Building Solar Panels

    Well we are in the construction phase finally!  The solar cells came from Silicon Solar on Monday and we can now begin assembling all the pieces together.  Here's a picture (above) of how the solar cells look when they are shipped.  The goal now is to make panels in leaf shapes.  I started by simply drawing out a leaf shape on a piece of poster board and slowly soldering the cells together to fit into my shape.  This picture shows the layout...

  
    These cells needed tabbing before I could begin assembly, notice the shiny tabbing attached to each broken cell.  A pleasurable yet painstakingly slow process, my leaf began to fill up and take form!!!

                                                      

    We have our first LEAF!!!  As far as how many leaves we will need will depend on how much power we plan on using.  I go into this in depth in our solar blog.  Voltage, amps, and converting AC to DC are all covered in our solar blog.  Go check it out if your heady into this!  And stay tuned for more solar fun.  The next phase will be sealing these cells in epoxy and shaping the leaves to their final form!!!  Wayooo!!!!

      One Love from LEAF.  Http://www.leafjam.com