Before introducing you to the tutorial on how to make a CD solar panel, it is appropriate to open a small parenthesis. While making a solar panel with household items is advantageous and quite logical, the final product will not give the same result as professional equipment.
So, if your goal is to power the boiler, for example, the following ideas will not be very useful.
How to Make a Solar Panel with CDs
Don’t be intimidated by such a DIY project that seems too ambitious, but it is only at first glance. Follow the steps, and you will see that making a handmade photovoltaic solar panel is not rocket science. Of course, you must first obtain the necessary materials for its realization, in particular:
- Compact discs (the specific number depends on the dimensions of the panel you want to cover with them)
- Backing made of plywood, stiff cardboard, plastic or other material (best painted black or covered with black fabric)
- Zener diodes
- Copper wire
- Insulated electrical wire
- Hot glue gun and sticks or other instant/fast-setting
- Glue soldering
- Iron wire cutters
- Voltmeter
The first step in making a solar panel is hot gluing the copper wire to the CDs. Start with a wire and glue it near the center hole of one of the CDs.
Then, extend it towards the edge of the disc in an S-shaped curve before bringing it back to the center. Secure here and there with dots of hot glue, make 3 or 4 loops from a single piece of wire, and repeat to cover the entire surface.
You need to make a sort of serpentine pattern of sinuous lines to end up with several “petals” and a CD that looks like a flower, with each end of the copper wire free, all close to each other, in the center of the disc.
Here is a video that perfectly illustrates what you need to do:
Repeat this step on all the CDs and let the glue dry briefly.
Now it’s time to attach the Zener diodes between the free ends of the copper wires. To do this, solder the ends of each diode to the ends of the wires near the center of the disc. One pair of neighboring ends should remain free, as you will use them later to connect the insulated wires.
After fixing all the Zener diodes, use the soldering iron to connect two pieces of insulated wire to the ends of the copper wire that we left free before.
Then, we must fix the disks on the support and connect them in a single circuit. Here is how to carry out this important step in practice and make a DIY solar panel:
So, everything is ready and it is time to test our homemade solar panel by placing it in a sunny place and using a voltmeter. All you have to do is connect the insulated wires of your solar panel to the wires of the voltmeter.
If you have done everything correctly, the voltmeter will indicate the current generated when the panel is in the sun, and if you cover it or place it in the shade, the voltmeter will display zero. That’s how to make a photovoltaic CD solar panel!