• Ok, cool. That's pretty easy then - I guess your best bet is to put a resistor right across it to give it something to put power into. Do you have a volt meter? If so you could experiment and pick some resistor value such that the voltage only got to the near maximum when you had the most light you ever thought you'd get.

    You connect panel negative to gnd, panel positive to C0, and put the resistor across gnd and C0.

    Then, working out the power is easy. You measure the voltage and know the resistance so current is I=V/R, and you multiply that by V again to get power, so it's power = V*V/R.

  • Thanks Gordon, actually I just bought a volt meter since I guess it is a necessity :) The voltmeter has some built in resistors right and is what your are referring to am I right?

    I will do what you suggest and experiment.

  • I just tried this, without a resistor across actually and yet able to measure voltage. I am surprised how high the voltage readings are - bringing my 7 Watt lamp close to the solar panel read out a value around 3.1 V and value decreases as I bring the lamp further away naturally. Just fun :)

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