Portable solar cells

After a long career in photovoltaics, I finally decided it was time to get a few solar cells for personal use. Other than a few gadgets, I've never had any for home use. Since I'm an avid hiker, I decided to get a portable variety that would allow me to travel for longer journeys without the need for an external electricity supply. I'll explain this motivation in a further post. The desire is to be able to charge a camera, an iPhone and a small computer, but not all at the same time! I chose a SolarMonkey Adventurer. Rated at 3 Watts and weighing only 265g, it comes with a couple of polycrystalline silicon solar cells, an internal battery and MPPT (maximum power point tracking) circuitry. At 700mA, the rated output current is sufficient even for such a gluttonous device as an iPhone.

Today was a beautiful, sunny winter day. Time for a test. SolarMonkey's battery was completely empty when I placed it on the balcony in the sun today. While it was in the sun charging, I decided to use the iPhone until the battery was empty. That was easy. The iPhone played Pat Metheny music until it went silent. Good - no sign of life in the iPhone despite revival attempts.

And so, how did the charger perform? After letting the iPhone charge for 2 hours, the battery showed it was only one notch from being fully charged. Success!

What is it like to be a writer?

I'm afraid I have no idea - it's been over a year since my blog has been graced with my ramblings. But I do know a very delightful person who knows how to write. Catherine Banner has just started a web site to clarify how a writer writes, or,specifically, how the writer Catherine Banner writes. She started writing at a very young age and published her first book when she was only... but you can find this out yourself by visiting her site: http://www.catherine-banner.com/index.html .  She'd love to hear from you!

the journey

I received a bit of encouragement to start blogging again (thanks, Steve). While one post doesn't mean I'm back, it's, well, one post. As in the past, my thoughts about writing go to the most banal events of my life with a smattering of photovoltaics thrown in.
Central to my way of life remains the bicycle. This photo is from my commute, here coming home from work in the evening. I have a 200m altitude climb through the forest to get home. It's slow going, meaning I take time to enjoy the journey rather than being in a hurry to get home. Being in a hurry while bicycling uphill gets tiring very quickly!

Blogging vs facebook

I never used to use facebook but use it more now - at the expense of starting to blog again. There are a couple of things that make facebook preferable. I find it more interactive, whereas blogging was something I viewed as writing for writing's sake. Right now it's the interaction I prefer. I also like being constrained by the length of facebook status updates - it prevents the sort of rambling I'm engaging in at this very moment. Being forced to get to the point and eliminate superfluous information takes more thought than blog writing. However, blogging has allowed me to "meet" online people I would never have known otherwise. And I've appreciated all the comments on my solar cell work. But facebook only it will be, for now.

The year gone by

Yep, a whole year and then some since my last post. In the year and a half since leaving Sweden I've move my entire household three times and have lived in 9 different places for stays ranging from 2 weeks to 2 months. I now consider myself to be fairly settled, having lived in my *permanent* home for 4 months already. I'm actually quite pleased with my new digs, an appartment outside of town (Zurich, that is). Still, I can't find anything and I seem to be lost in a jungle of bureaucracy as I sort out all the governmental fallout from my travels. This, too, will pass. Just picked up my new Swiss residence permit this morning.

Developing flexible CIGS solar cells has, of course, occupied the bulk of my time this last year. I'm happy to say that the project is as full of challenges as I had hoped! Plain old CIGS on glass is already old hat to me. It's so much more fun to try and get energy out of a thin sheet of plastic!

Normally I'd say that I'll write more about this later, but I think I'll just stick to good intentions about writing more at this point. I do hope, though, that I'll be back to blogging regularly again.