If I put six 0.5 volt solar cells together in a series, can I power a 3 volt (or less) DC motor?
Question:
Answer:
yes...Hooking the batteries in series will give you a voltage equal to the total voltage of all the batteries, but the amp hours and current carrying capacity of only one
Hooking batteries in parallel will give you the same voltage as a single battery, but with an amp hour and current carrying capacity equal to the sum of the capacities of all the batteries.
Put them in series, add the voltages. Put them in parallel, the voltage remains the same as one of them. You can experiment with the motor speed by putting them in a series-parallel configuration. Hook up three pairs in parallel, then put the pairs in series. You will get 3 x 0.5 = 1.5 volts. If you hook up two trios in parallel, then put the trios in series, you get 2 x 0.5 = 1 volt. By mixing parallel pairs with the remainder in series, you can get several other voltages.
It will depend on the amperage draw of the motor whether it will spin or not. Putting them in parallel will not work.
Well i make crippldo… right here, only i fear there may be a little confusion and by the way, i do have a life, well a bit of one lol. Anyway. Yes, placing all the cells in series will multiply the voltage approximately, so 6 x 0.5v will give you approximately 3v, only the amperage or current will remain that of only the output of one Cell, so you have to know the current demand of the motor, if its too high you will damage the cells and eventually they will fail so do this.. Place a series resistor in-line with the motor to prevent the motor overloading the cells, that providing your not too worried about the loss of speed that will result from using cells of reduced current output. Now there are a host of other current limiting devices, but for now, i think the easiest is the resistor of a curent slightly less than that specified by the Cells.
Not entirly relevant, but usefull..
NOW for the second part, and that's connecting cells in parallel, its not ideal, and you will lose a little voltage output, but use diodes on the + output of each cell, this will allow all the cells to produce 0.3v only now as there are 6 in parallel the current is thus 6x that of the one cell, and by the use of 6 diodes, you prevent each cell from effectively passing current in to the other, that given the cells will never be delivering an equal voltage to current ratio at all times.
YOU however have a problem here, in that your Cells are only 0.5v and a standard diode requires least 0.6v just to work!
Personally i would dump your cells and go for something a little higher spec, only if you don't care too much about the technical stuff, just wire the damn things in parallel and don't worry about it. If you do use diodes in this application you would have no choice but to use something like a Schottky diode. Schottky diodes have a much lower voltage requirement than standard diodes.
In fairness to crippldo… Using 0.3v Cells wont require the use of diodes or any voltage regulation but its something you should least know about.
Cells in series will add voltage, so yes, 6 x 0.5V = 3V. A 3V motor will run on 3V.
Cells in parallel will add current, so instead of multiplying the voltage of the cell, you'd be multiplying the mAh rating of the cell. So if you had 150mAh cells, 6 of them in series would give you 0.5V @ 900mAh. You motor might turn, but not very fast. It will just turn for 6 times longer than the series configuration.
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