Since I am scrounging for content until I get started on this years plantings in another week or so I thought I would share my solar panels and the system I have put together with them. Please note I am not an expert in this field but what I have done works for me. I have a dorm fridge that I am able to run pretty much full time with these two battery banks.(more like a battery piggy bank since there are only two batteries in each set). First I would like to share some of last nights snow, our first of the year.
The wife's unheated 10x15' greenhouse
Here is a pic of my two sets of panels.
The bottom set is one that i got from Amazon.It is a 60 watt set and was $300. It came with the panels the charge controller and a 200watt inverter. The inverter won’t power much so I also got a 750 watt inverter. The set also came with lots of different wiring stuff. Almost all of which is in a neat ball on my bench next to the batteries. The idea with this set was to be able to make my own power and store it in a couple of batteries. This is a dream of all preppers. Turns out that using 2 12 volt batteries that have a amp hour storage capacity of only 84 hours each wasn’t going to light our world.. Next I bought the 3 panel 45 watt set from harbor freight (yes the store that doesn’t have a single thing made in America. damn shame). That set came with a combination charge controller and direct use 12 volt output box. This way you could hook up almost anything that runs on 12 volts direct to the box however you could only carry that appliance or tool or light as far as the cord would go. So for this unit I got a 1000 watt inverter and a 2000 watt one so I could use things like my chop saw or a skill saw anywhere on the property.
With this set I also found that two 6volt batteries also makes a 12 volt system, I knew that new math would come in handy sooner or later,. These batteries cost only $36 each more than the 12 volt ones and have a storage capacity of 228 amp hours each, almost 3 times what the 12v batteries store.
Below are the two sets of batteries.
6 volt on left 12 volt on other left
Here is a closeup of each. Note how they are hooked up.
6 Volt Set
In the 6 volt set above the heavy red cable is on the positive post of the front battery and the other end is on the negative post of that battery. I understand this is called using the batteries in series. The clips you see are going to that little grey box that says 13.2 amps in the second picture. This is the charge controller and the 12 volt supply that came with the harbor freight kit.
When I am using this set I will have an inverter hooked up to the same two posts as these clips.
12 volt batteries set
In the above picture is the set with 2 12 volt batteries.The red cable on the left runs from neg on one battery to neg on the other battery. The one on the right goes from pos to pos.. The black cable is from the 2000 watt inverter it is going to the neg post on the front battery and then there is another red cable coming from the inverter that is hooked up to the positive post of the front battery.
Tomorrow I will show how I use these battery sets.
I use trash cans at the back of each greenhouse for water. With these cans I can dump in 10 ounces of my soluable fertilizer into a barrel and do a 300ppm watering on the whole greenhouse at one time. I will usually use the fert. once every ten days or so.
I’m getting pretty hard up for content now. I hate to leave my new readers without anything to read so if you have any suggestions please shout them out. Thanks. By the way it is my job to dust the table in the garage that the fridge is sitting on and I am going to go do that right now.
