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The problem

Nowadays, installing solar photovoltaic panels on big city buildings is limited to the roof area of the building. This means little power generation capabilities for energy savings when considering each individual apartment.

The idea

The idea of this "Smart Home Solar Power Management" Project is to develop simple components and accessories that enable easy, "for dummies" kind of installation of solar photovoltaic cells. For that to happen is required installation of additional wiring in the apartment electrical network. Staring with a 5V DC wire, suitable for most small home appliances such as vacuum cleaners, smartphones, tablets, and any other smart device or technology. And another with 12V DC suited for computers, gaming consoles, and OLED TV displays.

Energy storage methodology follows a decentralized architecture of installation, where each individual room or compartment has its own "independent" battery storage up to 40.000mAh. All connected to any Smart Home device I made available on my Github.

The solar panels can be assembled in a Lego-style kind of way. Due to the reduced photovoltaic solar cells, can be assembled into any shape or area. For instance glass door windows and doors. For instance in a terrasse or a terrasse exterior wall regardless of floor area shape.

Prototyping a support for a Polycrystalline 78x39mm Solar Cell

Polycrystalline solar cells are known to break too easily when handing and assembling all together when building a solar panel.

To protect this kind of solar cells I've designed and order fabrication a support hardware electronics where any solar cell can be soldered , in particular the ones below i used for this testing.

This is a simple PCB for a direct fit on commercially available blue solar cell tiles with dimensions 78x39mm. This support hardware PCB is intended to be connected to the distributed Indoors power storage and installed at the ttop side or at the bottom side of transparent glass windows at a home or office. This PCB, when assembled with a blue solar cell tile, can be used to power a low voltage 4.2V indoor illumination network using ultra-low power micro LED strips. For instance, this one sold on AliExpress.

When connected in series and installed on several windows and networked, can power off the grid 4.2V DC LED lights on all rooms and compartments at a home or office. During evenings and at night until bedtime. If one intends to use it to power indoors LED illumination during the day is required a High Capacity Power Bank connected to all first tiles of all the series. For instance this power bank here. One important takeaway about this prototype project is the ability to be installed on any traditional apartment or home in a big city.

Support PCB for the solar cell

On the photo below is possible to see one solar cell placed in one of my apartment's windows for evaluation of aesthetics and total area required for an installation directly placed on the window. This one in particular requires 124mm of window glass estate, at the top or at the bottom and has an height of 80mm. This setup and installation is able to connect to existing home automation networks or systems (see my next iteration of this project to learn more).

solar cell comparison with a window size

Below is possible to see solar cell array assembled in series to output 4.5V DC and 1.3A and installed (taped) at the bottom of window. The solar cell support PCB works really well on protecting the fragile solar cell from breaking when handing and installing. Defiantly a must have when thinking on fabricating and assembly these kind of fragile solar cells.

solar cell array assembled in series to output 4.5V DC and 1.3A

Current Status of Development

1st iteration

The current status of development of this project has now the following preliminary conclusions:

A dressing room with an area of...