Foldable Solar Power

Just a little blog about creating your own portable solar panel for charging your
power-bank.

A few month ago I was playing around with solar power and this is one of the hobby projects I
created that was actually a success 😂 and still works perfectly.

I had bought these small solar panels on ebay and after playing around with them for
a few days I came to the conclusion that they were not very useful when used as
single units. At least not for stuff I wanted to do like charging a power bank.

Oh even 1 panel (6 volts and 0.5 Amps) will charge a 18650 battery but it takes about a week
in full sunlight. IMHO Not very practical. So Lets go parallel. I calculated that at a peak of 3 Amps it would be enough
to charge a power-bank in 1 day and it didn’t even have to have full sunlight.

So thats what I did. After a lot of trial and error I found a way to create it and be small when folded.






Later I changed the cable with a micro-usb one as it is more standard.

Conclusion

Fun to do and cheap (all in all less then $10,= to make).
A bit of soldering, some duct tape and some vinyl along with the solar panels and we are in business.
Oh and a blocking diode to make sure that current will not flow back to the panel when power is reversed.
I still use it on a regular basis.