Lau Wai Pan’s solar-panel power supply has great potential

Okay, let’s disregard the bulky box that is about as big as an oven — it measures 21″ (L) X 16″ (W) and 12″ (H) — which houses the solar panels and car headlight halogen bulbs simply because there’s nothing that can be done to reduce the size as solar panels require a certain amount of surface area to function.

Let’s concentrate on the technology and the results. Like I said in the previous post (see https://www.av2day.com/2023/04/lau-wai-pans-solar-powered-preamp-his-best-design-so-far/) there are audiophiles who live in remote, off-grid areas and they have solar panels to power up the house including the hi-fi systems, and there are also audiophiles who are greenies or live in areas that experience frequent power outages who have set up solar systems. But Lau’s design is different because it does not depend on sunlight but on a pair of car headlight halogen bulbs to enable a steady and stable generation of DC current.

The advantage of this method is that the noise in the mains electricity supply is totally removed, so you save some money because you don’t have to buy expensive power filtering or isolation transformer products. You also don’t have to worry about voltage fluctuations, under or over voltage.

Also, Lau said solar-panels generate very low-noise current and it makes the music sound good “just like direct-heated tubes”. He sent me several readings of distortion.

This reading is from choke capacitor filtering (CLC).
This reading is from normal CRC filtering DC source.
Lau says solar-generated DC is a perfect DC source with around 10mV noise.

Indeed, the solar-panel power supply is very quiet and reveals micro details. It also does not restrict dynamics.

It is possible to make one according to the power requirement of your component, for e.g. 5V 3 amps or 15V 1.5 amps. I can think of these components that can potentially benefit from the clean, quiet and stable power supply from solar panels — phono preamps, preamps, music streamers, digital transports, DACs, headphone amps and audiophile network switches.

It would be easier to make a solar-panel power supply to replace an external power supply of a two-box component but it is possible to make one that can bypass the power supply section of a one-box component.

Lau is so excited by his solar-panel power supply that he is applying for a patent for his design.

Lau said he can make a bespoke solar-panel power supply for RM1,700. — By Lam Seng Fatt

Call him at 012-5121787 for more details.

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