How to Solder Solar Cells
- How Do You Solder Solar Cells?
- Cutting the Tab Wires
- Soldering the Tab Wires to the Solar Panel
- How to Calculate the Tabbing on Solar Cells
- More Solar Panel Videos
How Do You Solder Solar Cells?
Sure, it would be nice to find cheap solar cells on ebay that already have the tabs soldered on them. When you’re building the cheapest solar panel you can manage, sometimes you can’t afford to be picky. But hey, that’s no problem at all. It is actually very simple to solder tabs onto your solar cells. Here is our video on how to solder your own solar cells.
Cutting the Tab Wires
First, we have to cut the tab wires. There is a real easy, simple way to get all your solar panel tab wires cut to the exact length you need. First a description of what I’m doing, then the video. We will part the tabbing wire to get 155mm sections. In this video, we wrap the tabbing wire around a piece of cardboard — actually two piece of corrugated cardboard. The width of the cardboard is about 71mm. When you add the thickness of the edges (about 2 to 3mm each), the total becomes the length we want, 155mm. Next we run scissors down the middle of the slot made when you separate the two pieces of cardboard. Voila, all of the solar panel tabbing cut to the exact length you need!
Soldering the Tab Wires to the Solar Panel
This video shows how to get started soldering the panels. Start with solder that has a low melting temperature. It is going to be hard to keep the wire in place, so to make sure it stays in place while running the hot soldering iron over it we are using a slight adhesive glue pen. Next, we place the wire on the solar panel, dip the soldering gun in rosin flux and slowly run it over the solar panel wire. Just watch, its not that hard!
How to Calculate the Tabbing on Solar Cells
This solar cell is extremely thin, about .2 mm — it is 81×150mm in length and width.
Solar Cells this thin easily chip their corners by the way, which is why there is an abundance of slightly damaged or blemished solar cells you can pick up on ebay for extremely cheap. In fact, as I made this video, you will see I took a little chip out of the corner (by complete accident!) Make sure you treat your solar cells very gentle.
Anyways, as you can tell from our video, as you place the solar cell down for mounting there should be a 5mm gap inbetween.
When placing two solar cells next to each other, the distance of both their height plus the gap is 167mm. The tab wire doesn’t have to be 167mm however, above we cut 155mm tab wire and that will be just fine for wiring the solar cells.
As we flip the solar cells on the back side, you can see why they do not need to be the complete 167mm — the interval between rear side contact pads have a 1.5 centimeter border. This allows us to make the proper contacts we need using about 150mm … but we went with 155cm cuts above to have a little extra room just in case.
The wire tabbed to the front of the first solar cell goes to the back of the second solar cell. Your solar panel includes 36 cells. Every cell needs two tabs. Incidentally, saving that 1.7cm of tabbing wire per solar cell is going to save us a full meter of tabbing wire by the time the entire solar panel is done! As I fold the tabbing wire to the backside of the second solar cell, you can see the tabbing overhangs by 5mm, which is fine.
More Solar Panel Videos
Save money by building your own solar panels. However, it is a wise investment to get yourself a decent how-to manual for diy solar panels. Would you like a clear, concise, exact guide, with wiring diagrams, detailed instructions and hours of video explaining just how to build your own solar panel? Our video for solar panels is cheap compared to all the money you will save by doing it right! There are so many things you get — I’ll save for all the details on our explanation page. Please check out our details on how you can build your own solar panel properly by clicking on the image below.
