Solar Video Editing

[MGB1977Red]

I hooked up the inverter to power the holiday lights this winter. They consume 2500 watts over the dark 12 hours and the system recharges by 9am the next morning. A neat way to provide a little light outside during the darkest nights...courtesy of the sun!

[MGB1977Red]

I just substituted some 75ah AGM UPS batteries for the golf cart cells. Amazing difference! The AGMs don't self-discharge so the efficiency of the system is up at least 20%. Well worth the extra money. Now that it's summer and the sun is so much higher, I need to tilt out the panels...but they're still making quite a bit of useable power at this winter setting. Longer 14 hour days but still only about 7 hours of useful sun since the panels don't track.

[MGB1977Red]

I've added a second Xantrex C-40 as a load controller for the electric heater. This has extended daylight heating to 6 hours in January and uses just a fraction of the battery bank.  There's more than enough power in the batteries for morning pre-sun heating.

[MGB1977Red]

It's a cloudy day today and it's trying to snow. Still making 54 volts and the batteries are charging slowly but shurely. Getting accurate volt readings can be misleading due to all the capacitors in the system. Be carefule when working around a big inverter because it can still pack a whallop even when disconnected until you run down the capacitors! The difference between a big capacitor and a battery is blurring. Soon supercapacitors may be the ultimate way to go for energy storage.

[MGB1977Red]

Grid-tied systems are real simple but playing with your own electric micro-utility is a lot more fun. Energy harvesting happens every day and it's up to you to use it all up. Even on cloudy days there's still a lot of volts available...in fact more than on sunny days...just fewer amps. That's why I doubled up the panels to 48 volts so that I can still charge the 24 volt battery system on marginal sun. Automating the system is the other fun part!

[MGB1977Red]

The intersection between A123 lithium batteries for high performance and lead acid for charging the airplanes is a curious combination. One 180 watt panel would work the lithium charger at 10amps but 24 volts is too high. Regular 12 volt autombile batteries crash when trying to charge the lithiums at 10amp charges. The deep cycle 6 volt wet cells could prove to be expensive due to their limited cycle life.  Vanadium Reflux Flow batteries might be the answer!

[MGB1977Red]

I also use a couple of the 6 volt golf cart batteries to charge my electric airplanes on the weekend. A 2.5hp 9lb A123 powered Power 90 retract-equipped Chipmunk charges in only 17 minutes from these sun-charged batts.

[MGB1977Red]

This Solar project is a work in progress. The short days in winter are a great time to test the system and maximize performance. Sun-made electricity is an amazing thing and is about as close to magic as it gets!