Remote Living > Water
Solar Powered Pond Aerator
OperaHouse:
I can assure everyone I am not full of it, just finished a colonoscopy this morning. I don't have a pond if you don't count the water in the basement. Missouri Wind showed this product in a video with the controller in a screw top box. Seems they don't want to shock people with hoe little is in it. Note it is in sealed plastic so no one can copy the design. Still can't use a respectable size grid tie panel with it. In a couple I will have a version that works on two grid tie panels in series.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Solar-DC-to-AC-Power-Using-NO-Batteries-for-Camping-RV-Pond-Pumps-Off-Grid/371237403299?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D41375%26meid%3D4d49968e89bd461994f5b58ad084f109%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D6%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D321643772490&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m2219
On a sad note, my water heating experiment is a dismal failure. The electronics works, but the panels are propped up on a wall and only gt one hour of clear sun. The rest of the time the 560W panels can put out between 6W and 60W. Not sure if I want to drag those big things on top of the roof where it is a little better. I never envisioned the site was that bad. Thought 3 hours of full sun was possible
george65:
With respect, you were full of hot air!
They would have pumped it into you and then not let you home till you emitted it. My father had one last year and reckoned he could have blown the candles out on his birthday cake from 30 ft away.
Geez I dread the day when I have to have one of those. I'm very shy about my private bits and the thought of having someone stick something up my nether regions does not sit well.... pun intended.
The Offgrid/ renewable/ solar industry reminds me of and is exactly the same as the veg oil Fuel component suppliers that sprang up when that was a craze. They simply took off the shelf products used by other industries and hyped them as speciality items and put ridiculous mark-ups on them.
There is some development of products as there was with veg components buy by and large..... Ripoff.
I noticed they were selling 3 phase rectifiers for $38..... the very same ones I bought off fleaby some months back for $7.XX ea.... delivered. To me, they want another $30 for postage! Ya! ::)
Just like the veg game, they WILL sell them to people. Some won't look anywhere else and some will think that they are " Special" for solar and that fleabay ones won't work.... just like people did with filters, valves and heat exchangers in the veg game.
First thing I noticed watching the vid is they use a 12 V panel. This is an example of the industry being self serving to me. Anything 12V I have seen here is ridiculously over priced and under powered compared to the cost of a new, off the shelf roof type panel which will undoubtedly have a far higher output.
Buy the controller but of course you are going to need one of these overpriced, under powered 12V panels with it. Or several to do anything much with them.
I will be very keen to see what you come up with for a setup like this even though I inevitably won't have the skill and knowledge to build it. I may be able to learn something or get the gist of the theory of operation though.
For us mere mortals, it seems an incredibly difficult thing to harness solar generated power into anything more than just battery charging and grid tie when it does not seem it should be.
I would suggest your water heating is not a failure at all but rather your panel location choice is. Can you not ground mount the things in a more suitable spot and just run a ( buried?) wire back to the controller?
My test setup is playing havoc on the lawn and has killed off a sizeable area where it's lying flat on the grass. Where it's raised, the grass is going nuts compared to what's around it. I think having it shaded allows the moisture to be better absorbed and results in better growth. Mower over that and it will be fine... although one hell of a contrast with the thick lush area to the barren brown one! :0(
Having some family gatherings coming up and to make the place look less like a junkyard , I thought I'd just put them up on the shed roof for the time being till I finally decide how I'm going to mount them. I thought they are lying flat on the grass, cant be any worse on the 5 and 13o pitch of the roof.
" Ideal" tilt here is 34o but I have run the numbers and want to optimise for summer so going to set them up at 25o.
I thought I'd run the numbers again to see how much I'm going to loose at those "flat" roof angles. To my great surprise, I'm going to make more with them from November ( ooops) till march than I would at either 34 or 25o. Looking this morning, I realise how much more overhead the sun has become in the last couple of months. There is a lot I have learned with this stuff well beyond the immediate technology itself.
I can now put the panels up there temporarily till I do some more number crunching and get over the silly season and my Daughters up coming 2st Birthday party before I need worry about mounting the things properly. Might just screw a bracket in them and to the roof bolt hole for good measure against the wind and then I'll have time to mock up some mounting frames for the permanent fixing.
You should feel grateful only looking at hauling 2 panels on your roof. I have 30 of the buggers I want to get up there!
I have made a ramp out of a couple of 3x4's I have braced together and the idea is to stack them at the end then lay them on the ramp, have a helper ( there's the wishful thinking part!) attach a hook under the lip with a strap and and then slide them on up.
Wish to hell I had that tractor I want now instead of having to wait a week for the thing! Put them all on a pallet and hike them up. Need them out the way now as they are annoying me and my anxiety/ OCD/ whatever will drive me nuts no matter how many other things I could kick on with in the mean time... of which there are endless! :0)
OperaHouse:
At camp my panels are almost flat and that gives me even performance throughout the day much like the 60 degrees east and west positioning. All I need to survive is a consistent 4A throughout the day since battery storage is minimal. Flat for a pond would work out well. The home panels are just a reminder that dreams suddenly hit reality and it is difficult to get a fully unobstructed view. I just don't see me with solar at home because I want to leave this place and while I am here it is only the winter months with the least solar production. It just doesn't make sense. When I had a panel on the roof a few years ago I could get watt hours of 2.5 times the panels watt rating. In current position this seems to be about one. The low wattage tracking does work great.
DenverDave:
I'm wondering what turnkey systems might be available larger than the $15 Walmart solar fountain mentioned, but less than thousands and requiring grid electricity. We also have a pond with algae and have been told if we aerated the water that this might help, don't know, but might be worth a try. Or do we just get multiples of the $15 version?
OperaHouse:
I have this cast iron water pump. Harbor Freight sell a copy of it for about $70. It has brushes on the side which indicates it is a universal motor that will also work in DC. I have a shallow well and want to pump some water to the garden and have 60V DC from my grid tie panels. I've built some Linear Current Boosters that keep the panel voltage at optimum and boost current to the motor. I've wanted to get around to this. Lots of rain has kept this from being a priority. These are nice systems that don't require a battery. It would probably work well in a pond.
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