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Registered Member #29
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500
It has been a while since I have had a little time to indulge in a bit of projectitis.. We have been having a fairly sunny summer in Belgium so I took the opportunity to assemble a 220W peak photovoltaic power system.
The solar panels and charge controller I procured on E-bay sometime last year. (Sorry, I do not remember the seller, but such panels are relatively easy to locate from many sellers). The batteries are 100Ah semi-traction deep-cycle lead acid batteries (the type found in electric wheelchairs and golf carts). The inverter is a 1500W, modified sine-wave static inverter that powers most household appliances without complaint.
I have assembled a simple webpage outlining some of the details and behaviour of the system at this address.
Future additions to the system will be some type of charge monitering system as well as probably adding some more PV panels to assist charging during short winter days. A small pure-sine-wave inverter may be in the cards as well....
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Looks great
Why not try a constant voltage transformer with your squarusoidal inverter, instead of getting a pure sine wave inverter. I wouldn't buy a CVT new (if you can even find one) but it's the kind of thing that you might have lying around at work. They do a pretty good job of turning nasty mains waveforms into a sine wave.
Registered Member #1497
Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801
Another neat addition you should think about would be adding sun-tracking. You would really only need 1 sensor/driver and just mount all the panels on gimbals, then parallel them mechanically by using braces/bars/cables, etc.
Registered Member #29
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500
Hi Steve: A CVT is indeed quite hard to find. I thought about making a large low-pass LC filter (a T-filter) with a cutoff of about 75 Hz or so out of some old transformer cores but the group delay may introduce more wobbles and ripples in the output waveform when things switch in or out.. I'll have to give it some thought..
aonimus: Yeah, tracking would be nice to have, but that's a project for another day!
Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140
One extra thing to consider is 'peak power tracking' for a given light level to get the maximum POWER available the currewnt drawn needs to be controlled, e.g. 0v4 @ 30mA = 12mW, 0v35 @ 35mA= 12.25mW, 0v3 @ 40mA = 12mW. The extra cost of the electronics is usually (I've read) less than the cost of extra cells.
Registered Member #1497
Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801
Not to derail about solar electric, but solar thermal I think cost wise would be cheaper. One big 10ft satellite dish + mirroring + blackened copper pipe loop = hot water/steam...
Your array of panels could possibly supplement your AC usage, there are 'plug and play' grid tie inverters that are in the neighborhood of 200W that take 14-48VDC and output power back into a wall outlet after syncing to the grid freq.
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Simple portable solar power system
