[vop id=’8′]hey thank you so much for watching I’m Pippi Peterson you can connect with me on Facebook Instagram and Twitter as well as on my website and join the RV living community at Pippin INSCOM so this is a part two of a two-part video series on how to build your own solar panels from scratch and so be sure to check out the first video as well as there’s an accompanying blog post http://www.pippenings.com/rv-living/diy-solar-build-homemade-solar/ that has a lot of information just for this project like specifications shopping list details and all sorts of stuff like that that can help you either replicate this project or help guide you to build your own project so be sure to check that out all right well let’s get started on all of the wiring of the solar panel now that all the cells are soldered together so the basics is this is a terminal block the negative is going to connect to the terminal block in the middle and the positive is going to connect to the term the other side of the terminal block and in the middle of this you’ve got a diode and that just makes sure current doesn’t flow backward and you know short out any cells or wiring that you’ve got in the solar panel so that’s pretty much it so we can start by it’s going to be easier to get like the wires assembled with the feet on and soldered before we connect it to the terminal block but we can start by connecting the terminal block to get that one done and these are just holes that that I drilled out when I was making the frame and it was easy because the terminal block has these little screw holes so I just took a sharpie down in there and I could easily note where I had to drill out so since I have a diode that’s going to go in the middle of the positive wire I’m gonna have to cut it I’m gonna cut it and I’ll need to strip away some of the insulation so that I can solder it to the the diodes low legs and then this side of the wire is going to touch and be soldered to the other side of the diode as well as have one of these little feet clamp that can connect in there so I can do the same thing for each of these now the diode it’s got like these long legs that come out of it and you have to be really careful that you don’t break them off of the diode so I’m actually going to put like a little bit of a bend in them kind of like like one of those long horn cow antlers or whatever just to kind of because it’s going to be you know worked in here and then moved around I’d rather there be a bend to kind of reduce the stress so I got my two wires ready and I got my diode ready I’m pretty much just going to solder it to make a shape like this and I’m going to start by getting flux on my wires and I’m also going to get flux on this and then I’m going to try to get as much salt as I can on here and on here totally separate so that you know Sauter’s flowing on each element separately and then I’m going to solder them together once you’ve got a definite solid secure connection from your diode to your positive wire then you can take some heat-shrink and this will keep this from being exposed so after a little bit of discussion with my dad who’s an electrical engineer he suggested that I put heat shrink around the diode as well he said it’s possible that wrapping it in the heat shrink could lose a few watts from the panel because it could get a little hot but it would make it stronger and you know help protect it like okay something shorts it out or whatever next you can add a little foot on to the end of your wire your positive wire that’s going to connect to the terminal and you know this side is because the gray on the diode is going to point point towards the terminal block Chris sat down and now it should be on there pretty well so I ended up bending my little foot because of this like bar here I couldn’t get the little circle part in so I had to bend it so I’m going to have to get it in this way so I’ve got my wire connected on this side there’s the diode and now I just need to solder this piece to my my ending positive side repeat the same process for the negative side – the diode well after getting these wires soldered in and you know putting in the the bus wire i’ve got fingerprints over here as well as some flux splatter and just a ton of flux platter over where i had to solder the wires to so i got a little bit of clean up before i move on to the next step after that I can put a long bead around all of the cells because when I pour my encapsulants lint to run to the edges because I’ve got holes and stuff and it would just waste a bunch of it right here oh are you guys ready for the last step of this project you’re probably not as ready as I am I’m so ready to do this I can’t wait and I’ve got my encapsulants Ilocano encapsulants this one is q seal 216 that’s just like a weird chemical name they have other chemical names like seal guard 184 and I think there’s even another one but anyway this is kind of the cheaper one probably because they’re the people selling it are just competing not because it’s better or worse anyway it is a two parter it did not come with instructions but luckily I’ve worked with you know catalyst and things like this before so I am going to do what I would suspect I’m going to pour this big one in here which is clean and I have a clean stir stick on this side aleast and then I’ll pour this in and mix it for probably like 10 minutes or something and then I’m just going to pour it on it’s possible that that this is empty enough on top yeah to pour this in however I don’t know how you would stir it and I don’t want to shake it because I don’t want to get bubbles in it oh let’s see put it in here so normally or I mean normally in the two times that I’ve used stuff where you have like a two parter the the second part is a catalyst or not even sure what the scientific name would be called but it’s kind of something that sets sets the epoxy or in capsule or whatever you want to call it as well as kind of forces air bubbles out so that it’s a it’s a hundred percent seal so I’m guessing that’s what this one does for this also you might be wondering like what is Q seal or what is silicon in capsule int well you know and why can’t you use epoxy right like for example I did my penny countertop and my broken CD tabletop in epoxy like why can’t you use that well there’s a couple reasons one is epoxies will have a tendency to yellow in the Sun and these are only going to be sitting in the Sun so you don’t want them to yellow because that will reduce the amount of sunlight photo voltaic stuff that comes from the cells because it will be slightly hindered by the color change the darker color and to this stuff is this stuff is not going to be a hundred percent rigid when it is dry and you want that you want there to be some flex to allow when these cells you know heat up and cool down and whatnot they’re going to change sizes you know I mean probably micro sizes but they’re still going to be changing and if it were in something like an epoxy or a glue when those changed if it was so rigid that they were environment that they were in they would be cracking and breaking and once you have a piece of the blue break off from the rest of the cell the energy that that it’ll still create energy but it’ll be separated from where the wire is where the you know the main cell and it will not it will not give you any extra energy so once the cells break you’re losing that much more voltage and amperage that you can get from them I did read online that this stuff will last for about four hours so don’t worry about you know over stirring it’s probably better to over stir than to understand you got four hours it’s not going to take four hours to pour to stir and pour this in so there’s two differences I want to point out between making your own panels and buying them one is the way that they’re encased on the purchased panels almost always the cells are going to be laminated to the glass I mean they’re like perfectly without any oxygen or water in there so it’s possible that the cells will last longer and what I mean longer I mean like you know maybe 30 or 40 years versus 20 years or something like that so I don’t know exactly but the bot ones are laminated this one is encapsulated with silicon and the other difference that I want to point out is the glass thickness so in my in my solar panel that I built I used quarter-inch tempered glass and when you buy them it’s probably going to be an eighth of an injury maybe even less and I don’t know if once you purchase our tempered or not I don’t know but mine it can withstand up to like 100 mile an hour wind and you know if a baseball hits that or something like that whereas if it’s not tempered you know you let’s say in the middle of the day you spray water to cool them down because they’re more efficient when they’re cooler you might break the glass but on tempered glass that’s not going to be the case so it’s kind of a toss-up you know to have like you know better glass thicker glass again I don’t know if most of them or all of them are what when you that you buy are tempered or not but this way you know you’re getting like a really sturdy glass that’s totally going to stand up for you know twenty thirty years all right well was this project worth the cost and worth the time probably no in fact definitely no so the specifications on this panel the cells are they rated at like 3.8 I think it was and the voltage is a half volt and so because I did 18 I put them in series I are sorry I said I did 36 put them in series so I have about I should have about 18 volts coming out when I test I it a little bit less but that was because it was upside down and you know shade was on part of the cells even though I was using a mirror to reflect the sunlight anyway at the rated specification which is by the way you’re always going to see the rated specifications on purchased panels and it doesn’t mean you’re going to get that so on the rated specification for this panel I should get 68 watts and so before I put these all together I took four cells connected in series I took them out and put them in the sunlight and I tried to read them and I wasn’t getting three point eight amps I was getting like two points something so let’s be safe and say the minimum for this panel is going to be like 35 40 Watts maximum is going to be like 65 or something like that so normally you want to spend no more than like a dollar per watt on a panel this panel with all the materials and mind you I had to buy extra wire you know I had to buy like 25 feet of wire red and white and I only needed you know less than a foot so I mean that was 16 bucks there so I don’t know if you can account you know those extra 24 times two feet of wire into the cost but but it wasn’t cost because I had to buy it so let’s say roughly the materials you know not including like buying 24 extra feet of wire and I had the screws already it was a rough it’s a little bit over a hundred bucks so you know not totally worthwhile and it was a lot of work so it’s way easier and way cheaper to just buy them but this is a fun and awesome project and I’m so happy I did it I’m still going to use this panel I have a project in mind and you can stay tuned for that video so anyway you know if you want to do this remember that I’ve got an accompanying blog for this whole project which has a ton of information plus how you can if you want to change the specifications or like you know do different shapes or dimensions and stuff like that so that might be really handy for anybody so be sure to reference that again that’s at my website at Pippa dings comm and also the the link is in the description of this video so anyway thank you so much for watching until next time happy trails and keep it simple you