I'm planning on powering my cell phone!
...
With the sun!
Nope I'm not suddenly becoming so environmentally insane that I worry about the power my cell phone wastes while charging (though it wouldn't surprise me if the wall wart that they give you is a mere voltage divider). But the thing is, is that I always seem to forget to charge my cell-phone. So I came up with a brilliant idea! I live in Arizona, where it is sunny... It is ALWAYS sunny... except today. I figured that I may as well use the solar energy that roasts my rump every summer to power my cell phone!
I stuck to two panels in series, and though they were rated for putting out only 3V a piece, you can tell just by looking at the voltmeter that this isn't true... and today the weather looks like this:
Yep. When the sun barely peaked through a small thinner layer of clouds, that thing shot up to about 8.4 V. Needless to say, I think I'm going to have to stick these two in parallel to increase my amp output and reduce my voltage to avoid damaging my cell-phone (it's rated to handle up to 500 mA, this thing may put out between 10-20% of that).
But anyways, if I get it all hooked up, I'll tell you how it works!
-Pascal