Sun Sled

[SparWeb]

A friend of mine (Pierre B.) gave me some old PV panels, with a challenge: Find a novel way to put them to use.

So I put them on a sled.   
I can drag them around and provide power to various things.
No... not very useful...  yet...



It folds down when being dragged around:



The panels are old amorphous things.  6 Volts open-circuit and 7 Amps short-circuit.  So I have them connected all in series and they do actually produce 36V.  And nothing seems to be wrong with the wiring because in the full sun I measured up to 7.6 Amps shorted.  These can be brought around beside my main 24V battery stack for additional charging, unless I choose to take them somewhere else.

Since we have horses, there are lots of electric fences.  I'm going to get a battery-powered electric fence unit and see if I can't get it to work from the solar - perhaps even without the battery at all and just run it directly from the solar panels.  Horses only need to be zapped once in a while to maintain respect for a fence, so it's OK for the electric fence to be active only during the day.

[JW]

Been thinking about this topic for a day or two now. It seem to have a primitive sun tracker(i:e you   but is highly accurate. also being in bright white snow helps the refractive index...

Heres one for our Canadian users

Rush - Subdivisions (Official Music Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYdQB0mkEU   

[SparWeb]

I got some numbers, now.





I guess about 4 ohm load will be OK for either sun or cloud.

I think I could connect it to a heat tape or several of them in parallel to get close to 4 ohm. 
I'd only get 170W through them all, but of course it's free, portable, and adjustable.

[skid]

I've been using a cheap Canadian tire solar panel to power my electric fence for years. I use a battery powered zapper to keep bears out of my orchard. They definitely respect the fence although a few really hungry ones tunnel under it.

I have to mention as well that I've seen a ~400 pound black bear hop the fence at almost a full gallop when it was only 5 feet tall. Quite amazing to see actually. 6 feet seems to have stopped that.

[SparWeb]

I used them to fill-in while the turbine was down for maintenance recently.



Electric fences: yeah.  Bears?  no thank you.

[Bruce S]

SparWeb;
I was going to ask about those amorphous types. From an earlier picture , it looked like the wood was blocking parts of them.
This is a better pic.

Nice little sled ya got there.




     

[SparWeb]

I see what you mean.  The panels have these big plastic frames, and one edge is almost 4" wide.  For whatever reason...  I never saw them in their original application.  Probably intended for RV's or something.