I have purchased lots and lots or solar lights. I'm removing the batt. & base section. I'll be securing these on a panel, then using in series to charge a deep cycle battery. Any suggetions on this would be wonderful, as I'm a newbie to solar but building a log cabin and want to use some solar. Oh! by the way I already have a 750 watt, 1500 peak DC to AC inverter.

Solar lights cell are pretty useless and not an efficient means to build a solar panel. Typical Solar lights are about 0.2 watts peak so even with 100 of these wired up you will only have 20 watts

Silicon panels in the 100+ watt range cost purchased about 5 dollars a watt, nothing can beat a manufactured panels in both cost and reliability. The People who sell cell on eBay and other places are just pumping the idea of making panels to sell parts, its has no savings at all for the purchaser

So, My only advice is don't waste you time, you could spend those countless hours working at a fast food restaurant and pay for many manufactured panels before the solar light one would even keep a stereo running for one day

As to your inverter, that meaningless, you can get cheap mod-sine inverters for 29.99 bucks at harbor freight, the inverter is the cheapest part of a off-grid power system.

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I'm confused, but not hard; right? Iffff a single cell is .5v, and 1 of these lights puts out 2.29v then why is it not possible to make a energy producing panel from them? I've read where people are taking 36 single cells to make a panel that produces 18v, and that seems to make them happy. I can't see the difference, in what they are doing and what I want to do. Except for the fact of having to use less to gain more. Please simplify this for me. Anyone

You might indeed get 18V at 20 mA But what can you do with it? Light 6 garden path LED's is about all. That is VERY little power.

I think the guys on fleabay have shills that are talking big talk, to pump up sales, like the Traveling Medicine Shows would do .

Here is an example, using the solar light tops you want to use:

Voltage TIMES Current is the wattage ... so the little solar cells lights have 2.2 volts at 0.03 amps, that is 0.066 watts , run it for 1 hour and you have 0.066 watt/hr

Now lets think of something to try powering like a common standard 60 watt light bulb everyone knows , how many solar top panels do you need?

That happens to be 0.5 amps at 120 Volts = 60 watts

so you would need about 30 of these solar lights all wired in a series , that will make 120 Volts DC @ 0.03 amps = 3.6 watts

you need 60 watts for the Bulb, so you need 17 of these 30 in series strings

Grand total would be 17 TIMES 30 or 510 of this solar lights to power a single 60 watt load

Or you can go buy a 65 watt solar panel for 357.00 http://store.solar-electric.com/kykc65wasomo.html

vs your build it yourself with solar light for ~1.30 each or 663.00, plus you have to assemble everything

All your answers an in this post ... if your confused, just keep reading it over and over and you'll get you answers

thanks all for the info. I see now