My tiny project in sunny Ecuador

[ecusolar]

First panel voltage read

Here now a surprise:

I took out the panel I made yesterday, remember that it has only 33 cells by accident of missing space!

It reads on a cloudy morning at 8:30 18 volts to my surprise.

I can't measure Amps as my other (the good one) multimeter is damaged and I have to wait till the 15th of dec. to get my new clamp meter.

I was wondering if that would be fact for another panel and soldered 10 cells together and brought it out at 9:30, it measures a happy 6V outlet.

Q: Would that mean that I can reduce the quantity of cells because I'm direct under the Ecuator?

[ecusolar]

First panel

Here an update

My friend delivered the panel frame, man that's heavy.

He used 6mm glass on both sides and the frame is like a door.

It measures 100 x 50 cm inside and here was the first problem.

I only could glue 33 cells (3 x 11) as the last one of the strings was touching the aluminium frame, next have to be made 5 cm larger.

I might use this one for triggle charging my diesel generator battery and the hot water DC pump for the future solar hot water system.

I had to use a flash to take the photo, it's evening now. Tomorrow I'll post the generated voltage.

[ecusolar]

Question about encapsulating

Now my first question to the experts:

I was reading that it will be a good idea to encapsulate the cells but I also was reading that this is very difficult to do.

What is the reason for encapsulating
What would be the estimated time a panel can survive without encapsulating?
Does someone have photos of cells that got damaged cause of corrosion?
I imagine that the reason is to avoid corrosion and I was thinking of a glass/glass sandwich system like we all know from isolated double windows. It could be easy done even creating a vacuum inside with a small plastic tube which will be sealed after the desired vacuum is reached.

Did anyone try this out?

Would it be wise to apply WD40 or any other chemical like oil or fluid silicon to avoid corrosion before encapsulating?

I know that a junction of glass and air will reflect a certain amount of sunlight but would it make a big difference?

I would have serious problems to adquire solar cell encpsulating materials in EC and would like to work with what I can get easily here.

[ecusolar]

I started a thread in another forum and Jason asked me to post it here as well.
The mods in the other forum are more focused to professional solar installation and rarly answered a question there, I hope that I can get better responds here.

I will copy the most important parts of the proyect.




Hi everybody

First of all I want to introduce myself.

I’m a 51 years old German retired (of my self employed biz) mechanical engineer and own a hostel in Ecuador where I’m living since almost two decades.
English isn’t my mother language, so please forgive if I use sometimes a wrong word or have some typos.

Ecuador has a huge amount and intensity of sun hours and at noon you have no shadow as the sun is right above you. We have only 3 to 4 months raining season with very poor rainfall.

EC (Ecuador) generates his electric energy mostly from hydro systems and during a strong dry season we have energy cuts which lead to dark nights all around.

I use a 7500W diesel generator and a emergency 3500 gas generator for those cuts and can work without interruption in my hostel where I have an electricity bill of about 150$ monthly.

Now I came up with the idea to generate enough energy to be independent of the grid at least in my own house which is relative big (500 m2) but we are only a two person household.

I want to exclude in this first project air-conditioning, microwave, washing machine, dryer and the fridge which are the main power eaters. For hot shower water I will try to construct a Solar panel with isolated 100L hot water backup during my project.

I will have several questions during realizing my mini project and hope to find useful answers here, thanks for that in advance.

In attach my estimated energy use during a day/night for this project.

In the not far future I want to construct a Wind Generator of about 600W grid tied, I already bought a 60VDC Ametek motor, the rest have to wait till I finish the first step, the solar energy.

I need to refine these values, to be able to find real numbers I bought a watt meter called Kill_a_Watt which should arrive next week from USA.

What I already invested:

To start the project I was surfing in the net and tried to figger out what would be basically needed for my small project and the conclusion was:

330 3x6 cells 0.5V, 3.5 Amp 1.75W (will leave a review of 3 different Ebay sellers when finished)

1 Charge controller Morningstar 30 Amps

1 Modified Sine Wave inverter 2500W/Spikes 5000W

I do have basic tools like a solder pistol of 35W and 60W, a multimeter which I’m replacing actually with a Clamp multimeter to measure Amps, etc.

What I’ve done so far.

Well, the first solar cells arrived, it was really well packed and the shipping cost me 40$ additional to the US Ebay price.

I was able to solder the 3 x 12 cell strings with only damaging one cell which broke in the middle while a strong wind passed the open window of my work room, will not happen again.
I have a friend who works in aluminum doors and windows, I told him about my needs as a solar panel frame and he said: no prob look for it in two days, that’s today. I will upload a photo when I glued the cell strings.

One string of 12 cells produce 7 volts from 9:00 to 17:30 in the afternoon.