General Category > General Discussion
Solar Panels and Back Up Batteries
Orange Guzzi:
I would like to purchase some solar panels for temporary backup power with back up storage. A wind turbine would also work well at my home due to my physical location on top of a hill. Battery charging, radio, computer, wi-fi, some light, small chemical/water pump and maybe refrigeration. What say you all that have temporary power supply?
Best type of battery for storage and charge, discharge cycles, output voltage, amp hours
Triple Jim:
You need to start with the watt-hours you need to run your loads. Make a list of each load's watt requirement and how long you need to run it, in hours. Then add all the loads up and you'll have the total watt-hours. Then decide what battery voltage you're going to use. Assuming 12v, divide your total watt hours by 12 to get amp-hours. Choose an array of batteries rated for about double that, since you don't want to discharge a lead-acid battery more than about 1/2 way very often. Conventional lead-acid batteries, and AGM batteries are probably the only reasonable choices.
Choose an inverter rated for a continuous load of something well over your expected peak load in watts. Motors need about 5 times their rated running current for starting. You may be better off with more than one inverter. A good one like an Exeltech that put out clean sine wave AC and has plenty of overload capacity and circuit protection is needed for a reliable system.
Your solar array's size depends on how quickly you want to be able to recharge your battery after it's discharged. Figure about six hours of sun per day, and count on about 75% of the output current that the manufacturer specifies. If you have 100 amp-hours of 12v battery, and a solar array that's rated at 4 amps, you'll need about 5-1/2 days to recharge the battery if the weather is clear.
A 24v system may help if the battery current requirements start needing huge copper wiring. I built a sort of pontoon boat that's battery powered and recharged with solar panels on the canopy. It has four 115 amp-hour AGM batteries in series, making a 48v system. Even so, the battery wiring is pretty hefty, and fuse protection at the battery terminals is mandatory.
zedXmick:
Here is some info about wind,when i was researching wind power,this product just stands out. UGE is the name of the company. They do solar and wind.
http://www.urbangreenenergy.com/products
Perazzimx14:
What's your budget? You can easily get $1000's of dollars wrapped up. You can buy a small generator and lots of fuel for less. Having put in one of the biggest (at the time) evacuated tube hot water collection systems solar energy is still a feel good thing.
Triple Jim:
--- Quote from: Perazzimx14 on February 14, 2015, 11:27:19 AM ---What's your budget? You can easily get $1000's of dollars wrapped up.
--- End quote ---
That's for sure, you'll definitely be well into the thousands for a usable and reliable system, between the solar panels, inverter(s), batteries, charge controller, hardware, and electrical controls.
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