Here is a Fun Fact for you. If you had been smart and asked how to do this right from the start I could have saved you a ton of money with about 90% efficiency. No 12 volt battery, Inverter, or even your bike battery charger would be required.
I would have told you to buy yourself a Genasun GVB-8 Boost Controller. It is a buck/boost controller made for golf carts and can use a panel wattage as low as 100 up to 350 watts. They are made for 12, 24, 36, and 48 volt batteries. The 36 volt model charges at 42 volts a perfect fit with no waste. You may not like the message, but the absolute best advice anyone could give you. Your way just suks and now you know it and kicking yourself. .
Your idea of using your system to run a sump pump is not going to work for you. Will not even make a down payment for what it would really take.
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Fun fact- this message board has a twit filter! That will make things much nicer for me going forward. Have a nice day Sunk boy.Leave a comment:
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That is funny stuff, I do not care who you are. Who wants to educate this fool his 100 watt panel and his toy sized 12 volt battery will be dead long before he can pump the water out of his basement.
Give you a better idea and it would work a lot better. Make a contraption to use your bike to run a pump and peddle like crazy for a few days. It wil work better and move more water. Won't do the job, but a lot better than a 100 watt panel and a car battery.
Last edited by Sunking; 03-31-2018, 12:19 PM.Leave a comment:
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Yes, that seems pretty close to what it has been running.
can be any time, actually, usually around noonWhen do you ride the bikes Noon ? Morning ? Evening ? It matters because you will either be charging directly from the sun, or storing power in an intermediate battery.
Lol, I know HF has a bad rep on these forums. I bought them because I needed an energy source on short notice last August and renting a generator was twice what the panels cost. They were perfect for my needs and as far as I'm concerned, they've already paid for themselves. Anything else I get from them at this point is a bonus.
100w HF panel. Sadly, it's turned out that the cardboard the panel comes in, is more valuable than the panel. But while it's working, great
Got itThe most practical battery is a cheap battery, generally a 80ah 12v battery. 100w charging it, is barely sufficient, but it's all in the timing.
, using the inverter to charge the bikes in the morning so solar can recharge the battery in the day, is preferable to using the inverter to charge at night, and letting the battery sit drained all night.
The longer and deeper a battery is discharged, the shorter it's life, you want to maximize solar utilization.
Actually our power here is super reliable and I may never need to use this option, but I want it just in case of emergency. If my basement flooded, it would be very expensive for me.Sump pump. Would a 12V marine bilge pump, if it meets the flow and lift requirements, be a option to avoid an inverter ? How often does Grid power pump fail and what expense are you willing to go to for a 80% solution or do you need a 99.5% solution ? If grid fails, that means storm which means no solar for recharge .
Thanks for the information!
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OK, sorry I missed the 84 watts. How many hours to recharge 3 hours each bike ? 84x3= 252 watt hours per bike ? x 2 bikes = 504 wh
When do you ride the bikes Noon ? Morning ? Evening ? It matters because you will either be charging directly from the sun, or storing power in an intermediate battery.
100w HF panel. Sadly, it's turned out that the cardboard the panel comes in, is more valuable than the panel. But while it's working, great
The most practical battery is a cheap battery, generally a 80ah 12v battery. 100w charging it, is barely sufficient, but it's all in the timing.
, using the inverter to charge the bikes in the morning so solar can recharge the battery in the day, is preferable to using the inverter to charge at night, and letting the battery sit drained all night.
The longer and deeper a battery is discharged, the shorter it's life, you want to maximize solar utilization.
Sump pump. Would a 12V marine bilge pump, if it meets the flow and lift requirements, be a option to avoid an inverter ? How often does Grid power pump fail and what expense are you willing to go to for a 80% solution or do you need a 99.5% solution ? If grid fails, that means storm which means no solar for recharge .Leave a comment:
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So you have an Inverter with a 12 volt battery to make it work. I told you that is the only way to make it work which is real silly and wasteful. Why you ask, because of everything you are ignoring. You have a PWM Charge controller, which changes your 100 watt panels into 66 watts if even that high because it is from Harbor Fright. Next you have a 12 volt battery which at best has a 80% charge efficiency. Next in line you have a cheap Inverter with any where from 70 to 90% efficiency. Then we have your battery charger with unknown efficiency but lets pretend it is top of the line and say 90% efficiency. Lastly we get to your bike's battery which has its own efficiency, and depending on battery type can be 60 to 95% efficient.
So you start with a 100 watt panel that never generates 100 watts but lets be ignorant and say it does generate 100 watts. 100 watts x .66 (PWM CC eff) x .8 (12 volt battery eff) x .8 (Inverter eff) x .9 (Bike charger eff) x .9 (bike battery) = 34ish watts from a 100 watt panel that never generates 100 watts.
No I did not include all the CO2 used to make the panels, charge controller, Inverter, and bike charger. Hell if I did that it gets really nasty. I was just referring to the batteries alone. With just the batteries you are paying up some 10 times more for electricity because the ROI and EROI of a battery is negative. Throw in all th eother stuff and it makes you a very heavy polluter paying up to $2 per Kwh rather than buying it for 12-cents.
Charging any battery is not fun regardless of the energy source. You must like watching paint dry.
Me I want it charged as fast and cheap as possible so I do not have to hang around and watch paint dry and grass grow while loosing my kids money.
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I'll have to have a conversation with my existing equipment which has been working fine for weeks to occasionally charge 1 battery from 50% to let it know it's not supposed to do this.
Only if I were not using an inverter which I already said I was using
It would require 3 of those panels wired in series using a Charge Controller that can charge a 36 volt battery. Good luck with that.
You're claiming this setup would only be 40% efficient at converting solar into the bike batteries? What is your basis for this? From what I've read, inverters are 85-90% efficient, and Lithium-Ion battery charging is close to 99% efficient. Being conservative, it seems like I should be in the ballpark of 80% efficient, not 40%, and as I already mentioned I'm targeting 50% recharge of both batteries a few times a week.
To do what you want would require you to have a 12 volt battery, a large one, and an Inverter to run a conventional charger. That can be done but very wasteful because of all of the conversions. To get 800 wh into a 36 volt battery is going to require the panels to generate 2000 watt hours per day. That will require 500 or more watts of panels, a 12 volt 400 AH battery (, and a expensive 40 amp MPPT charger. All that to generate less than 5 cents worth of electricity. You are looking at $2000 for a crappy charger.
I already have most of this gear except I'm considering a bigger battery. I assume you're talking about CO2 created to produce the gear? AFIK, solar panels do not produce CO2 directly
It would be a lot less expensive and a lot better environmentally to use good ole commercial power and the bike charger. Off grid is extremely expensive and nasty nasty CO2 emission. Far more than any fossil fuel would generate. Not to mention a whole lot faster in 2 hours vs a day or two using solar.
I already own most of this equipment and riding a bike powered by sunbeams is fun. If you don't think so I think you should find a new hobby like yelling at kids to get off your lawn.
I suggest you rethink this idea. Not well thought out.
Last edited by wunder; 03-31-2018, 10:48 AM.Leave a comment:
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What's the charger for each bike, consume from 120VAC ? You need a solid number, not a guess.
How long daily, do you need to charge ?
Here's my suggestion
Look for a couple 200 -300w panels. Maybe a single 300w panel will work
Use the appropriate charge controller PWM or MPPT
Use a single 12 v marine deep cycle battery (less expensive than smaller "solar" batteries
use a suresine 300w inverter, and only charge batteries while sun is on the panels (or other efficient small inverter, nothing from autoparts store)Leave a comment:
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Hate to tell you, but it is not going to work. You have a 12 volt battery panel trying to charge a 36 volt battery.
What is wrong with that picture?
It would require 3 of those panels wired in series using a Charge Controller that can charge a 36 volt battery. Good luck with that.
To do what you want would require you to have a 12 volt battery, a large one, and an Inverter to run a conventional charger. That can be done but very wasteful because of all of the conversions. To get 800 wh into a 36 volt battery is going to require the panels to generate 2000 watt hours per day. That will require 500 or more watts of panels, a 12 volt 400 AH battery (, and a expensive 40 amp MPPT charger. All that to generate less than 5 cents worth of electricity. You are looking at $2000 for a crappy charger.
It would be a lot less expensive and a lot better environmentally to use good ole commercial power and the bike charger. Off grid is extremely expensive and nasty nasty CO2 emission. Far more than any fossil fuel would generate. Not to mention a whole lot faster in 2 hours vs a day or two using solar.
I suggest you rethink this idea. Not well thought out.Last edited by Sunking; 03-30-2018, 09:26 PM.Leave a comment:
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Thanks for the tip. I now live out in the country so I do get some pretty good views of the stars when the moon isn't full.I've been doing astrophotography for a lot of years
If you want to talk about a money pit, that's the ticket! But it's very rewarding. Actually that SCT scope wasn't terribly expensive, but the mount was about $4k. If you want to just do visual astronomy, Dobsonians are the way to go- you can get a really nice 10 incher for just a few hundred bucks.Leave a comment:
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I've been doing astrophotography for a lot of years If you want to talk about a money pit, that's the ticket! But it's very rewarding. Actually that SCT scope wasn't terribly expensive, but the mount was about $4k. If you want to just do visual astronomy, Dobsonians are the way to go- you can get a really nice 10 incher for just a few hundred bucks.
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Your welcome. I hope you enjoy solar technology like you do astronomy technology. I would kill for that scope you showed in the other post. Right now I have a cheap Celestron 102SLT which isn't anywhere close to being in the same ball park as what looks like your Cassegrain model.Leave a comment:
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Thanks much! I'll sleep on it before I pick up the batteries this weekend, but this is really a 'just for fun' project so all learning is good.Leave a comment:
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