Hybrid solar panel (photovoltaic and thermal)

Step 3 Gluing the PV cells

The aluminum needs to be covered by some electrical insulator (I used Begquist sil-pad 400, cost about $50) because the backside of the PV cells is one of the elctrodes. Sil-pad is a decent thermal conductor too, but I presume that tar-paper would have worked OK too and would be much cheaper! The PV cells are 15 cm x 7.5 cm, and this pane will use 36 cells. I bought the cells on ebay from rebeccayi0904 (nice!) at $150 for 76 cells (used ~1/2 of those for this panel). The cells need to be connected in series (how are your soldering skills?) and then I glued them to the sil-pad using silicone caulk. BE CAREFUL: the PV cells are only 0.20 mm thick and break if you look at them too hard!