Renewable Energy Systems (Solar)

[eye exaggerate]

If you have a tester test them. Also if you can get the amps and volts each put out and post a pic of them that would be awsome.

...I tried to put the time together this past summer but couldn't find it. It's winter now and I should be able to work it out by summertime. It would be neat if it worked!

 

[Toolage 87]

...I tried to put the time together this past summer but couldn't find it. It's winter now and I should be able to work it out by summertime. It would be neat if it worked!

It will be. I am hoping by next year I will have at least a 10w solar system setup. I wanna do a thing where I get every thing but I get the battery and drain it to 80% or to where the inverter cuts the power and use a single cell to charge it as much as possible and get enough power to use a soldering iron to do some soldering and such and build up a panel like I living in the woods with no power right then and there to use. I wanna see if it is possible to start with the solar stuff and no power and see if I can build it and if I can prove its possible that will be a huge bonus for people with no power but know its possible.

 

[eye exaggerate]

It will be. I am hoping by next year I will have at least a 10w solar system setup. I wanna do a thing where I get every thing but I get the battery and drain it to 80% or to where the inverter cuts the power and use a single cell to charge it as much as possible and get enough power to use a soldering iron to do some soldering and such and build up a panel like I living in the woods with no power right then and there to use. I wanna see if it is possible to start with the solar stuff and no power and see if I can build it and if I can prove its possible that will be a huge bonus for people with no power but know its possible.

...it can be done, but nowadays who really tries? It's too bad that comfort is always 'job number one'. It's fun to get your hands dirty and try to make stuff. Especially stuff that will benefit people.

 

[Toolage 87]

...it can be done

Well I know it can be done but for me there are things that I have to get done first in my life and money is gonna get very very tight and that's why I am not sure if I can get my 10w system up and running before the end of next year.

But nowadays who really tries? It's too bad that comfort is always 'job number one'. It's fun to get your hands dirty and try to make stuff. Especially stuff that will benefit people.

Yea its kinda sad to see but also some people can afford a project but they want it to pay for its self fast but never look at the big picture like if there is no power for them for 1 day or more. Then what's gonna happen? I always thing ahead and how to get ready for some things like no power.

 

[eye exaggerate]

to get ready for some things like no power.

"necessity is the mother of invention" So true...

 

[Toolage 87]

"necessity is the mother of invention" So true...

That is so true but its also a thing of evolving. I guess it also has to do with people who don't see it happening don't try to do it them self unless they see it work for someone else in different scales.

 

[Weedasaurus]

I would like to see roof shingles made from solar cells.

 

[Toolage 87]

I would like to see roof shingles made from solar cells.

If you can make a clear thing that they can go in its highly possible to do such thing

 

[MacGuyver4.2.0]

If you can make a clear thing that they can go in its highly possible to do such thing

Guys- These have been out for quite a few years now. Many companies have them even DOW got into the act: In Colorado first : )
Do a Google search for DOW Solar and Colorado

Oh, and I know my solar...I have a 5.5 Kw solar grid for my home. Makes about 7412 Kwh a year so far.

 

[eye exaggerate]

Guys- These have been out for quite a few years now. Many companies have them even DOW got into the act: In Colorado first : )
Do a Google search for DOW Solar and Colorado

Oh, and I know my solar...I have a 5.5 Kw solar grid for my home. Makes about 7412 Kwh a year so far.

...and there it goes. Fck man, I've been thinking about this one for years But, those chemically bstards use new, raw materials (I'm gue$$ing)... I'd still love to find a way to get some existing plastics used up.

 

[Toolage 87]

Hey all. Ok I was starting to question my math and figured that to get a better idea on how many hours of sunlight a person gets they should google it to find a chart. I was very surprised to find out how many hours of sunlight I get here per month. Using the new numbers I put them into Microsoft Excel with other numbers and found out that I get more hours of sun then I thought per day. When I did the numbers I got around 5.5 Hours of sun per day at average adding all the hours of sun divided it by 12.


I found out that at the high end if a 25 cell panel producing 15.675w of power it would take 8.16 Years for the cells to pay for them self.

If you bought a 100w Solar Panel built for around $400 it would take almost 20 and a half years to pay for its self.

Now if you spent the $400 on the 25 2"x2" pack of cells that cost $25 you could buy around 16 packs of them and build a panel around 200.64w to around 250.8w for the same amount and it would take 10.2 years to 8.1 years with the cost per 1kw at $0.10. So as you can see building them can be alot cheaper and pay for its self in half the time.



Using the DIY method you could produce around 392,150.88w per year to around 490.188.6w per year. A $400 25 cell 2"x2" will produce at the low end 196,700.88w more.



I know its not alot of power that is produced to run things off of it that use alot of power but its a start.


Another thing that some people haven't though of is when going to solar buy a Kill A Watt meter and spec your stuff to help size up your needs but also see if you can go for a lower wattage item of it.



I was reading a guy that built his own panel and please don't quote me on this but he said he ran his built panels through a charge controler and then used a volt and amp meter to get a reading off the panels when they have a load on them.


Here's the amount of sun I get roughly per month here

Jan - 40.3
Feb - 77
Mar - 144.9
Apr - 194.2
May - 236.4
June - 253.2
July 300.5
Aug - 272.2
September - 213.1
October - 132.3
November - 52.8
December - 37.6



So as you can see if you think solar isn't worth it you might wanna research how many hours of sun you get per month and see what the price of solar cells are where you can get them.

 

[Toolage 87]

Hi all. Its been a while since the last post in here and I was hoping to have my solar power system up and running by summer time and I don't think its gonna happen but I just got a good idea when building your DiY Solar Panels.

When building your solar panels you want them to put out 12v under load. Now when building a custom solar panel you are going to most likely end up with sets of solar cells that add up to 12v now when building your solar panel if you do it right you can make sets of 12v solar cells that when rewired a cretin way you can get either a 12v or 24v or 48v solar panel. Making your panel this way can save you money by not having to make more solar panels and hook them up to make your system that voltage.

In the end doing the special cell set wiring you would only have to upgrade your charge controller and adjust how your batteries are hooked together thus your saving your self more money so you could start out with a 12v setup and adjust the wiring in your DIY panels to go to a 24v or 48v panel and your battery bank down the road.


Toolage 87's other idea on how to save your self money going solar power.

 

[dtp5150]

the higher voltages (48, 24) are recommend because they require thinner guage wire and give you less amp drop for distances, but have more expensive inverters and maybe charge controllers, compared to 12v. It would be very inefficient to make a battery bank at 12v.

The battery bank voltage is determined in how you wire them based on their rating, series ( voltage is sum of each battery voltage, holding current constant at each battery) or parallel ( voltage is constant, current is sum of batteries).

So running long lines of efficient 12V wire is costly, because it would have to be thick to avoid amp losses. Thats why you would wire up a series of panels in the field to raise up to 48v or something and then use a thinner gauge wire to meet up to your charge controller in a building and distribute the current to your battery bank nearby.

For wind turbines a good technique they do is use dual magnet alternators for the turbine which they can make output a 3phase AC 60 hertz signal, that can run power efficiently over cheap extension cords, and then rectify it back to DC for transmission thru thick cables to the charge controller battery bank which puts the ineffiency at voltage change and not thru cables.

 

[Toolage 87]

Hey all. Its been a while since I posted in here but I have a little project that I wanna try out.

1 - Buy those garden solar light things that have the solar cell and battery
2 - Get a tester

Test the cells out to see how many volts and amps I would get for a $20 pack of garden solar lights and give the results.

 

[cannabineer]

http://home.comcast.net/~botronics/project.pdf

 

[Toolage 87]

Not quite what I was thinking of using them for. I was thinking of buying the garden lights for their solar cells and building my own solar panel from them but I wanna measure the volts and amps the cell puts out for each garden light to see what the cost per 1w is.

 

[cannabineer]

Yes, but it had detailed volts/amps info. cn

 

[guy incognito]

Watts is depending on how your panel that you make is wired together.

Here's an example what a 2"x2" cell specs is

Amps per cell - 0.88 - 1.10
Volts per cell .57


The difference between the 2 is that the 2 cells wired in series produce a higher voltage but the amps it produces stays the same. The 2 cells wired in parallel will produce more amps but the voltage will stay the same. Now the part that makes things a little confusing is where you are at. No cells will produce exactly the same amount of volts and amps each. So wiring them in series and or parallel the wattage won't be exactly the same as 2 cells with. You could have a 2"x2" cell produce 0.50 volts at say 0.75 amps and a 2"x2" cell producing 0.57v at 1.10 amps.


I can't do the math for that kind of difference because 1 I don't know how it would go and 2 I don't want to give the wrong numbers on it.


So you could end up with a 2 cell panel that will produce a different amp and voltage thus the wattage will be different. How hot the cells get how much sun strength and many other things come into play on how much a panel will produce.

I don't understand.

P=VI

P = power, in watts (rate of energy flow) - this is equivalent to how much work can be done by flowing water
I = current, in amps (rate of charged particle flow) - this is equivalent to volumetric flow rate of water, ie gallons/s
V = voltage, in volts (electrical potential between 2 points) - this is equivalent to the potential energy of water, ie the height difference

2 cells wired in series will be like 2 pipes wired in series. amps remain the same (first one pipe has 10 gallons/sec flow through it, then below that the second pipe has 10 gallons/sec flow through it) but the voltage doubles (your height difference has doubled, you have 2 pipes on top of each other). Now when you collect that energy at the bottom of the pipes with a water wheel it has fallen 2 pipe heights instead of just 1 pipe height so it will hit the water wheel twice as hard, which results in twice as much power.

2 cells wired in parallel will be like 2 pipes wired in parallel, each with their own water wheel. each pipe still has 10 gallons/sec flowing through it, but now you have 2, so your total volumetric flowrate is really 20 gallons/sec. The voltage remains the same (only 1 pipe height). Now when you collect that energy at the bottom of the pipes you have twice as much volumetric flowrate hitting it (20 gallons/sec) but it is all falling only 1 pipe height, so it doesnt hit the water wheel(s) as hard.

I understand that real world differences such as different intensity of sunlight, duration of sunlight, etc will effect the measurements from one time period to another. However given a constant energy input I would expect a constant energy output equivalent to the area of the collection site regardless of how it is wired like cannabineer suggests. V and I may adjust, but P should remain constant.

 

[Toolage 87]

Solar cells of the kind and size will not always produce the same amount of output.

Each cell puts out x amount of volts and x amount of amps.


The charge controllers can only handle x amount of amps, watts and volts going though it. If you wire enough solar cells that are 0.5v each to give you 12v at load in series but not in parallel that meens it will take longer to charge your battery bank. Let me do some numbers as a example.

------------------------------------------------
1 solar cell puts out

Amps - 1.0
Volts - 0.5


1 AGM Battery
Watt Hours - 1200
Amp Hours - 100
Volts - 12

So if you wire enough cells together to make a 12v setup you will get a output of
Watts - 12.0
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 12.0

Leaving it like that it should take you 100 Hours to charge the battery to full from dead.
------------------------------------------------


1 solar cell puts out
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 0.5

1 AGM Battery
Watt Hours - 1200
Amp Hours - 100
Volts - 12


Ok so now lets add in the math for what a charge controller could handle going though it

Charge Controller
Watts - 450
Amps - 30
Volts - 12


So if you wire enough cells together to make a 12v setup you will get a output of
Watts - 12.0
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 12.0



Now if you took that 12v set of cells and have them wired together to up the amps to say 25 then you would get this
Watts - 300
Amps - 25.0
Volts - 12.0


Now the battery should take around 4 hours to charge.


If its wired to put out 30 amps then you would get...
Watts - 360
Amps - 30.0
Volts - 12.0

This meens it should take around 3.3 to 3.4 hours to charge the battery from dead


---------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's more math


Now say that your running an item on your off grid system when they battery bank is dead to a full charge and I will adjust the cell specs to help you understand what I am saying


1 solar cell puts out
Amps - 1.1
Volts - 0.5

1 AGM Battery
Watt Hours - 1200
Amp Hours - 100
Volts - 12




Solar panel that is 12v
Watts 13.2
Amps - 1.1
Volts - 12.0


Ok lets say the item that you are using draws 13w @ 1 amp every hour.


Now that meens your 12v panel is only producing positive power of

Watts - 1.2
Amps - 0.1
Volts - 12.0


Now this meens it should take 1000 hours to charge the battery from dead with a load that is using almost your 12v panel's max production...



Now lets say the panel puts out 5Ah @ 12v
Watts - 60.0
Amps - 5.0
Volts - 12.0

Lets say the item that you are using draws 13w @ 1 amp every hour like the example above.


Now the panel would be producing this as its positive power production

Watts - 48.0
Amps - 4.0
Volts - 12.0


Now doing the math and it would take 25 hours of max power production to charge the battery from dead with the same load.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

End result

1 solar cell puts out
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 0.5

24 cells to make just a 12v panel should take you around 100 hours to charge. While wiring cells together to make a 12v panel but puts out say 25 amps will take around 4 hours to charge from dead.

So as you can see having the cells wired to amp output makes a difference. Remember that when its a off grid system the amps that are put out matter because every thing uses amps.

 

[guy incognito]

Solar cells of the kind and size will not always produce the same amount of output.

Each cell puts out x amount of volts and x amount of amps.


The charge controllers can only handle x amount of amps, watts and volts going though it. If you wire enough solar cells that are 0.5v each to give you 12v at load in series but not in parallel that meens it will take longer to charge your battery bank. Let me do some numbers as a example.

------------------------------------------------
1 solar cell puts out

Amps - 1.0
Volts - 0.5


1 AGM Battery
Watt Hours - 1200
Amp Hours - 100
Volts - 12

So if you wire enough cells together (24) to make a 12v setup you will get a output of
Watts - 12.0
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 12.0

Leaving it like that it should take you 100 Hours to charge the battery to full from dead.
------------------------------------------------


1 solar cell puts out
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 0.5

1 AGM Battery
Watt Hours - 1200
Amp Hours - 100
Volts - 12


Ok so now lets add in the math for what a charge controller could handle going though it

Charge Controller
Watts - 450
Amps - 30
Volts - 12


So if you wire enough cells together to make a 12v setup you will get a output of
Watts - 12.0
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 12.0



Now if you took that 12v set of cells and have them wired together to up the amps to say 25 then you would get this
Watts - 300
Amps - 25.0
Volts - 12.0

(wait a minute. In order to get get 25 amps at 12 volts you will need 25 parallel circuits comprised of 24 cells in a series. You need to make 25 independent circuits that you just made in the previous example. If you simply wire 24 circuits in parallel instead of in series you get 24 amps, but it's all at 0.5 volt. 0.5 V X 24 amps = 12 W, the exact same as the other example. 24 cells all producing 0.5 W adds up to 12 W no matter how you wire. You will simply get different voltage and current in each system)

Now the battery should take around 4 hours to charge. (as I just stated you need 25 parallel circuits each comprised of 24 cells in series to accomplish this. This makes perfect sense, increase your total collection surface area by 25 and you reduce your charge time by a factor of 25)


If its wired to put out 30 amps then you would get... (as I already point out you cannot simply wire up the same number of cells to get different amps at the same voltage)
Watts - 360
Amps - 30.0
Volts - 12.0

This meens it should take around 3.3 to 3.4 hours to charge the battery from dead


---------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's more math


Now say that your running an item on your off grid system when they battery bank is dead to a full charge and I will adjust the cell specs to help you understand what I am saying


1 solar cell puts out
Amps - 1.1
Volts - 0.5

1 AGM Battery
Watt Hours - 1200
Amp Hours - 100
Volts - 12




Solar panel that is 12v
Watts 13.2
Amps - 1.1
Volts - 12.0


Ok lets say the item that you are using draws 13w @ 1 amp every hour.


Now that meens your 12v panel is only producing positive power of

Watts - 1.2
Amps - 0.1
Volts - 12.0


Now this meens it should take 1000 hours to charge the battery from dead with a load that is using almost your 12v panel's max production...



Now lets say the panel puts out 5Ah @ 12v
Watts - 60.0
Amps - 5.0
Volts - 12.0

Lets say the item that you are using draws 13w @ 1 amp every hour like the example above.


Now the panel would be producing this as its positive power production

Watts - 48.0
Amps - 4.0
Volts - 12.0


Now doing the math and it would take 25 hours of max power production to charge the battery from dead with the same load.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

End result

1 solar cell puts out
Amps - 1.0
Volts - 0.5

24 cells to make just a 12v panel should take you around 100 hours to charge. While wiring cells together to make a 12v panel but puts out say 25 amps will take around 4 hours to charge from dead.

So as you can see having the cells wired to amp output makes a difference. Remember that when its a off grid system the amps that are put out matter because every thing uses amps. (no it doesn't, it uses watts)

I think you are doing your circuit math wrong.