Charging My Devices with a Spare Solar Panel

I recently discovered a solar panel hidden under my bed about a week ago and thought I'd put it to use. The following post may turn into a blog about how I've been using this solar power and I hope it can also encourage others to help the environment and go solar.

The Setup

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As shown in the picture below, this setup intends to charge regular mobile devices.

I currently have the following:

• A solar panel rated at just over 5W (5v 1A)
• A solar panel battery bank with 7200 mAh capacity
• A regular battery bank with 1850 mAh capacity
• A spare computer front-panel interface board
• A really old computer case

Every morning I get up and connect all the wires and make sure it is producing a current and leave it to run while I'm at school and usually it charges all the way up when I get back. The smaller bank takes about 4 hours to charge whereas the bigger power bank takes a whole day.

With the power I collect in the battery banks, I use it to charge my tablet so I don't have to rely on household adapters and mains power. So you could call this my solar powered tablet! (I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2)

Another fun thing is that while my tablet charges, I run some distributed computing projects via BOINC, specifically rosetta@home which folds proteins to help do stuff like identify new drugs to battle cancer or investigate the behaviour of a particular molecular combination. So it is a totally renewable human race helping machine!

Some Small Problems

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1. A hassle to maintain
   Provided that I have to do some work to get this thing working, sometimes I don't have time to set it up in the morning which makes me miss out on possible opportunities to collect some solar power.

2. Not Waterproof
   The current setup provides zero protection against the elements and requires me to keep it covered at all times that it is not working and quickly run out and disconnect it if it happens to start raining during the day (which I might not be able to do 24/7)

3. Effects of the Other Elements
   I've noticed over the recent windy days over here in Australia that the solar panel gets blown over and as you could probably guess, stops charging the battery banks. So I guess I need to find a sturdier solution.

4. Heat
   Don't even mention the heat here in Australia, we live in 40C heat for the majority of summer. As a result, I have to anticipate how to handle the increase in heat which is not healthy for those Lithium Polymer batteries. Solar powered fans maybe?

First Upgrades

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It's small progress, but we are getting there...

Over the weekend I had a friend over and we soldered up the joints and connections on the solar panel while also adding some GPIO pin connectors I had lying around.

To partially solve the waterproofing problem, I added some blu-tack to the connectors and solder joints as shown.

Now it makes it way more easy to get set in the morning.

Next Steps

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I was thinking to use the rest of the computer case shown.

With the gratings on the side there, I can feed-in the wires and create a little housing in the shell so it's protected from the rain. Then I think I'll plaster up the grating somehow to create a totally waterproof container.

The end product should be a little box with a USB port on it so I can just plug it and leave it.

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Interested about solar? Have solar panels on your roof and want to be rewarded? Want to invest in the future of energy?

Well you should check out Solarcoin, an innovative hybrid POS/POW coin that rewards its users for going solar. 1MWh of solar energy is equivalent to 1 Solarcoin. Help spread the word and join us in making the move from fossil fuels to a more sustainable outlook for the future of the human race.

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See you in the next post, thanks for reading!

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