note for solar panel builders

[picmacmillan]

i was just looking to see if the guy on e-bay that sells the small solar cells, has anything else, and he has some solar panels for sale "with the blocking schottky diode in them ...apparantly it prevents reverse current flow at night?....do you have to have these as i know a few guys are building these panels themselves?..thanks..pickster

[tecker]

   There is really no reason not to put in blocking diodes and in the case of schottky

diodes ( with a voltage drop of 1/2 a volt ) a litle protection is the good to keep the panel with it's  hundreds of low amp connections safe from loading up from the equipment down line .

[Norm]

 Simply put a schottky diode is a little more expensive but it only has a voltage drop of about .1 volt, whereas a silicon diode has a voltage drop of about .7 volt How do I know this?

 I've got a newer computer with a nice 17 inch flat screen monitor (early Christmas present) and I can zip search Google better than ever now!

 and that's what it said about schottky diodes !

http://www.ganssle.com/articles/amemdev.htm

  Havin' Fun!

        ( :>) Norm.

[picmacmillan]

the best part of this site is when you ask a question the answer usually contains some more cool stuff to learn about..

[tecker]

 

   Allright Norm congrats open up the res and you'll see silicon at .7 generally considered to be 1 volt ,schottkys at .3 considered to be 1/2 volt and germanium at .2 volts signal type .

[tecker]

 

  check out the link It goes to a memory post