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:

where the power comes from, ie. the solar panel, windmill, or Burro
where it gets stored in the mean time, like on a sunny/windy day, like in a battery.
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