I brought the solar panel home for the long weekend to work on. We have four days off for Memorial Day and this would be a good time to make progress. I’m soldering two strips of tabbing wire on each of the cells top, or negative, side.
I’ve completed soldering 24 of the 36 cells yesterday. I’m not quite sure if I’m making great connections or not. Here is an enlargement of one of the soldered connections on the cell. I’m using a lead free flux with the tabbing wire.
The top part of the cell is the negative terminal and the bottom is the positive. I’ll start the positive soldering after all the negative soldering is complete. The flux helps the tabbing wire stay down but it also helps the solder make a good connection.
The plan is to make three rows of twelve cells for a total of 36 cells. This should produce about 18 volts. My question is if this will be too many volts to charge a 12 volt deep cycle battery.
As you can see, I’m using latex gloves because it’s not good to touch the cells with your fingers as the oils from your skin are damaging to the cells. The cells are very fragile and I broke one of them by pressing too hard with the hot iron. I’ve adjusted my technique and I only apply a light pressure. It just takes some time getting used to soldering.
I’m checking my wiring diagram on how to connect all the positives with the negatives going from one column to the next. I need to use the thicker bus wire to make this connection. That will be my next challenge. Part two is here.
