LED as solar cell , high voltage low current converter

There are some nice photovoltaic optocouplers that make around 10V at

But SIP dc/dc converters can be series'd too. To make kilovolts, a Cockroft-Walton multiplier is hard to beat.

If an LED put out say 1v 100uA that's 0.1mW. To get 3W you'd thus need 3/0.

Just connect them so you get 12v rather than 1000! No convertor needed.

You could run stuff like an LCD calculator. Or CMOS with equally little loa d. Or store it up for many seconds then do more for 0.01 seconds etc.

s too but there are cheap ways to tackle that.

NT

LED or solar cell (SC)/ photodiode (PD) you are stuck with the band gap of the semiconductor. LED's give a bit higher voltage, but you might as well string a bunch of SC/PD together and get the current (larger area)

As JL says there are these various isolater, gate driver things that can give you 10's of volts.... I strung a bunch together once and got ~100V at "not enough" current.

George H.

I made this a long time ago:

Finding an LED that's a good solar cell and finding a 500µF cap that doesn't leak current like crazy isn't easy. It's luck if you can get that circuit working.

Blue, green, and violet LEDs might not work as well as you hope. They produce the highest voltage but they also have a protection MOV. Over time the MOV will leak just enough current that you won't get power from ambient light. They work great when driven by a laser, though.

Thank you guys for your reply.

I was thinking on using converter just because of design simplicity. It's easier to connect 1000 led in series :-). Or maybe buing just few

Laser and LED

- quite interesting idea! Did you try this on some practical sample ? Do you have some test results ?

GM

it isn't

what possible use is a less than 1% efficient convertor of electricity?

NT

the semiconductor with its junctions.

NT

The old 1N914 glass body is light sensitive. Any silicon junction is.

That was pretty much Solyndra. Their less expensive and less efficient solar cells never found a market. I guess nobody looks at solar farm plans and wishes it was bigger and more difficult to install.