Build and Review Series Idea Feedback Wanted

Well if you can get your hands on those it’s awesome :smiley:
I was just going off of consumer grade cells that i’m working with right now.

It would essentially need a regular lipo charger modified for higher voltages than 24V input or so, depending on how you configure the panel. A maximum power point tracker for the panel can’t hurt either.

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Believe the panels put out 1.5V per cell and can have them arranged in series and parallel to get the desired output voltage. Agree though I have only looked into this from a what can I buy on Amazon today perspective. Peak efficiency of a panel also doesn’t account for being off axis compared to the angle of the sun and other factors (shade on part of a panel with cells in series reduces power output of all cells in that series since the shaded cells act as resistors).

If charging my relatively small lipos at 1C I need at least 10Ah x 5 x 4.2 = 210W. Not to say a 20W panel will do nothing but in an hour or riding I can drain the 185Wh in my battery and would have only gained 20Wh during that ride at best (with no losses, about an extra 2 miles on a 12 mile trip)

Regarding original post and concept of a fund for trying new things out to share with the community it sounds good to me, maybe could straw poll or do a pay to play type thing where patreon perks are different ideas you can vote on with your dollars or something along those lines.

If you can get hold of someone in the solar business, chances are good that they can offer you some b-grade or used modules for cheap. You could get a single panel that’s used for buildings outputting 250W and more for probably around 100 bucks. That is if you know a guy who knows a guy and so on :smile: