Power Regulation

Introduction

I'd like to learn what it takes to work with power from a solar panel or any other "unreliable" source.

and I'm David so that means nitty gritty do it yourself.

So there are three sides to this story:

1. where the power comes from, ie. the solar panel, windmill, or Burro
2. where it gets stored in the mean time, like on a sunny/windy day, like in a battery.
3. where it goes to, like an electronic circuit.

So you can find tuns f articles about how to clean power destined for ttl circuit, but what do I need to put betwix a solar panel and it's battery?

• input power is jittery.
• Do you turn off input power if it's too low? Does energy leak back from the battery to the panel if it's too low? Diode?
• How do batteries behave? there is more than one type of battery and I know that they behave differently but I'll be damn if I can find a site that says: charge a deuterium battery as fast as you can , even with jittery power, charge a cheese battery slow with very little current but lots of voltage. Stuff like that.
• can I use capacitor to smooth out power?
• Have a bit of a side idea to use a water pump to raise water as a more efficient long term energy storage system. Even with efficiency lost between the motor and a power generator, a water tank (from which water does not evaporate) can store energy longer than a typical battery.

Links of note

http://www.reuk.co.uk/Using-The-LM317T-To-Regulate-Voltage.htm

great write up on lots of testing: http://www.limpkin.fr/index.php?post/2011/12/07/Indoor-solar-energy-harvesting%3A-a-platform-to-%28finally%29-get-some-numbers