A very simple DIY solar-powered USB charger
https://www.electronics-lab.com/simple-diy-solar-powered-usb-charger/
Raj @ embedded-lab.com tipped us with his latest project. It’s a simple, but useful USB Solar powered charger able to charge a power bank or your smartphone. Yesterday, I built a very simple DIY solar-powered USB charger for my TP-link 10400mAh USB Power Bank. All I needed was a 6V/3.5W solar panel and the TD1410-based 5V buck converter module. […]
MPPT Solar Charger Design based on PIC18F26J50
https://www.electronics-lab.com/mppt-solar-charger-design-based-pic18f26j50/
Lukas Fässler shares his Maximum Point Tracker Solar Charger Design based on PIC18F26J50: At the core of the design is a PIC18F26J50 in a 28 pin SOIC package. It’s capable of running at down to 2.15 volts and consumes extremely little power when running at lower clock speeds. And apart from that it features USB […]
Photovoltaic simulator system adds automated MPPT Efficiency Test
https://www.electronics-lab.com/photovoltaic-simulator-system-adds-automated-mppt-efficiency-test/
An added test facility enables test of a 1,500V photovoltaic (solar energy) inverter’s static and dynamic maximum peak power tracking (MPPT) according to European Standard EN50530, with a single command, creating downloadable photovoltaic I-V curves, plus static and dynamic EN50530 test reports. by Graham Prophet @ www.edn-europe.com Photovoltaic simulator system adds automated MPPT Efficiency Test […]
SunDuino – Run your C application using solar power
https://www.electronics-lab.com/sunduino-run-c-application-using-solar-power/
SunDuino is a Single Board Computer with integrated Battery Charger, Voltage Regulators, I2C, Digital and Analog IO. It’s main benefit is that it can run a compiled C app for years on a small battery or forever using built in solar charger. A background RTOS provides SLEEP functions for reducing operating current to 100ua while providing 125ms periodic wakeups. […]
Build a $1 per Watt parallelizable MPPT controller
https://www.electronics-lab.com/1w-true-mppt/
Jonathan Bruneau designed a $1/W maximum power point tracker used to extract maximum power from solar panels and published his project on hackaday.io: Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is a technique whereupon special electronics attempts to extract the optimal amount of energy from a solar panel. This optimal point fluctuates in function of a variety […]
Dual axis solar tracker with online energy monitor
https://www.electronics-lab.com/dual-axis-solar-tracker-online-energy-monitor/
by geo bruce @ instructables.com: The features of this solar tracker are: Solar tracking: making sure the solar panels are aligned to the sun as long as possible. Energy monitor: This measures the voltage and the current generated by the panels and calculates the generated Power and Energy. Data logging: this sends the data from […]
21.1% efficiency with Perovskite solar cells
https://www.electronics-lab.com/21-1-efficiency-with-perovskite-solar-cells/
Scientists have successfully developed a Perovskite solar call containing Cesium which has attained an efficiency of 21.1%, as well as a world record for reproducibility. by Denis Meyer @ elektormagazine.com: In adding Cesium, the scientists at EPFL, let by Michael Saliba, have developed the first Perovskite compound with triple cations (Cs/MA/FA). These new films are more […]
SolarBoost – Make Your Own USB Solar Mobile Charger
https://www.electronics-lab.com/solarboost-make-your-own-usb-solar-mobile-charger/
SolarBoost is an open source smart interface that allows you to build your own powerful and portable solar charger for your phone and other mobile devices. It has two USB ports and can provide 5V @ 2A at each of them and is controlled by a 8-bit 32MHz Microchip PIC microcontroller. It is also equipped […]
Smartphone Solar charger card
https://www.electronics-lab.com/smartphone-solar-charger-card/
Here is a nice idea of a business card solar smartphone charger with USB plug. The charger is 3mm thick and can provide 50mA @ 5V Smartphone Solar charger card – [Link]
Arduino MPPT Solar Charger Shield
https://www.electronics-lab.com/arduino-mppt-solar-charger-shield/
Lukas Fässler has designed a MPPT Solar Charger Arduino Shield and document it on the link below. A Solar MPPT charger is used to convert the solar panel voltage to the optimal voltage for charging a battery in the most efficient way. This way the solar panel works on the maximum power point and thus […]