We collect a solar battery at home

Materials for the manufacture

In order to make the device at home, you will need:

1. Thin copper sheet. Its average cost is about one hundred and fifty per 0.9 m2. It will take somewhere 0.45 m2.
2. "Crocodiles" among two pieces.
3. A tester or a microammeter. This device is needed to measure current and evaluate the effectiveness of the energy source.
4. An electric stove, with a capacity of 1100 watts, it is necessary that the spiral in it be heated to red.
5. A plastic bottle in which you need to cut the neck yourself.
6. Plain salt. A few tablespoons.
7. Heated water.
8. Fine sandpaper (nulevka).

Step-by-step instruction

So, to make a solar battery with your own hands, you must perform the following steps:

• We cut off a piece of copper from a sheet of copper so that we can place it on a spiral of an electric stove. The cut piece must be well cleaned of any dirt with sandpaper, if necessary, you can use cleaning products. Any traces of fat will prevent oxidation, so they must be removed and a clean sheet should be taken only by the edges.

• Next, place it on the spiral of the stove and turn it on so that it glows to red. In this case, be extremely careful and observe safety precautions! Under the influence of chemical reactions, when heated, copper will oxidize. That's when the copper turns black, count another 30 minutes to make the black layer thick.

• Then turn off the stove. Let the piece designed for the manufacture of a solar panel do it yourself to cool to room temperature. When cooling, copper and copper oxide will cool and contract at different speeds. Then the oxide detachment begins.

• Next, take and wash a piece of copper with heated water. Do not scrape off the black oxide residue and do not deform the sheet! It is only necessary to slightly remove pieces that exfoliate themselves.
• After that, we begin to assemble a home-made solar battery without leaving home. Everything is very easy to do.
• We cut off another piece of copper corresponding to what we have already heated; it also needs to be cleaned of contaminants.We bend 2 sheets so that they fit into the bottle without touching each other, we hook the “crocodiles” to them, as shown in the photo below. We complete our process of manufacturing a solar battery on our own, connecting a plus to a clean piece of copper, and a minus to an oxidized one. Next, add a few tablespoons of salt in heated water, and stir until final dissolution. Then we pour the resulting solution into a bottle with pieces of copper, but not completely. Leave about two and a half centimeters from the edges of the plate.
  

By the way, such a solar battery can give several milliamps even without the sun, working like a battery! Of course, such a design is not capable of powering anything serious, it can be used as a demonstration version or prototype, from which low-power LEDs can light up. We recommend that you immediately review the more serious use of alternative energy sources, which we described in an article on how to make lighting for a solar powered cottage!

Charge the phone from the sun

Now we will tell you how to build a solar battery that can charge a mobile phone. Making a battery consisting of individual parts based on monocrystalline silicon is one of the most popular types of cells, problems with their soldering are not ruled out due to the fragility of the panels. If you are not sure that you can do everything yourself, it is better to choose already soldered modules. Well, if they will consist of ten single-crystal elements and have an output voltage of five volts.

Solar cells can also be present in calculators, lanterns powered by the sun, from where they can be pulled out. These devices use mainly amorphous elements, where the semiconductor layer is located on a small glass plate. Given that modules of this type give about one and a half volts, we need four pieces that need to be connected in series. Do not forget to solder the diode to the positive terminal of the battery, which will prevent the battery from wasting charge through the solar battery. You can get the diode from the flashlight board.

It is highly advisable to install a simple 5 Volt linear stabilizer and a USB connector after the solar panel. This is necessary to limit the voltage, as if the connection is incorrect, the charging device can be damaged. You can buy a stabilizer in any radio parts store or drop out of a non-working board.

In order for our product to serve more reliably, we pour hot glue on the transverse faces of the modules to protect against mechanical damage.

Overview of a more complex model

So, in this article we prompted you how to make a solar battery with your own hands from improvised materials. Of all the options, namely: the manufacture of a battery from aluminum beer cans, silicon, foil, transistors, on the same diodes, etc. We proposed a simple assembly from copper plates, and also described a method where solar modules can be removed from a calculator or a flashlight, and correctly connected, used to charge the phone.

Also read:

• How to charge for the battery at home
• How to pay less for light legally
• The most economical home heating