Solar Power Setup

[Zigs]

Just thought I'd show you our solar set up so far. I add bits to it and tweak it now and again but basically it collects and stores electric in the shed which is used for charging various things.



The front of the shed is south facing, but I've just added another panel (picture below) on the East side to catch the sun in the morning before it goes behind the trees.



I've mounted the things such as the charge controller, hub and fuse box onto a timber panel. The whole thing is earthed to a rod sunk into the ground outside.



Since putting a pic up on another forum someone pointed out to me that the charge controller (the blue thing near the top) was a naughty Chinese fake that would mess my batteries up, it was about £15 so I replaced it with a better one that was about £50...



At the same time I added trip switches/fuses so that in the event of a CME or EMP it should trip and not blow the whole system to Kingdom Come.

I still monitor the Solar Ham website to keep an eye on what the sun is up to as it's still advisable to switch everything off if there's a large scale CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) headed towards the planet.

At the moment we have four 12 volt leisure batteries, these cost about £100 each. These are in an insulated chest as batteries don't work very well at low temperatures. I took the picture below while I was jump starting the tractor from them, it's handy to have a 12 volt supply next to them.

 

[Zigs]

For output we have a simple 12 volt car charger socket for plugging in anything that can be charged by usb, radios, phones, cameras etc.

For larger appliances we have 2 inverters to step up the 12 volt DC into 230 volt AC. The smaller one (800 watt) is used to charge the lawnmower, chain saw, strimmer and hedge cutter.

The larger one (3,000 watt pure sine wave) will power almost everything, we've even tried it on the halogen cooker We have a freezer next to the set up that we could use if we had a lengthy power cut. If the batteries got low in a long power cut then it's easy to put the jump leads onto the batteries and use the car engine to top them up, it works both ways. You can see the advantage of keeping a petrol car now



This is the 12 volt socket charging 2 area lamps, we have 5 of these, they're very handy for emergency lighting.



The chainsaw has a 45 volt battery and will last a morning on one charge



We have DAB radio plus this AM/FM/SW radio that both charge from usb so we can keep an ear on what's going on if other things go down.

 

[Zigs]

I've also run a 12 volt lead from the battery bank to the house, where we have sockets to charge phones, cameras and AA/AAA batteries, plus a switch ( just above the leads in the picture ) to turn on the LED lighting strip for emergency lights.

 

[Meadowlark]

Looks like everything is 12 volts DC? Do you have an inverter or plans for one?

I've toyed with the idea of adding solar but as yet have not taken the plunge.

 

[Zigs]

Looks like everything is 12 volts DC? Do you have an inverter or plans for one?

I've toyed with the idea of adding solar but as yet have not taken the plunge.

Input and storage is 12 volt DC Mr Lark (Good to hear that you are ok after hearing about the storm over there) Quite a few things charge at that voltage, more and more things have a usb charger as standard now. We've got 2 inverters on the board for everything else that needs mains power. Daft thing is that nearly all of them waste power by having to step it up to 230 ac and then back down again to charge the batteries

If you are going to add solar then think about a stand alongside system rather than putting it into the grid and having to pay 3 times as much to buy it back. Tetters found me a good video about getting a system installed, I'll stick it on later

 

[olly-buckle]

Someone I know is in charge of updating all the company executives phones, so gave me an iphone 7 when the contract ran out on my little old Nokia like that one. I think about changing back to it, all I ever do with a phone is make calls, and it weighed about a quarter of what the i-phone does

 

[Mr_Yan]

Ok @Zigs you've pequed my interest but I'm too tired to dig into this. I'll have to return to it later.

You're right on the low volt DC aspect and lack of needing the inverter. AC is only really needed for heaters, motors, and efficient transmission over distance - and even with this motors are quickly changing to BLDC that invert to a controlled multi-phase source locally at the motor.

USB is mostly 5 VDC so this dominates little consumer stuff now.
Car stuff is mostly 12 VDC.
Industry controls and automation is 24 to 48 VDC.

I've been thinking about how to build up a solar array and use my tool batteries in it - I happen to mostly have DeWalt 20 V stuff.

 

[Meadowlark]

- I happen to mostly have DeWalt 20 V stuff.

Same here.

 

[Zigs]

I've been thinking about how to build up a solar array and use my tool batteries in it - I happen to mostly have DeWalt 20 V stuff.

Yep, our stuff varies,

chainsaw - 45 volt

Lawnmower - 36 volt

Strimmer and hedgecutter also have different voltage chunky batteries (not sure of the voltage). I charge all of these from the solar array using the inverters.

My main gripe is the stupid lithium batteries, they only work properly for a short while (about a year for the lawnmower) They won't charge in cold temperatures and when they get over a year old they only hold the charge for a short while. I used to be able to cut all the grass around the shed/polytunnel/veg plots with 2 charges, now it takes about 20

The price of a new lithium battery is so high you might as well lob the whole lawn mower into landfill and buy a new one.

I even thought about mounting a lead acid battery on top of the lawn mower but being 36 volts I'd need 3 of them, so that was the end of that one.

Tetters recently bought an electric screwdriver, that has a usb charger.

 

[olly-buckle]

I even thought about mounting a lead acid battery on top of the lawn mower but being 36 volts I'd need 3 of them, so that was the end of that one.

Have you considered a trailer?

 

[Zigs]

Have you considered a trailer?

I did Oliver but it wasn't practical. Might have been doable if it was only one battery, could have fixed it above the grass box but 3 wasn't a good idea

 

[Zigs]

As promised, the video by Survival Lilly...

Interesting that the company seemed to want about £6,000 a day labour costs

Now our system isn't connected to the grid at all but adding up the costs of it very roughly (as I've bought the components over a number of years) I would estimate that it cost a bit under £1,200.

 

[Zigs]

Just as an addition to this thread, I see Australia are starting to charge homeowners to put solar power into their grid. They should have worked out many years ago that if everyone took up the offer of free grid storage it wouldn't work

Won't be long before other countries follow....

 

[olly-buckle]

Our kittens are growing, but we still keep them in at night, I have been getting up early to let them out so they don't use the litter tray. Better than emptying the tray, but tiring. Can someone please market a solar powered cat flap?