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Is it safe to connect a small 5W 5V solar panel directly into a portable power bank? (self.solardiy)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by toaster to c/solardiy@lemmy.world

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Can I connect a 5w 5w solar panel directly into a 10k mAh portable battery bank safely via USB 2.0, or does it need some sort of protection in-between like a solar charge controller or a schottky diode?

Example of battery bank (except one with usb 2.0 input): https://www.anker.com/ca/products/a1229

Example of solar panel: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006012344670.html

5W 5V Solar Panel

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[–] NigelSimmons@startrek.website 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Are you going to wire the solar to a usb connector and plug it into the bank charging port? This is probably the safer way of approaching this.

Also, sometimes the quoted voltage is a "nominal working voltage" kind of deal. Grab a multimeter and see how many volts the solar cell puts out at noon without any load, it might be in the 8v range that could pose an overvoltage problem to your bank (that's expecting 5v ) if it fills up completely.

[–] toaster 1 points 8 months ago

The panel already has a USB 2.0 cable. I just added a photo to my post to make that clearer. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try to test out the peak voltage.