Unstable Voltages of Solar Cells Damage Charging Boards? A Tip 4 U.
Solar cell is one of the most popular ways we use to harvest green power. It’s so convenient, cheap and environmental-friendly that we sometimes have some crazy urges that every project should be tinkered into a solar-powered one. We love this carbon-free idea, and sure you agree (yes, we can tell that from sales of these products.).
However, the unstable output voltage of the solar cell might cause damage to your charging board. How to protect your charging board from damages caused by unstable voltages of solar cells?
Here is a tip that you should know before happily tethering solar cells to your charging boards.
It takes only two simple steps to protect your charging board. We have a Lipo Rider here. Let’s check out these steps:
1. Pick a moment with the brightest sunlight that your solar panel is possibly exposed to; connect the solar panel to the Lipo Rider, as the following picture.
2. Take out your Multimeter. Select the 20V voltage profile. Check the load voltage of the panel ASAP like the following picture.
The safe input voltage range of Lipo Rider/Lipo Rider Pro is 4.8V-5.5V. We listed the max input voltage as 6.5V on the Wiki pages of Lipo Rider and Lipo Rider Pro. That’s true. However the charging boards can’t run sustainably under such a high voltage.
Back to the multimeter, I got 4.56V, within the safe range of Lipo Rider. If not, the output voltage of the panel should be lowered by different measures, like moving it to a less sunny place or blocking sunlight from part of its surface with black material, etc.
This can not only happen to solar panel, but also to other unstable power sources. So if you are using or plan to use an unstable power source, try this tip out!
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