openinverter forum

after watching this Will Prowse Bypass VS Blocking Diodes in a Solar Power System YouTube video I decided to do some testing of my own





here is Amy's How to Wire Shaded Solar Panels presentation from the altE Store

I decided to do this because my Windy Nation 100 watt solar panels were grossly under performing, here I only have the single panel on the left plugged in, the other two are not even hooked up for this experiment

Test: 25% covered
Result: the rest of the cells work, they generate power

only the panel on the left is hooked up to the inverter the two on the right are not even connected for this test

Test: 50% covered
Result: the rest of the cells do NOT work, they do not generate any power

just for the hell-of-it-ness I decided to do the same from the other side, I honestly do not understand how the cells are connected in series on this panel, I will try to post a close up of the bus bars later on

Test: 25% covered
Result: the rest of the cells work, they generate power

and once again did the same thing from the other side for the heck of it


Test: 50% covered
Result: the rest of the cells do NOT work, they do not generate any power

here is what the back side of this Polycrystalline WindyNation (pronounced: cheap) 100 watt 12 volt solar panel looks like

and here I am pretending like I know what I am doing, this is on the continuity setting



I honestly don't get why this value is negative below when I measure across both diodes simultaneously

and here is Amy showing us How to test a solar panel diode

and here I am just measuring OHM aka resistance

so it appears as though the one different solar panel aka the good one has diodes requiring only 150 millivolts to open up the check valve if you will to bypass shady cells where as the other two matching ones aka the bad ones have diodes requiring upwards of 550 millivolts to open their check valves

so I yanked those Schottky diodes as they are called I think what makes them special is they react much quicker than "regular" diodes and also don't run as hot, correct me if I am way off on that

and I bought some new ones on AMAZON