Category: Solar Workshop Experiments
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Solar Hot Water! Semiconductor Immersion Heating Elements – my research project
Solar panels do so many things very well, but there is always room for improvement and new ideas. One application I find interesting is to directly drive a Hot Water Heater (HWH) heating element in a water tank with PV DC solar panels. But are there better ways to do it? I made a video…
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How Much Power Are You Losing? A simple introduction to voltage drop in wires and cables
Have you ever looked at an extension cord and wondered “how much power is it wasting”? And how about those cheap skinny solar MC-4 cables – maybe they’re not such a bargain either. Or perhaps you never gave any of this a single thought! It is a fact that using the wrong cable or cord…
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14 Watts Can Do WHAT? Getting smarter about solar power, efficiency and high-tech survival
Hi folks, most survivalists know how much food & water they need to survive “X days” in the jungle”. That’s because they are smart and take time to think things through! But have you ever wondered, how many slices of toast can that 12-volt 10 amp-hour lithium battery make?? Note: this article is about an…
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Boiling Water with 14w of Solar Powered Induction (plus video) EXPERIMENTAL
It’s that time again… another solar powered experiment at the outer edges of “feasibility”. Part of my work and research in solar power the past few years has been about finding ways to do “more with less“. Often I try to accomplish a task using only the solar panel itself, using minimal to no electronics…
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Video: PV-to-Wall – Direct DC Solar Power – Direct Drive Solar
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How Many SOLAR Watt-Hours does it take to cook? (Documented Experiment plus Video)
Kitchen-Grade 12 Volt Cooking Appliances are an untapped industry in my opinion. There is a pressing need all over the world for simple, durable and affordable 12v cooking appliances, but most of the ones available are not designed for the rigors of daily use. After years of searching for alternatives, I could not really find…
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Solar DC Direct Drive 12v / 24v / Series car radiator fans – Bench Test with video
In this article and video I compare the performance of different car radiator fans in a direct PV DC driven (PV-to-Load) shed ventilation scenario. Overview A 50 watt solar panel and a simple car radiator fan makes an extremely simple and robust DIY shed ventilation solution. 12 volt fans are very common and affordable, but…
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Nichrome and fuses melting at 1800x magnification – video
Recently I was asked by Joyalens to review their JL246MS digital microscope. I accepted in order to look at Nichrome and fuses up close. (Note I don’t receive any commissions for sales). Interestingly this microscope is USB 5v powered, so it’s easy to run even off of a battery pack if needed. Nichrome wire forms…
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Direct Solar Electric Cooking vs. traditional methods – A Grid Down Scenario
It’s happened, The Grid Is Down. Roads are closed. No gas stations are open. Nothing works. Electrical power and communications are gone. Chaos is slowly breaking out. But the Off Gridder feels fairly secure; solar panels on the roof, 20kw of batteries, a wondrous integrated inverter with bluetooth, MPPT charger all crammed into one giant…
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20 Watt Solar Panel Boils an Egg! My ultra efficient solar electric cooker prototype (Video Added)
Cooking food with only 10 watts of solar power sounds unattainable – but it’s not. This was recently proved in my solar workshop. I used a combination of an insulated food container with a diode chain solid state heating element to efficiently extract heat from a solar panel. The result is an ultra efficient mini…
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Solar PV Solid-State heating elements (Diode Strings) explained
This post is mainly to address the lack of understanding about solar powered (PV-to-Load) solid-state heating elements – also called a diode string or chain. The Part 2 video presentation and this blog post should help fill in the blanks. The video itself is also posted here on this page. Watching Part 1 is also…
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Boiling Diodes: a more efficient way to heat water and cook food using Solar Power
Why Solid State Solar Electric Heating Elements Matter Update: further research has been conducted into this topic, and it has been very fruitful. Videos showing some of the latest results are posted on this page. While continuing my research into solid-state solar electric PV-to-Load heating elements, I decided to try heating and if possible boiling…
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Solid State Solar Electric Heating Elements
Background Update: further research has been conducted into this topic, and it has been very fruitful. Videos showing some of the latest results are posted on this page. I’ve spent a lot of time working with resistance style heating elements to extract heat from solar panel arrays. Uses include space heating, cooking food and heating…
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Simple Solar Electric space heater conversion project (With Video)
Introduction and Recap of Past Work Over the past several years, I have experimentally heated my home and workshop with custom space heaters converted from AC to Direct DC operation. What I wanted to achieve was to plug my space heaters straight into the solar panels, bypassing inverters, charge controllers and batteries. Plus save wear…
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Boiling an Egg with a 100 Watt Solar Panel – Simple Solar Electric Cooking
What can a 100 Watt solar panel actually do? Well, it can boil an egg pretty easily. There are a lot of complicated and expensive ways to cook off of solar. But this is not one of them. One of my favorite ways to use a small solar panel to cook is to simply plug…
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My Portable Solar Electric Toaster Oven prototype – cooking without batteries!
Hi folks, hope you’re doing well. In what is possibly a first, I am unveiling a new prototype invention – a mini PV solar electric toaster oven. It is lightweight, portable and I think would be fairly cheap to produce. It easily bakes or roasts bread, meat, vegetables and whatever else – all day using…
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My Mini 100 Watt solar electric oven prototype – Simple Solar Cooking!
Can a single 100 Watt 12V solar panel supply enough power to cook or bake food by itself? I’ve been thinking about this question for years. A simple portable electric oven that operates off of such a small amount of power could change everything. Finally, after a long wait, the opportunity came to test the…
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Risky Experiments in my Solar Workshop – Part 2: lithium cell phone batteries
Some time ago, a friend sent me a box of discarded lithium-ion cell phone batteries he had no use for. They would have ended up in the landfill otherwise. So I started a “side project” in which I intended to experimentally use these batteries for solar power. Normally I use LiFePo4 cells for solar power,…
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