i have been putting together a bunch of seconds and broken solar cells that i bought on ebay. my wife's horses got into my shop and i wound up with a lot more broken pieces than i received. life must go on so after a lot of cussing and crying, this is what i ended up with. there are six sets of cells in series that range from 18 to 22 volts open voltage. these are tied in parallel for 18.2 volts open, 16.5v @ 39.3 amps under load charging a badly discharged 12v battery. i am in the proccess of building a tracking mount for them and will have mirror deflectors on top and bottom to consontrate the suns rays. they should put out quiet a bit of power. copper pipe circulating water behind them will take some of the heat out and give plenty of hot water at the same time. i found two batteries at the local dump sight. one showed 11.3v and the other one showed 12.5 but they were in a badly discharged state. i tied them together in paralle and hooked them to the solar panels, after 7hrs. on the solar panels they were both fully charged at 13.4v very good i think. i went out to the shop about 11pm to get a tool that i needed and as i passed the panels i noticed that the security light was in the right place to lite up the face of the panels and i had to bring out themeter to see if they were using the lite to make a couple of volts. the meter showed 12,2v and 2amps into my battery bank, i was verry pleased with that.
