solar cell!

[Wond3rboy]

i just bought this cell which is supposed to give an o/p of 5.5v and 60ma. can i use this to charge one or if possible 2 1.5v rated at 1a(i no its not possible) nimh batteries??

is there any other ay that i can store its power?

 

[Sceadwian]

At 60ma (full sun) it would take about 20 hours to charge a pair of 1AH batteries in series. Depending on how much voltage drop you get when the cell is loaded you should be able to constantly trickle charge up to 3 1.2 volt cells (NIMHs are 1.2 nominal not 1.5)
It's not a lot of power but it would keep a small pack topped off under very light load.

 

[Space Varmint]

i just bought this cell which is supposed to give an o/p of 5.5v and 60ma. can i use this to charge one or if possible 2 1.5v rated at 1a(i no its not possible) nimh batteries??

is there any other ay that i can store its power?

I agree with the other guy. Not allot of power there. It would take a while. Pep Boys has a nice one for about 75 bucks used to recharge you car battery. What I do, is I went down to Ace Hardware and picked some some sealed Led-Acid batteries rated about 6 volts at 3 amps. They may work better with your solar cell. Led-Acid are better trickle charged. If you want to store some significant power you need to get you a deep cycle marine battery.

 

[Sceadwian]

60mas of current is safe to leave on a pair of high capacity AA NiMHs indefinitely, especially since it's solar powered it won't be charging all the time. I've heard this mentioned a few other places but you'll want to make sure you use a low forward voltage diode (schottky) to keep the batteries from discharging through the solar panel when there's no light (it's just a PN junction after all)

 

[audioguru]

If you are not on the equator of earth at noon with the solar panel pointing directly at the sun, then the current won't be 60ma. It might be 40mA at noon then 20mA for a few other hours. The average current per day might be only 160ma. Then a 1Ah battery will take 9 days to charge if every day is sunny and the battery is not used.

 

[Wond3rboy]

sorry for very late reply. our country is located near the equator.i got ni-cd batterries couldnt get my hand on nimh ones.about the diode do you know of any diode that will be sufficient for such a small rating i mean arent they supposed to have ratings in kw.also what kind of a recharging system i should be opting for cause the o/p of my cell aint that big to have a circuit needing an external battery if so then there is no point of charging the cells if i am going to use them to power my charger circuit!