5v 1.25watt panels, do I need diodes?

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Hey there, thanks for helping in advance, I’m new to the forums only recently got into trying diy solar power stuff.

The question I have is if I should use diodes for my 5v 1.25w solar panels? I’ll be connecting 3 of them in parallel, then wiring them up to the sunflower solar power manager: https://core-electronics.com.au/sunflower-solar-power-manager-5v.html

I’ve searched around and the common thing to do seems to be one diode for each panel, but the power drop would be painful seeing the panels already produce such little power.

My goal is to make a solar power bank/charger for low power devices that can charge with 5v 1a. :slight_smile:

Thanks for reading! Here’s the solar panels I’m using (got them from eBay, they had some generic name with no info on protection circuits built in) :

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Hi Ari,

I’m thinking the right thing to use would be a Schottky Diode, and I found a good article about their use (and their successors) in larger solar arrays.

I might be understanding this wrong but it seems like the main danger of using panels without diodes is exceeding the breakdown voltage of a shaded panel, but I’m not sure whether this would happen in parallel.

Have a read and see what you think, in the meantime I’ll do more reading to see if I can understand this better
-James

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Thank you so much! I’ll read over it and keep doing research myself too. I just don’t want to end up breaking the panels and having to buy more haha. I’ll keep this post updated with my info too.

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