How I Get More Solar Electric Heat With POWER DIODES - Poor Mans MPPT

Solar electric heating made better! For years I have been using excess solar electric power to heat my home and workshop... the heating is done by modified space heaters that directly consume PV DC power. This is a simple, cheap, robust and DIY-friendly way of making heat. But like all space heaters, they use a resistance (ohmic) heating element.

Such basic heating elements cannot "track" or regulate the voltage to get the most heating power from the solar panel. That would require MPPT (maximum power point tracking) which is complicated and expensive, and ruins the simplicity and appeal of solar electric space heating.

But that's where Diodes come into the picture. That's right - Diodes. A string of diodes can be arranged into what is called a diode chain (or diode string). This can then be used as a solid-state semiconductor based heating element to produce solar electric heat from solar panels.

And the number one advantage of diode chains is they can literally "track" a specific voltage and hold it nearly all day! They can do this without any complicated or expensive electronic circuits, no microcontrollers, no inductors and no voltage conversion.

In this video I will show you some of my earliest solid-state semiconductor space heater prototypes built out of power diodes. They can hold any voltage I choose nearly all day, thus maximizing the amount of heat pulled from the solar panels. Their performance far exceeds static resistance-based heating elements. Such devices act like a "power optimizer" and their behavior is very much like an MPPT circuit.

And best of all, diode chain semiconductor heating elements can work in conjunction with standard resistance heating elements! I finally have what I wanted - cheap PV DC space heaters that can regulate to the solar panels Volts-Max-Power (vMP) region and hold that voltage nearly all day - yet without having to buy and maintain expensive MPPT DC converters.

🟢 Diode Chain Related Videos (Playlist)
   • Diode Chains - Solar Electric Heating and ...  

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/// PARTS LIST - Diodes on my store page (earns commissions)
🟢 https://www.amazon.com/shop/solarpowe...
🟢 Bridge Rectifier Diodes used in my builds - https://amzn.to/3YUlTEe
🟢 Heat sink: it's an old industrial heat sink from Nippon Chemicon
Here Is a large heat sink as an example: https://amzn.to/4hNfLGB
🟢 Fan: 200mm https://amzn.to/48RfGOc
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#offgrid
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#solar #solarelectric #solarelectricity
#diy
#heating #solarpower

Music credits: by TuneTank, Pixabay