Wattage adder

A wattage adder would be an electronic circuit that can combine power from multiple sources, including ones that are intermittent & unreliable. Each source might also have a different voltage & current rating.

Potential applications

• Robust solar panels: If one cell fails(...)( such as due to age; or due to manufacturing defects. The latter is especially important: If we want solar to be widespread enough to replace fossil fuels, then factories have to produce an extraordinary amount of solar panels. They would have to be made quite cheaply - even in a non-capitalist world, they would still have to be "cheap" in terms of energy & labor per panel. ), this won't affect the performance of any other cells.
• Stationary energy storage made by repurposing old EV batteries (each of which may have a different energy capacity).
• Building ebikes from used vape batteries, which may vary in size and chemistry. ^{[new page needed] [safety concerns would need to be addressed]}

Research needed

This page needs more research:

• Do wattage adder circuits exist yet? Do they maybe go by a different name?
• I would assume that such a circuit must involve a lot of power transistors such as MOSFETs. Would the cost(...)( beyond money, consider the amount of rare metals, energy and labor involved in production ) be reasonable enough for this to be scaleable for green energy solutions?
• What might the circuit look like?
  • Maybe a joule thief circuit connected to each cell, which charges one shared capacitor for DC output? And there would need to be some sorta round-robin switching circuit on the cells, to avoid unnecessary power drain when output load is low. Would all of this be efficient enough tho?
  • Are there other designs instead, and if so, how would they compare? ^{[discussion needed]}