dc motorinvertersolar energy
I have a mini solar panel 5.5 V 1 W 180 mA and I want to connect it to my DC motor 3-6 V. I tried directly but it didn't work. After some research I found that I needed a inverter.
My question is: do I really need a inverter? if I do what inverter should I get?
I'm new to this so sorry if i didn't make any sense.
A large capacitor would work, yes. Just get something rated for more than six volts (I'd recommend more than twelve, a wide margin is a good thing to have!) and a large capacitance; the larger, the longer it will continue to run, assuming the panel was able to fully charge the capacitor before it was blocked. If you want it to run for a very long time, you might want to look at electric double-layer capacitors, also known as supercapacitors, which can have very high capacitance.
How about trying something a bit different to make things easier. First, let's see if you can light up an LED with using the solar panel.
Build the following circuit.
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
Calculating Resistor Value
I calculated the resistor with the following formulas.
6V - 2V (approx drop for LED) = 4V
We have approx 4V to use to calculate the current. Current for the resistor can be about 20mA
4V / .020 = 200 (Ohms)
Does the LED light up?
If the LED doesn't light up then we are misunderstanding how the solar panel is providing current. And I think that is part of the problem. This may help you get to your answer.
Next thing you can do is insert your ammeter and see what current you may be getting.
Alter the previous circuit by adding the ammeter (multimeter in amp reading mode) inline:
Best Answer
You actually need an MPPT tracker also called a solar charge controller. This helps match the voltage and current (that act like a diode) to the load of the motor. The solar panel needs to produce more power than the motor uses. So if you have a 10W panel, it could run a motor using less power than 10W. The controller takes some power (usually 80% to 90% efficient) so that means you could run an 8W motor with a 10W panel. The 10W also assumes that your at the equator (1000W/m^2 of sunlight) and that the panel is pointed directly perpendicular to the sun on a sunny day. At higher latitudes you would get about 600W/m^2. So a good rule of thumb would be 3 to 6 times higher panel than your load.