Added solar power to our tractor storage building (pic heavy!)

[PRCWI]

Well my brother in law wired up the lights to the battery this weekend, amazon goofed my order so we are still waiting for parts to connect to the solar panel



Pretty happy with the light over the stalls thought I may add another 6 lights over the other half. The solar panel and Battery can handle it no sweat, next weekend I'll get pictures after we get the solar panel up and hooked up to the battery and charger.

 

[nikdfish]

Looking good! I was impressed with the amount of light the 10 watt floods put out that are up on the outside of our building.

Nick

 

[PRCWI]

Finally got the connectors so I could hook up the solar panel

 

[PRCWI]

So the 12.9 reading was late afternoon when the sun was almost set.

At 10am getting 13.7-8v. I could probably get better if I angled the panel but it's going to have plenty of juice to keep the battery charged. So far so good with my first venture into solar. thanks for the help and advice!

 

[k0ua]

Looking good! I was impressed with the amount of light the 10 watt floods put out that are up on the outside of our building.

Nick

Nick, are charging results keeping up with all of your load requirements? Now that you have had and used the system for a while. And do you think there is any chance you could go negative in the cold dark cloudy days ahead? Or will you still have enough reserve to get through until the next sunny positive day?

 

[nikdfish]

No problems to date. The system has a lot more watt hrs available than I am using or that the battery can absorb. The battery status LED is typically showing the slow flash for float charge before the end of the day. Since the exterior floods are motion sensor controlled, there is virtually no drain unless there is activity in their range and I don't use the interior lights much at all. The battery is a 105 AH deep cycle, so full charge is probably good for close to 20 hrs of interior light use. With current use levels, that is plenty for multiple weeks of my typical use before getting it down to an "undervoltage" state even considering self discharge.

Nick

 

[k0ua]

No problems to date. The system has a lot more watt hrs available than I am using or that the battery can absorb. The battery status LED is typically showing the slow flash for float charge before the end of the day. Since the exterior floods are motion sensor controlled, there is virtually no drain unless there is activity in their range and I don't use the interior lights much at all. The battery is a 105 AH deep cycle, so full charge is probably good for close to 20 hrs of interior light use. With current use levels, that is plenty for multiple weeks of my typical use before getting it down to an "undervoltage" state even considering self discharge.

Nick

Sounds good. It looks like you could but a 2 meter rig out there too!

 

[Garandman]

No problems to date. The system has a lot more watt hrs available than I am using or that the battery can absorb. //

Darn!

Since you did such a nice job, I was going to vote for adding a single or dual axis tracking system for the panel, jus tto see what you came up with!

I'd guess they only really pay if a utility is buying your output and has a premium during peak demand times.

 

[nikdfish]

Lights for the Christmas season

The wife asked if the solar charge setup in the equipment shed could support a set of Christmas lights. I took a look at the watts drawn by a small (200w) inverter and a timer, with a few strings of LED indoor/outdoor lights. The whole package looks to draw about 11 - 12 watts. We didn't have an appropriate tree, so I just set up a pole about 4' high & ran cord down to 8 stakes around the base. The lights were draped around the form & zip tied where needed.

This is what it looks like

The timer runs the lights from roughly 5:30PM - 12AM, so about 6.5 hours a night, in the vicinity of 70 watt-hours. I'll post back after a night or two's use/next day charge to report on how things balance. (for perspective, the 105 amp/hour deep cycle battery represents about 1260 watt-hours)

Nick

 

[Garandman]

Awesome. Ordered some Christmas LED lights and have an AGM motorcycle battery and a 15 w solar panel so I'll do some experimenting.

 

[k0ua]

Re: Lights for the Christmas season

The wife asked if the solar charge setup in the equipment shed could support a set of Christmas lights. I took a look at the watts drawn by a small (200w) inverter and a timer, with a few strings of LED indoor/outdoor lights. The whole package looks to draw about 11 - 12 watts. We didn't have an appropriate tree, so I just set up a pole about 4' high & ran cord down to 8 stakes around the base. The lights were draped around the form & zip tied where needed.

This is what it looks like

The timer runs the lights from roughly 5:30PM - 12AM, so about 6.5 hours a night, in the vicinity of 70 watt-hours. I'll post back after a night or two's use/next day charge to report on how things balance. (for perspective, the 105 amp/hour deep cycle battery represents about 1260 watt-hours)

Nick

That looks pretty cool.

 

[PRCWI]

Nice!

 

[nikdfish]

It looks like there should be no problem running the lights this way. By 1:30 this afternoon, it had 100 watt hours more put into the battery than had been consumed since resetting the counters yesterday (225 in vs 124 out) and the charge rate was down to about 14 watts (battery getting topped off). The inverter + timer are an ongoing 3.3 watt load that jumps to 11.5 - 12 watts when the lights are on. When I checked around 10:30 this morning the total consumption since reset had been 114 watt hours.

Nick

 

[k0ua]

It looks like there should be no problem running the lights this way. By 1:30 this afternoon, it had 100 watt hours more put into the battery than had been consumed since resetting the counters yesterday (225 in vs 124 out) and the charge rate was down to about 14 watts (battery getting topped off). The inverter + timer are an ongoing 3.3 watt load that jumps to 11.5 - 12 watts when the lights are on. When I checked around 10:30 this morning the total consumption since reset had been 114 watt hours.

Nick

It looks like a viable solution. Of course without the invention of the LED, you would be in a world of hurt.

The first LED's were observed in silicon carbide crystals back in 1907, but it sure took a long time for commercial applications.
Light-emitting diode - Wikipedia

 

[nikdfish]

I made a modification to the outdoor lights/inverter setup. The combination of inverter & 120v mechanical timer was a constant 3.5 watt load, both when lights were on & when off. I also found that the mechanical timer did not like the inverter output and tended to gain a half hour + per day.

I found a nice little 12v DC timer, whose relay can handle up to 1000watts ac or dc. I paid $8 and change, delivered but you can find the same thing offered for less than $6 if willing to wait 30 days for delivery.

Along some nice programing features, a real plus is that it draws an average of about 0.01 watts when in OFF/AUTO status, mainly to keep the internal lithium battery charged. A small amount more when the relay is energized.

You can set up to 16 on/off periods & specify running on every day, every other day, weekdays, weekends, etc. I figure it will save me something like 70 watt/hours each day, running the inverter only when the program calls for the lights to be on. These timers apparently get used for lots of things like poultry watering, poultry door control, pump cycling, etc.

The small gauge wires are for powering the timer, they were piggybacked on the 10 awg main conductors.

I use small zip ties to secure the anderson power pole connection to avoid an inadvertent disconnect.

Nick

 

[k0ua]

Good thinking!. Some more of that "ham" ingenuity!. :thumbsup: