![]() I use the light powered from this system regularly, which is why I need such a large solar panel. In practice you do a little bit better – in the sun this can charge at about 0.2A through my intelligent charge controller, giving me about 1/5 of the rated power. That 12W you only get to realise in the sort of sunshine you’d get in California, in the UK you can pretty much assume you will get on average 1/10th of the rated power even in the sun. The solar panel I used is shown on the right – this is occasionally on sale at Maplin for about £40, and is rated at 12W. It is about right for a shed system that would mainly be used in the short summer nights. For home use the solar panel shown isn’t big enough. The charge controller is in the middle of the picture and clockwise from the top left is a solar panel, battery and fuse panel. Some of the items are shown in the pic below solar panel, battery, charge controller and fuse board ![]() You don’t need to use all of these if you are prepared to improvise – a good knife can double up for the wire strippers provided you know what you are doing, but they show what I used. This is a picture of the tools I used tools used to assemble the solar power system spade crimp kit if the fuseholder needs spade connectors.4-way fuse panel (can substitute with inline fuse holder for single load).20A terminal strip (4-way or 8-way if using float charge controller with wire ends).These can be used outside in well ventilated areas, and leisure batteries usually come with a vent pipe, which should be used to lead any gases to the outside if these batteries are to be used in a shed or outbuilding.Ĭar batteries should only be used in a car because they lack the vent pipe – when charged in a car there is usually a decent headwind of several miles an hour to clear the gases. Using leisure batteries or car batteries indoors is a serious explosion hazard because of the gases given off under some charge conditions. The reason these schematics include fuses is to safeguard you from fire risks, do not try and save money by eliminating the fuses, and take note of their locations.īefore working on a 12V system, remove any jewellery such as wedding rings, necklace chains and wristwatches, as if these metallic objects bridge the battery terminals they can heat up causing serious injury.įor indoor use, a charge controller and a sealed lead acid battery are mandatory. 12V is not considered a shock hazard, but FIRE is your enemy with low voltage power systems because of the high currents involved. A grid-connected solar PV system does not give you resilience against power cuts, because the anti-islanding systems in the grid tie inverter shut the system down if the main power fails, so that a PV system does not send power back into the grid when it may harm power workers trying to repair faults.ġ2V systems have different safety issues from 240VAC mains circuits. That sort of thing is on a different scale from this project, and capital costs are usually in the order of several thousand pounds, but the energy savings are much, much greater. For that it is best to get a grid-connected solar power installation which will allow you to save energy and get renewable feed-in tariff payments. If you want to primarily save energy or reduce your carbon footprint using solar power, this is not the solution. That is because in the summer you get far more solar energy and you’ll probably use the lighting less. In the summer you can also run a laptop computer power supply independently of the main for a couple of hours (these run typically 40W). ![]() The system as described lets you run one or two 12V 1.8W LED lights through the year – my system was able to run mine through the winter and the shortest day where the light would be on from about 6pm to 11pm. Although I have used lighting as an application, such a system can run an electric fence for much of the year if suitable solar panels and battery are used. It can be used at home to keep lighting during power cuts, but the same principle can be used to provide power to sheds on allotments, outbuildings or island sites without mains power. This project lets you run lighting off of solar power, effectively storing sunlight for later use. This was originally published on TI’s website, which is no more. ![]() It had to be targeted at a competent DIYer, and is for small scale lighting. The idea for the project came from the Transition Ipswich Energy group in 2011. Total costs should be in the order of £100, but there are ways to reduce that by getting some items from Ebay. This project is about resilience more than energy saving, though it can also be used to save energy. ![]()
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