Now that we have a power meter for the small solar panel (Harbor Freight #62449) it's time to take it into the sun and see what it does. The first lesson learned is that a solar panel's voltage range is far wider than a battery. A charged and rested "12 volt" lead-acid battery's open-circuit voltage is around 12.5 volts, and the charging voltage should never exceed 14.4 volts. In contrast, the open-circuit voltage of this "12 volt" solar panel sitting in the sun is more than double that nominal rating. Yikes!

Open 27V

While we expect the voltage to drop as soon as a load is put on the circuit, there's still that momentary spike of voltage which might cause problems until we better understand how to handle it. Digging through the parts pile for a test load found a 24V cooling fan that was retired due to a bad bearing. Since it was designed for 24V operation, a quick spike of 27V (or possibly higher) should not be immediately fatal. The maximum amperage listed on the label is 0.1A, which translates to a maximum power ceiling of 2.4W so it should be able to handle the power of a 1.5W solar panel.

Upon connection to the voltage output, the fan twitched but did not start turning. A tap of the fan started it turning and we can see the solar panel delivering 9.3V * 0.0328A = 0.3W. This is only 20% of the advertised power while the panel is sitting flat on the ground.

Flat 0.3W

This was in the mid winter afternoon, when the sun is already at a fairly shallow angle relative to the ground the panel was sitting on. Now we have this baseline, the next experiment is to prop up the panel so it faces the sun directly. We expect the power output to increase, and the meter will tell us by how much.

Facing 1.2W

The answer: 19.3V * 0.0625A = 1.2W, or roughly quadruple the output, just by finding a better angle into the sun. This reinforces why solar installations prefer to face into the sun and some photo-voltaic solar systems even track the sun's movement across the sky. Since this is not a rigorous test, there may be other factors involved that may overstate (or understate) the effects. But after this experiment it should be fair to state:

  • The advertised power rating of 1.5W probably represents the most optimistic value under ideal conditions, but we can get reasonably close.
  • Orienting solar panels to face directly into the sun makes a huge difference.