/challenges-projects/project14/solarpoweredyardgadget/b/blog/posts/upcycled-wireless-sensor-accent-light-part-2Testing the solar panel The next step in my project was to test the solar panel to see exactly how much power I could get out of it. To do this, I set up a variable resistor load on the output of the solar panel. Additionally, I used...en-USTelligent Community 12https://community.element14.com/challenges-projects/project14/solarpoweredyardgadget/b/blog/posts/upcycled-wireless-sensor-accent-light-part-2Sun, 24 Sep 2017 18:29:41 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:bca27f15-ccca-4075-9f0f-7470caab888eDAB0<p>Nice post.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>One of the things I always wanted to know about solar cells was just how effective are they when charging batteries or supercaps.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I know about the Maximum Power Point and all of the fancy graphs, but what I really would like to know is just how efficient are they when charging batteries?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Just because you can pull 48mW of power out of a cell does not mean you can put 48mW into a battery.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Could be a fun exercise to run.&nbsp; As David Jones recently showed in one of his videos, there is a big difference between Power output and Energy output.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>DAB</p><img src="https://community.element14.com/aggbug?PostID=3597&AppID=178&AppType=Weblog&ContentType=0" width="1" height="1">