12V Solar Panel

I recently bought four really cheap 0.6W-0.7W, 6V solar panels from eBay and they worked well when I tested them on their own. So I decided to use all four of them to make a small solar panel to power small projects.

I coupled up the four solar panels, two in series to create ~12V and the two pairs in parallel to double up the current. For now I drilled a couple of holes in an old doorbell enclosure and fixed the solar panels on to it.

Quick tests revealed that in direct sunlight it was able to provide an open-circuit voltage of about 13.5VDC and a short-circuit current of about 0.3A. This was alright for some small projects.

On my workbench I made a small hub which allows me to see the current voltage delivered by the solar panel. I can also use a switch that I fixed behind the unit to toggle between solar power and fixed 12V DC output from a power pack.

I have not yet added a storage battery to the project. I intend to keep working on this project and make it better. At the moment it passes through a buck converter and charges up a few 9V batteries during the day time.