Attempting to disassemble/salvage solar cells from a tempered glass solar panel (Why you shouldn't)
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- Опубліковано 17 чер 2020
- I was attempting to cut out an 8 call section of this solar panel for a project. As you see in the video this ended up being a total failure, due to the nature of tempered glass. But, some important lessons were learned.
1) Tempered glass cannot be cut without destroying it, or heating it to thousands of degrees to de temper it.
2) The glass panel at least in the case of this solar panel provides almost all of the structural integrity of the panel, aside from the outer aluminum frame.
3) Attempting to maneuver, cut, manipulate, or otherwise work with the panel while the front has been shattered, will likely destroy some if not all of the cells.
4(and this is by far the most useful lesson)) you can cut and peel away to access the tabs connecting the cells of the panel, and I'm certain you could rewire a solar panel to a different configuration this way.
The biggest thing that sucks about all of this, I had an almost brand new perfectly working and very nice solar panel that I could have just tapped into the right section of to do the testing I wanted to do, and then still had a fully working panel. But this didn't occur to me until the end and I wanted the smaller piece to try to use for my project and I ended up learning the hard way that's just not practically doable.
Hopefully someone thinking of doing something like this, sees this and can learn from my mistakes.
Also I'd like to thank Nick at astralpowersolutions.ca/ for giving me such a great deal on this panel. He was super enthusiastic in the project I was working on and I actually showed this video to him first cause he really wanted to see how it came along.
If anyone shows interest I might make a video about what exactly the project is that I needed an 8 cell solar panel for. - Наука та технологія
Live and learn. Good video.
Thanks for uploading this. It seems to have educated quite a few people - including myself.
work at a solar company, we have alot of old panels. was wondering if i can take apart some. thanks for this. i wont even try now. lol.
You could try solvent or heatgun to melt the glue and remove the glass that way. Should not explode if you evenly heat it. Also note that glass in solar panels far is understood is not normal glass, but lead free glass. Normal glass would block sunlight and cause efficiency to drop.. how much i dont know. This same thing will cause some issues for me, since got shattered damaged but working new panel. I'l probably try slowly cut the glue between the cells and glass and maybe add plexy or something top of it.
Thanks for sharing..it was useful...it was nice attampt to check how its gonna behave
lol at the transition at 2:22. Thanks for the video.
Thanks for the video. I was planning on doing something similar, I wont attempt after your experience.
Thx man for not to embarrassed to post this... I was planning to do the same....
Thank you for sharing this! 🤙🤙
Thanks for the experiment and your effort. I was going to fix a solar panel thinking I could get to the tracks on the front side of the glass and re-wire them but that seems futile. One of my good panel produces 60V (open circuit voltage) with 4 sections of 15V in series. Some of the panels I have produced 30V, some 45V etc. I am sure the individual cells are OK, but there are some connection problems after being used for 15 years. If I can rewire them to 15V (4 in parallel) and get 4 times the current that would be good deal.
Nice, was just wondering this and now I know, spot on vid. Ace. Thank you.
Thank you very much for publishing this!! It is very educational and it will certainly help many people, including me!
At 0:24 I see "maximum system voltage 600V, 20A". Do you happen to know what the 6 Shottky diodes are? I guess they're rated at 600V, 10A.
I plan to experiment with DIY of solar panels for home-lab use. I see that I can order bifacial cells from alibaba at $0.16/watt. The cells weigh 4 grams per watt, so shipping by air will be cheap. Tempered glass is actually expensive and heavy, so I'll be experimenting with lightweight solutions that certainly won't last for 25 years.
In your video I see how the glass holds the cells, and it gives me ideas on the structural requirements. I think I should connect busbars between cells with enough wiggle-room, if there's no solid glass to prevent tearing of those connections if the cells move a bit.
Hale protection might be handled by a cheap clear greenhouse plastic, that is elevated far enough. Oxygen/moisture might be handled by simply laminating some parts. The whole thing will be rather non-rigid. I'll see about handling strong gusts of wind.
I'm wondering if you heat the tempered glass up to melt the glue then have someone else slowly lift it as you melt it would work?
Maybe even somebody get like a thin but sturdy stick of some kind to slowly lift it carefully as the other person melts the glue.
I think the glue would be still stuck to those cells.
Maybe a good idea would be almost like a machine that heats up the glass part after you loosen it but has a suction cup for the glass to lift. It could be a thing too?
Those are all the ideas I have . Thanks for showing us.
Tempered glass shatters if even one spot cracks, but it is stronger than untempered glass.
Sorry for your misfortune, but, thanks for sharing this. Saved me a lot of aggravation. :-)
Thank you
Cheers for the deets!
I had thought about buying a panel that was Broken and I thought to myself it made me hard to get the cells out because they're incapsulated In the whole thing would be a pain So I didn'tthanks for this video
Nice experiment. Wish we could've seen it when the whole pane shattered like that. I suspect it's like when you use one of those piercing tools to shatter a cars window. Instant shatter. So what can be done to reclaim old panels then? Not much there to re-cycle.. maybe the aluminum frames?
Use them for yard art
Hi, Do you think it is possible to remove the glass and frame from the panels? To make a flexible panel?
If you watch the entire video you will see that its practically impossible
@@michaelboot yep difficult even with a heat gun thanks for the response
Your cost our education. Thanks for posting the "fail".
I couldn't find anything on the internet about salvaging cells from a cracked panel. Looks like I dodged a bullet with my ambitious plan.
It was at that point that Walter knew he ....
Well cutting that glass was bas idea from the start, little bit of heat and you could glue them off, shattered glass removal from panel is possible, but much harder
I'm just interested in the tempered glass to make a small green houses.
I wonder if you could melt the glue off with a heat gun.
- you would be best off to heat up the whole panel (or a large area) at once- to remove functional cells. - these things are made once - to be scrapped and recycled in a glass furnace at the end of life - metals recovery...
those cells probably laminated with Eva films (Ethyl Vinyl Acetate) and i think if you left them in toluene or xylene solution for a day they can come off by theirselves.
I was just givin a busted panel, I'm gonna go pour some xylene and report back..
@@B_Van_Glorious becareful tho, its highly flammable.
@@B_Van_Glorious and now!!!????
results
?
@@awesomed007 no dice. The Xylene had a small effect, it has potential. But that potentiality would require a submersion tank and I'm not looking to drop $1000 on petrochemicals.
cutting a solar panel in broad daylight if it succeeded is not ideal i suppose. You would end up shorting out the cells either physically or by water spray. One should attempt mods away from sunlight
I think one must think and wait before doing anything didn't do before
You only learn through experience. Gotta try stuff.
The silver in those panels is easily worth 150
20 grams per pannel. I don't think so
Must be an impressive glue they use. Has to high heat and stick to glass must be impressive glue.
Be nice if solvent. Surprised you didn’t try and heat the broken glass to a high heat and try scrapping the broken glass off?
Yeah I thought he was going to start picking the glass off
@@stupidscruff5794 might have been a deliberate set-up. To stop people trying. But that glue must do high heat and uv. So it's better than u can buy that's for sure...maybe a solvent though ? Impressive.
🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂🤣
Individuals cells are super cheap from china. This wasn't a wise move.