I just got my first solar-panel starter kit, and I want to use it for my light, so I have to have a battery for it.
The panels are 12 volt, 65 watt.
What kind of battery/batteries, and how many lights can I have on it?
My mistake, it is 60 watt, not 65, and there are 4 panels, I do not know if they are 60 what each, or total.
IGNORE EVERYTHING BEFORE THIS…..
Ok. here are the facts.
4 15 watt solar panels, for a total of 60 watts.
1 200 watt inverter.
1 regulator/controller
I also have 1 75 watt inverter, and 1 800 watt inverter that did not come with the kit.
The only things on them will be lights, and 1 outlet when the power is out, the outlet will be on the main line when we do have power, the lights will be on solar all the time.
What kind of batteries can I use, and how many lights can I have on it?
What kind of batteries do I need, how many, and how many lights can I have on it?
I am also open to ideas on how to hook everything up. I think I know how to do it, but others have already done this sort of stuff, so it would be smart to get ideas from them.
First off, for solar applications it is imperative to use deep cycle batteries (ie. batteries that offer a regulated power output over a relatively long time without needing a charge cycle often, typically used in marine, RV and solar/wind/hydro models) Deep cycle batteries, unlike starter batteries (which are usually found in automobiles) can be run down to 50% of capacity and charged back up with little to no degradation of internal chemicals (mainly lead).
Next, with the panels you would be using you can accrue 60 total watts of power per hour of sunlight you obtain. So as you can see we are in a bit of a guesstimation game in which you need to hypothesize how much sun you expect. For this model we will use a even 5 hours daily. Obviously, in practical application it will be a lot less neat but….
So if you get 5 hours of sunlight at 60watts/hr than on a day to day basis you have a total of 300watt/hrs per day to play with. Now due to efficiency recommendations of 50% discharge of deep cycle batteries you would want to have approximately a 12 V 600 watt battery (or 2 X 300 watt, etc.)
Now if you wanted to power your lighting system solely off the 300watt/hrs generated by your solar panels and you have to power the lighting for 8 hours (whatever the amount of darkness is) then you take your 300watt/hrs divided by total time needed to run the system (8 hours for this hypothetical) equals 37.5 watts of power available for each of those 8 hours. I would recommend running no more than 30 watt lighting on your current inverter setup.
Hope this was helpful,
Shawn
A 12 volt 85 amp-hour deep-discharge/marine battery will store about 2 day of output from one panel. The charge rate from one panel is slow enough (less than 1/10 of capacity per hour) that if you make sure you keep the electrolyte in the battery topped off with distilled water you won’t need a charging regulator. You WILL need a charging regulator if you use more than 1 panel per battery of this size. You can expect to run about 130 watts of lighting/entertainment equipment for 5 hours a night. Using a 12 volt dc/120 ac inverter of at least 200 watts capability you could run about 5 23-watt cold florescent bulbs, the equivalent of at least 500 watts of incandescent.
We run our homestead on 850 watts of solar panel, feeding through a charge regulator into 10 batteries as described above. The batteries run a 2600 watt inverter to power 4 lights a above, plus a home entertainment center, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, and two computers. I use a generator for power saws and the like, as well as about once a month when we’ve had too many cloudy days in a row.
I live in El Paso Texas,
I am next to Las Cruses where NMSU
Car batteries are the most commonly used batteries for a solar array……
They are relatively cost efficient and have a large storage capacity
I like the Sears Diehearts, largest amp hours avaliable…..
Good Luck