solar sucess

[ronsmith]

I finally got my 95w panel installed yesterday. Hooked it to a deep cycle battery with a sunsetter cc and a 800w converter. It worked! I left a florescent light on in my battery building all night. This evening I ran an ext. cord to my model railroad from my power supply and wae able to run four ho scale trains for about 2 hrs. until I shut them down. Now my batt. shed light is on all night. I think I'm off to a decent start!

[TERRYWGIPE]

cool, it's to see sucess, now you can expand

Terry

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Assuming about 80 watts of charging (panel wattage is rated for a higher voltage than you actually use them at) and five solar hours per day, that's about 400 watthours/day of charging, or about 17 watts average 24/7.  Assuming that converter pulls about 8 watts idling you've got maybe 9 left over for your load.

Until you get another panel up you should be careful about leaving that light on all the time - you could be getting ahead of your panel and running on battery drain.

Nevertheless:  Hooray!  (And you've got your baseline overhead drain covered so more panels should be pure load-gravy.)  Meanwhile you should be able to pull maybe 40-50 watts for five hours/day for years.  B-)

[Peppyy]

Congratulations! I love seing posts with the word sucess in the title. I have a ways to go before I will have a chance to post that one.

[ronsmith]

I ran a 12/2 circuit from my bat shed into my house, utility closet and mounted a plug. now i can use my solar power inside house and out in bat shed for light. I will add second bat. soon. I will relocate my panel to a sunnier location but the downside is its a 120' run from panel to bat shed. So I will be forced to step up to a 24v system when I add my second panel.I am using 6 gauge wires for my run. Now I will have power in case of grid outages.