What is tabbing wire and why is important when building solar panels? Before we get into that let's take a look at why we need tabbing wire when building solar panels.

First, lets take a look at why we need tabbing wire for solar panels. Solar cells are basically just silicon wafers (thin films aren't, but we don't really deal with them) that are specially coated so they produce electricity when they are exposed to the sun. We can't really harness the power of solar cells by themselves though we need to attach some wires to them. That's what tabbing wire is for.

Tabbing wire has a special name because it's different from regular wire. Normal wire that you'll see is made out of copper and is round. Tabbing wire is flat and thin. This allows the wire to be easily attached to each cell.

Tabbing wire is connected to each cell so we can use the power that they produce. All that's well and good, but where does the tabbing wire get attached? Well, since a solar cell produces negative energy on the front of the cell and positive energy at the back of the cell we actually need to use the tabbing wire to connect the front and back together. What I mean by that is that each piece of tabbing wire is approximately twice the length of each cell. Half of each piece of tabbing wire is connected to the face of the solar cell. The other half hangs off the front of the cell. The wire that's hanging off actually gets connected to the back of the next cell in line.

Solar cells are connected this way so we can get some usable voltage out of them. The cells by themselves only produce 0.55 volts which isn't enough to charge even a 12 volt battery. We hook the cells up in series (positive to negative) so that we can increase the voltage. The panels I make have 36 cells hooked in series which produces 19.8 volts which is more than enough to charge a 12 volt battery.

One thing I do need to mention is that you only need tabbing wire if you're going to build your solar panel with untabbed solar cells. It adds a bit of time to the build, but it is cheaper. If you have a little extra money I recommend getting tabbed solar cells (they're not that much more expensive) as you'll be able to build your panels in under 2 hours. If you're going to use tabbed solar cells you will need bus wire (basically bigger tabbing wire) which is used to connect strings of solar cells together.

If you're interested in building solar panels sign up for our newsletter. It's got lots of great info in it.

If you would like to learn more about building solar panels just click here