Solar Power DIY Blog

I call it my power shed but it is really only my main switchboard shed. When I say shed it is just a 1500 L x 700 W x 1900 H little gardon lockup. But it is so far working fine. I have my circuit breaker, battery charger, solar regulator and main battery fuses in the. I promise to post up some phots of the inside of.

It is important to keep the equipment cool. So I finally put a “whirly bird” on it that is a wind ventilator. I also put a covered vent low down on one of the walls.

The Switchboard Shed With Battery Box on Back End

When I first set up my solar panels, I wired things up on a temporary basis.  I used a lot of crimp connections and such like.  I have since begun mving things arround, with the bulk of the work done using this time proper distrubition blocks with tinned wires etc and discovered I get a couple of amps extra charging.  So it is important to make all your wire connections good.  Further details with some pictures of what I did in later posts.

I have never built my own solar panels.  With the research I have made, making individual cells is beyond the reach of most people.  But you can make up you own panels from pre-made cells.

New pre-made cells are not cheap.  Perhaps if you can source them in bulk cheap enough it might be worthwhile in building a panel in comparison to just buying the panel.

One idea though is to dismantle panels that have faults in them.  It is likely that most of the cells in the panel are OK.  The idea is to gather, interconnect and sturdily mount individual working cells on a frame to make the panel.  I have found a website giving details of how one person did this.  It is a time consuming process but if you have the time as opposed to the money and are a good scrounger that you should find this page interesting.   The article is called “How I built an electricity producing Solar Panel”.

Have a good day.

I have been looking to convert my front loading washing machine to run directly of 24 volt.  Why?

1.  For sake of efficiency.

2.  Most washing machine today are electronic and like only pure sine wave inverters.  Good sine wave inverters are somewhat more expensive to buy (and replace when they go wrong).

3.  I have not found a commercial ready-built 24 volt or 12 volt washing machine.

I shall keep you posted along the way of my journey on this one.

Please comment.

Solar powered water pumps can be a good alternative to wind mill pumps for a number of reasons.

1. In small locations, the sun can be more reliable that wind
2. Unlike wind mills that need to be placed on high masts to be effective, all parts of a sun powered water pump are easily accessible.
3. Installation can be flexible in that the panels can be some distance from the pump, obviously connected via cables.  This can be a good think when there are trees and tall vegetation where a well or bore is situated that you don’t want to remove.

Solar Powered Water Pumps consist of solar panels, an electronic maximiser and the low voltage pump.  No power storage is required.  A water tank is normally utilised to ensure there is sufficient water supply for cloudy weather.

Please forgive me for using this title, “Fact About Solar System”, for it is a bit of a play on words.  When the scientists or science teachers talk about the solar system they are talking astronomy.  However my solar system is what generates power for my house.  In fact apart from a backup generator I am solely reliant on it for my electricity needs.  Let me talk a bit about it.

Firstly, I decided to go solar because I had always dreamed of doing so.  The self reliance factor has always appealed to me.  Also, though I am not a “green” political activist or extremist but I like the concept of living green.  I’m not there in the way I would like yet but I’d like to there that we’re getting there bit by bit.

My solar system is 24 volt based, I have an approximately 500 amp hour battery bank and 8 x 123 watt sharp solar panels.  I am using a couple of inverters and Plasmatronics 40A regulator. That caters fairly well except in winter and extended cloudy weather for 2 laptop computers, 1 x 24 volt 150 L chest, 1 210 L chest fridge (will be going for a ‘normal’ fridge later), a small-medium 240 volt old style TV, a VCR, a DVD player, a small stereo, a handful of lights and when I get my pure sine wave inverter back a large front loader washing machine.  The system is not quite big enough so that I can have 3-5 days storage and reasonable to cover for and reasonably quick recovery from rainy, cloudy weather but the plan is to do so.

The house I am building will be lived in by 8 people, and as the children grow I expect the power requirements to grow, so the plan is to extend the power system. We live in South Queensland, Australia.

I am interested to know what sort of other power systems with the appliances they run that are in use.  I’d love it if you could tell us your set-up, even if it is only on your caravan or motor home, or weekend cabin, shed, or shed home, even if it is only temporary.  Please leave your comments.

OK to change the subject.  But why would we talk about Permanent Alternators.  For a couple of reasons.  Firstly they are the best type of alternator to use in a wind turbine.  For application of wind turbines, the windings need to be designed so that higher power can be generated with less speed. Secondly, since permanent magnet alternators are a little more efficient simply as a result of the absence of the field winding which takes some power to be energised, it would make good sense to use them as part of a backup engine driven battery charger.

Instructions are around to convert existing automotive or motocyle field winding type alternators to permanent magnet types.  A couple of websites I have found.

• Permanent Magnet Alternator From a Harley Davidson Alternator
• CONVERTING A JUNKYARD AUTOMOTIVE ALTERNATOR INTO AN EFFICIENT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PERMANENT MAGNET ALTERNATOR

OtherPower.com have some great pages describing how to build your own permanent magnet alternator from scratch.  I am going to get around to try one or two of these.

• Wooden Low-RPM Alternator
• A serious but simple one actually used in a wind turbine made from a old car disk brake rotor: Low-RPM Disk Alternator
• An alternator being made for a Steam Powered Battery Charger