My Year of Solar Power Improvements

[wooferhound]

 I have a small solar power system that has been in operation for a year and 3 months since October 2007. It was a very minimum system based on the Harbor Freight 45 watt solar kit. This system was simple but very functional and I was running: Lights, DSL Modem, Fan, TV/Radio from it and it's been working great. Here is a link to the original installation, this is a great example to beginners on how easy and cheap it is to get started setting up their own decent Solar power system...

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/3/4/6303/63451

 However there were some safety issues and the system was not very expandable, so I have made many improvements over the last year, allowing me to add more solar panels and a Wind generator to the system. This story will bring all of those improvements together into one place.

 When I first Put everything together, I used the Panel Mounts that came with the Harbor Freight solar panels and just set the three original solar panels down on the ground down on the ground.

 This was totally uncool so I built an Adjustable Solar Panel Mount and put everything up on top of the shed. Here they are set to the Summer position.

 This Last Christmas 2008 my mom gave me another set of Harbor Freight Panels. Now I have double the power coming in. Here are all six HF panels on the adjustable mount set to the Winter position.

 I was combining the power from the panels through a set of diodes that were screwed between two terminal strips. it worked OK but looked awful.

 Wanting to be able to expand to many more solar panels and a wind generator, I made this Diode Combining Network which has inputs for 10 Solar panels and my Wind Generator and an Auxiliary input.

 The batteries remain unchanged. They are still sitting inside a Coleman Ice cooler in the shed. The small one is a 30amphour Car Battery and the big one is a 135amphour deepcycle "reconditioned" battery. I have been having trouble getting the larger battery to keep a charge since the day I added the new solar panels, but I believe this is coincidence. I am using the Car battery as backup without any problem.

 Originally, Charge control was done using a single Ghurd Dump Controller. as pictured on the righthand side of the following picture. Battery fusing was very minimal and was one of my saftey issues that needed fixing the most quickly. The fuses are in the black box on the lefthand side of this picture.

I needed a bigger Charge Controller If I was to expand so I built another Ghurd Dump Controller which has 2 stages and can be set for 2 separate voltages and each stage can be set to dump two different Amp amounts. This Dump controller can dump a total of 18 amps or about 300 watts.

 All of the Unfused connections to the battery were bothering me pretty much. The first improvement that I made to the system was make a Fuse Panel for Everything that connects to the battery. Anything going In or Out of the battery goes through this panel on the left side in this picture of everything. Plus you can see another solar panel wanting to get installed, on the right side of the pic.

 The 110 foot (33m) Wire goes from the battery, around the house, to my computer room, which is where I use the 12volt power. Originally the wire was two 12ga positive wires and a single 12ga negative wire. I have added another 12ga negative wire. Now there are two 12ga wires on both the positive and negative side. I think two 12ga wires equal 8ga wire?

 Once inside the house the power goes to this switch panel. Every load I use is switched On or Off here. This is the next part to get upgraded. I have enough extra power now to run many more loads, but I don't have the ability to distribute the the electricity properly. Very soon I plan to make a Fuse panel here that will feed several switched locations with indicators when Solar power is being used. I plan to power the Base Station of my Wireless phone system in this upgrade, more on this later.

I am using the 12 to 15 volt DC power for many things.

 Five 12vdc 5 watt fluorescent lights -  DSL Modem

 12 volt DC TV and Radio -  Muffin fan for personal comfort in the Summer

Will be adding: Cell Phone Charging and Household Wireless phones,

 Digital TV converter box, plus more

I guess that's all the news that's fit to print.


W o o f -={(

[ghurd]

I love how it started to small to be 'usefull', but was used.

Then got bigger!

G-

[pepa]

   very good work Woof, i enjoyed the post, keep it up. pepa

[fcfcfc]

Hi:

I think 2 - 12's 10G.

.....Bill

[zap]

Nice write-up Woof.  I've really liked your posts on your system, it's been fun and interesting watching it evolve.

How big is the "soon to be installed" panel?

Any idea how much power the DTV converter uses?

Any more thoughts on a tracker?

I've nearly finished a vertical component using an old cordless drill... hope to be posting a piece on it soon.

[TomW]

Woof Woof.

[independent]

I really enjoy reading these posts by Wooferhound. Inspiring

[DamonHD]

Good man!

I thinks it's doubly good how you so the path from (solar) zero to hero, so someone else can see all the steps.

Rgds

Damon

[wooferhound]

I regularly use 12ga for 20 amps

and 10ga to carry 30 amps

I thought that 8ga was good for 40 amps

which would be double the amps of the 12ga wire

[wooferhound]

The Solar panel that will be going up this year is a 12watt panel that has degraded over the years to about 9watts, every little bit helps.

The wallwart that powers my DTV Converter Box is rated at 12vdc .5amp or 6watts.

Tracking would be nice, I have great Sun exposure across the South. But this is more of a hobby to me right now and I'm trying to keep it all fairly simple. If I were to get more serious about it and get some "Real" solar panels, then I would be thinking about tracking a lot more.

[luv2weld]

Really good write-up!!

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Ralph

[fcfcfc]

Hi:

OK, To be precise, the cmils are:

12. g is 6529
    
10. g is 10380
    
9. g is 13090
   
8. g is 16510
   
   

So really, it is almost exactly 9g... 2 x 6529 = 13058

I like to error to the larger even wire size...

.....Bill

[mixerman]

DTV converter box that use's DC? Whats the brand name?

I got a cheepie but its AC,  no wort.

[wooferhound]

I got two DTV Converter boxes with my government coupons, They are

Artec T3AP Pro Converters, I can Highly recommend this box

http://www.meritline.com/artec-full-digital-conventer-box-t3ap-pro-digital-to-analog-converter-box.h
tml

[Bruce S]

Woof;

 Very NICE!! indeed. I especially like the ability to adjust the voltage of the dump controllers for different types of batteries

Cheers

Bruce S

[mixerman]

I couldent get any of the on-line venders to respond fast enough, the problem I had was the coupon expires today.  I did have some luck at the local target store and picked up a RCA stb7766g1, use's 6 watts, DC operated ! onsale it coasted about 6 bucks out of hand. I like no shipping involved and a place to return it to if it dont work.