Quick update, I've finished the first year of my Master's. I'm not doing particularly well or even as well as I'd hoped. I just finished a module in RF design and Digital Systems Design 2. I had 6 assignments for RF and 2 large assignments and a IEEE paper to write for Digital Systems Design 2. I may upload some of these at a later date, once I clean them up, improve on them and then I can use them as part of my very own portfolio.
Last year I bought a number of broken photovoltaic cells for about $20 on ebay and I never got around to using them, due to lack of time and space to do so. So on last Tuesday night, I finally got around to starting it all. In the picture at the top of this post, you can see my test setup. I built the wood panel from 1 90cm x 60cm hard back board, 2 x 90cm rails and 2 x 45 cm rails. I've left gaps on either side for wires to come out, in case I want to place plexiglass on top to use outside.
Now as you can see in the picture on the left here, I've made quite a stupid mistake here. I've wired the solar cells in parallel, instead of in series. This means that the voltage will only be a fraction of the total possible voltage and this fraction decreases with every cell I attach. For two cells, 1/V(total) = 1/V1 + 1/V2, which is halved for two cells, a third for three and so on. Currently the measured voltage indoors under a fluorescent light is about 150mV and 20mA, which is nowhere near the results I need. I went out this morning to see what my new 3 cell panel would work and I got a reading of 565mV with 150mA. Much better, but still way below what I was expecting. By placing the cells in series, The voltage will be additive and the more cells I add, the greater the voltage will be.
Tonight, I think I'm going to keep my parallel 3-cell and I'll build a 3-cell series as well so that I can compare the results and show the difference between the two.
I'll have more on this over the next few days, watch this space.
