Anyone knows a good solar cells supplier in north america ?

[Tenbatsu]

Smokey, how many watts can you generate on a typical sunny day with your solar panel?

[fritznien]

 I see 200 watt panels for sale by the pallet load for as little as $1.68 a watt.
what are your costs?

[sm0ky2]

The calc cells are usually 2 types, rectangle and square.
square is 2 rectangles approx., but they're not exact, so mixing and matching throws off yur math. you can use them in all sorts of ways, not just the industry standard " flat panel"

i may be off on these numbers, it was several years ago, and the guy i helped build it for hooked it up to a car for 3 days. took it off and decided that a solar car was unpheasable, because your panel would need to be 3x the size of the car, to be able to drive anywhere. but, we learned how to, and how NOT to build a solar panel out of a bunch of tiny pieces, and had a lot of fun in the process...

this is just off the top of my head, so if you are going to build a replica, i can talk to the guy and check on the exact numbers.

but its something like rows of 243 x 60 calculator cells, 14,580 total, just shy of 30,000 holes and solder indentions drilled into the wood, 9 tubes of silicone, 11,000 cusswords, half a dozen glass-cuts on your fingertips, and 6 hours of troubleshooting to figure out that row 187 was put connected to the parellel points instead of in the series, and was screwing with our voltage.

each cell was 2.25mw, they were the rectangle ones, not the squares. and we used the ones with the dark glass. that seems to make a difference in how much / what kind of light they can use. (iron tempered/doped or something i think its called)
total panel produced just over 300W in full sun. over 500 with the multisun set-up, until the sealant started melting from heat.
but it produced still a good ammount of electricity in even ambient light, indoors, moonlight, not even facing the sun in the daytime. which commercial "rooftop" panels won't do.


i had guessed the weight to be about 75-80lbs, i dunno, moving it around was a 2 person job, because it was a full-sheet of ply. we took it up to the school, we used to do this thing, where everyone brings their projects up to the field next to the college to show them off, test balistics from potato guns, laser displays, robots, you'd be amazed what college kids come up with in their spare time, that you dont know about.....


i wonder if i could get it...
its probably just sitting in the jack*@'s garage.....
took us longer to make the panel than it did for him to give up on the solarcar and go back to plugging into the wall....

im far too lazy these days to build that again, i think i'd just call a BP supplier and tell them mail me one...

Wal-mart uses this cheap roll-out mat stuff.
you just plug them into one another like xmas trees.
the power per area isn't what it could be, but the cost when they cover the entire roof of a WalMart is like 60c/watt

i think companies should redesign this technology to fit our society... so that we can actually use it, instead of accomodating its use...

like i mean, if it were designed to go in places like... covered patios, awnings, windowblinds,
things that we use for WHAT purpose?
to BLOCK the sun.....

why not harvest it too??
theres also thermoelectric concepts that should be implemented into the cells also. to cool them down, and also to convert some of the "heatloss" into more electricity. maybe the solar industry just as a massive lack of engineering skills...
just a bunch of chemists and businessmen, noone that actually has a clue how to use this crap they sell us...

its all about making a "product", when it should be all about harvesting the sun.

Texas Instruments understands that. which is why they use the good cells.
   thats why i suggested using the calc cells. they're small enough that you can angle them, to fit over any type of surface, angled, curved, whatever.
make a kewl "solar-skin" for things. we had a football, an RC boat, a solar-cokecan, and a solar-powered steam-roller that blew smoke out like a fog machine...
gave a lot of thought into covering the entire surface of the car,
but we went with the more rigid one we could just strap to the top of the car and take it off any time.