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Simple Solar Circuits

by Windell

Octo ber 22, 2008

Simple Solar Circuits:

How to get started adding solar power to your small electronics projects. Use the sun to power small solar
and battery powered night lights, garden lights, and decorations f or halloween.

T he f irst part of a solar circuit is a device f or collecting sunlight.

To keep things simple, were using a single nicely made small solar
panel f or all of these circuits. T he panel that were using f or these
circuits is this one, part number PWR1241 f rom BG Micro, about $3
each. T his is a monolithic copper indium diselenide solar panel,
apparently printed on a 60mm square of glass and epoxy coated
f or toughness. On the back of the panel are two (thin) solderable
terminals, with marked polarity. (While you can solder directly to the
terminals, be sure to stress-relieve the connections, e.g., with a
blob of epoxy over your wires.) In f ull sunlight the panel is specif ied
to produce 4.5 V at up to 90 mA, although 50 mA seems like a more
typical f igure.
[Bef ore we move onto our f irst examples, a word of caution: T hese
are small simple circuits. In building these, we will quite intentionally
gloss over a number of minor details and issues that are
unimportant at these low powers, but could become critical if you
were to try to scale up.]
Direct Drive:
T he most obvious way to use power f rom a solar panel is to connect your load directly to the output leads
of the solar panel.

Here are a couple of examples of this in practice:

On the lef t, weve hooked up one of our little solar panels directly
to a small motor taken f rom an old CD player. When you set it out
in the sunlight or bring it close to a lamp, the motor starts to spin.
On the right weve hooked one of the panels right up to a highpower blue LED. T he reason that weve used a high-power LED
here is that it can easily withstand 50-90 mA f rom the solar panel
a regular LED designed f or 20 mA would be destroyed by that
current. (T he LED is the same type that we used f or our highpower LED blinking circuit.)
Interruption-resistant direct drive:

T he direct drive circuits work well f or their design f unction, but

are rather basic. T hey provide no energy storage, and so are quite
vulnerable to blinking out when a bird or cloud passes overhead.
For some applications, like running a small f an or pump, that may
be perf ectly acceptable. For other cases, like powering a
microcontroller or other computer, a brief power interruption can be
disruptive. Our next circuit design adds a supercapacitor as a
f lywheel to provide continued power during brief interruptions.

Instead of adding a single supercapacitor, you might notice that weve actually added two. T hats because
the supercaps that we had on hand are rated f or 2.75 V not enough to handle the 4.5 V output of the
panel when sunlight is present. To get around this limitation, we used two of the caps in series, f or which
the voltage ratings add, giving us a barely-okay total rating of 5.5 V. (Note: be caref ul adding capacitors of
different values in series the voltage ratings may scale in non-obvious ways.) When f irst exposed to the
light, this circuit takes about 30 s to 1 minute to charge the capacitors enough that the LED can turn on.
Af ter its f ully charged, the circuit can be removed f rom the sunlight and still drive the blue LED f or about 30
s to 1 minute a very ef f ective f lywheel f or light duty applications.
Adding a battery

While interruption resistance is nice, a capacitor generally does not provide suf f icient energy storage to
power a solar circuit f or extended periods of time in the dark. A rechargeable battery can of course provide
that f unction, and also provides a f airly consistent output voltage that a capacitor cannot. In this next
circuit, we use the solar panel to charge up a NiMH rechargeable battery and also LED of f of the power,
which will stay on when it gets dark out.

In this circuit the solar panel charges up a 3-cell NiMH battery (3.6 V). Between the two is a reverse
blocking diode. T his one-way valve allows current to f low f rom the solar panel to the battery, but does not
allow current to f low backwards out of the battery through the solar panel. T hats actually an important

allow current to f low backwards out of the battery through the solar panel. T hats actually an important
concern because small solar panels like these can leak up to 50 mA in the reverse direction in the dark.
Were using a garden-variety 1N914 diode f or reverse blocking, but there are also higher-perf ormance
diodes available that have a lower f orward voltage.
In this design we are continuously trickle charging up the battery when sunlight is present. For NiMH
batteries and sealed lead-acid batteries (the two types that are most suitable f or this sort of un-monitored
circuit) it is generally saf e to trickle charge them by f eeding them current at a rate below something called
C/10. For our 1300 mAh battery cells, C/10 is 130 mA, so we should keep our charging below 130 mA; not
a problem since our solar panels only source up to 90 mA.
T he other thing to notice about this circuit is that its pretty darned inef f icient. T he LED is on all the time,
whenever the battery is at least slightly charged up. T hat means that even while the circuit is in bright
sunlight it is wasting energy by running the LED: a sizable portion of the solar panel current goes to driving
the LED, not to charging the battery.
Detecting Darkness

We have written recently about how to make a usef ul dark-detecting LED driver circuit. T hat circuit used an
inf rared phototransistor. To add a darkness detecting capability to our solar circuit is even easier, actually,
because our solar panel can directly serve as a sensor to tell when its dark outside.

To perf orm the switching, we use a PNP transistor that is controlled by the voltage output f rom the solar
panel. When its sunny, the output of the panel is high, which turns of f the transistor, but when it gets dark,
the transistor lets current f low to our yellow LED. T his circuit works very well and is a joy to use it would
make a good upgrade to the dark detecting pumpkin to make it go solar with this circuit.
A solar garden light circuit
While the last circuit works well f or driving a yellow or red LED, it runs at 2.4 V (the output of the NiMH
battery), it does not have suf f icient voltage to drive a blue or white output LED. So, we can add to that
circuit the simple Joule T hief voltage booster to get a good design f or a solar garden light: A solar-charged
battery with a dark detector that drives a Joule T hief to run a white output LED.

Naturally, youd want to give this a tough, weatherproof enclosure if it were going to be run outside. (A
mason jar comes to mind!) T his circuit is actually very close to how many solar garden lights work, although
there are many dif f erent circuits that they use.
Adding a microcontroller

Our last circuit examples extend the previous designs by adding a small AVR microcontroller. We use the
voltage output f rom the solar panel again to perf orm darkness detection, but instead take it to an analog
input of the microcontroller. T he microcontroller is potentially a very low current, ef f icient device that lets
you save power by not running the LED all the time, but (f or example) waiting until an hour or two af ter
darkness and/or f ading the LEDs on or of f , or even intermittently blinking f or very low average power
consumption.

In this example we have the PWM (pulse-width modulation) output of the microcontroller driving a Joule
T hief style voltage booster to run the white LED. (T his is one of many, many dif f erent working designs f or
this sort of boosting circuits.)

We also made a second version of this circuit, with two red LED outputs to make a spooky Jack-o-lantern:

To f inish it up, we carved a beautif ul white pumpkin and added this circuit to make our microcontrollerdriven, dark-detecting, solar-powered programmable pumpkin, which f aded its eyes in and out one at a time.
Note the long leads on the solar panel and wires to the LEDs to reach.
We hope that you might f ind this introduction to simple solar circuits helpf ul; lets see those solar jack-olanterns!