I've dabbled myself with solar power in the past, yet I've never owned my own equipment nor have I done anything for myself. That all changed last week when a friend lent me a small solar panel, a charge controller and a dimmable LED light. The idea being that I could 'experiment' to find out for myself and it's really been a huge learning curve so thank-you for the lend!!
The main purpose of this blog entry really is to share what I've learnt and hopefully to get some of my readers to dabble themselves. Thinking about environmental reasons, thinking about self sustainability. It's really quite simple and I'd like to try to reassure you. You don't need a professional installer nor a qualified electrician. You can even do this with simple tools that you have around the home.
Originally I had grand ideas of buying two large solar panels and fitting them onto the roof. That idea in itself could still occur (in the future) but what I've learnt and would like to share with you all, is that you don't necessarily need to do that.
The first step before you even start looking at items to purchase is to try and work out exactly what you would eventually like to run 'off-grid'. For me it is a radio, a light and then I hoped to also be able to run an internet signal booster. In addition to those, I kinda like the idea of being able to charge my mobile phone too. With everything considered, my power requirements are relatively low.
Then you need to buy/obtain some form of battery to be able to store the electricity in. I've another friend who had a spare car battery, which although that isn't idea.. it's a great place to start. Ideally you should be looking to get a deep cycle battery that has enough amp hours (Ah) to run your electrical equipment for a few days. I've seen 130Ah batteries new on eBay for around £80 and hope to upgrade to something like that in the future.
12v wiring can be done with quite light cabling, in fact there is no need to use heavier gauge cable as there is a thing called 'voltage drop'. Voltage drop is when an electrical current moves through a circuit, a small amount of voltage is lost due to resistance in the wires. This concept, known as voltage drop, leads to a slight production loss from your solar array. When you go solar, one of the goals is to minimise voltage drop so that your system performs at peak efficiency. Basically using a heavier cable is not required and ideally you'd be using a thin pair of wires, of the size typically used for speakers.
Here's a few images of my system so far..
As you can see, I've used jump leads to connect a second battery to the first increasing my storage potential. This isn't necessary for my current setup but in my case, there is certainly no harm in me having it.
The second picture you will be able to see the dimmable LED light on the left, below that is the solar charge controller and to the right (screwed below the skylight) is a piece of MDF with two batons to prevent the MDF from warping from the heat of the sun. The solar panel itself is really quite small (50cm x 30cm), yet provides more than sufficient power for my 'current' needs!
Lets talk about the elephant in the room.. attaching a solar panel under a window or skylight. Sounds crazily inefficient doesn't it. Personally myself, I really was unsure if it would even work, but it really does and it saves a lot of hassle. External mounting of solar panels involves removing tiles/slates and acquiring the correct mounting brackets for whatever mounting system you intend to use. Even getting access to the roof could even be an issue? Additionally once the panels are externally mounted, you also have to consider that they will be exposed to the elements and although yes they are designed for that purpose, damage could still occur and maintenance may be required.
I mentioned before about running a radio, well I found (in my loft) an old camping TV/Radio that runs from batteries OR a detachable mains lead (with in-built, transformer plug, that drops the mains electricity from 220v to 12v). Simply cutting the transformer plug off the lead and connecting it straight into the charge controller enables this to run. I've powered on the TV on a couple of occasions, it really does draw a hell of a lot more power from the system but it does work, unfortunately it isn't of any benefit to me. It would also require a TV decoder box to be connected and running with an aerial to pick up any free stations. The use of this TV/Radio is only temporary as I'm hoping to get an old car stereo or maybe one of these Chinese MP3 radio head units in the future.
Thus, I have a light, I have radio and I can charge my phone from the USB inputs on the charge controller. Then I wanted to have an internet booster. A repeater of sorts, that would receive my wireless signal from the house and redistribute it. I already had an old Linksys WRT54G which was already flashed with the DD-WRT firmware. Basically these routers run from a 12v battery by using the same method as the TV/Radio. Cutting the transformer plug off and wiring them straight into the charge controller. The DD-WRT firmware basically allows you to have additional features, more options than the original manufacturers firmware, that the router shipped with. It's also compatible with many more makes and models of router than just Linksys. DD-WRT has a router database here if your interested in re-purposing an older device that you may have laying about? I then setup a 'Repeater Bridge' and you can follow the same instructions as I did to get that up and running from here.
You'll see the car speakers and the cage ready to home the radio's future replacement. I've also added in a switch to isolate all of the equipment housed in this make shift enclosure. For now when I want to turn off the router I unplug it (as seen!).
As the title of this post says, small (my solar panel) is surprisingly large (in terms of devices you can have running from it). So what's next for the future? I'm planning to add these :
I'll update this post when anything more gets added into this solar project. Thanks for reading.
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