Let's talk about my solar setup
A few days ago I made a post showing my workstation setup and people kept asking me to talk about the DIY solar backup system I was running it on.
First things first. Please get a professional electrician to do your solar setup. Mine is a fire hazard I am willing to live with for the love of DiY but burning your house down is a very real risk for solar installations. If you do decide to do this then setup the solar components in an isolated room, not under your desk like I did. Finally, when opening up electronics be sure to not electrocute yourself. Public disclaimer over
Let's talk about the components. To have a usable solar setup you will need a few things. A solar panel (converts sunlight into electricity), a charge controller(regulates voltage and current coming from the panel to a battery, also safeguards against battery overload), an inverter (converts the DC current from your battery into AC current to power your devices) and a battery (stores charge).
The first thing I did before the installation is finding out how much power my devices actually consume off the wall socket. To measure that I had to get a smart plug, this device plugs into the wall socket and then you can plug your device into it and it will measure out how much power the device is drawing. It provides stats such as . You can find them on Jumia.
I found my whole workstation setup uses less than 200W even an peak usage. With that in mind , I got a 600W solar panel which gives me around 200-300W during the day consistently even when its cloudy. The amount of power solar panels yield will vary based on temperature, sunlight and panel quality .
I also got an MPPT **(**Maximum Power Point Tracking) charge controller, essentially an MPPT charge controller scans and samples the solar panel's output and finds the exact point at which the combination of voltage and current yields the absolute highest wattage. This means you get more power from your panel that would be underutilized if you were using a charge controller that doesn't use the MTTP tech.
I then got a 100AH battery. For the inverter I got one that was labelled 600w but when I opened it up to check the components used I doubt if it could hit 100W without setting itself up on fire. So I decided to take an old APC 300w UPS I had and converted it into an inverter, the connection is quite simple, just had to remove the UPS battery, link those connections to my 100AH battery ensure to disconnect the UPS input so it does not try to charge the battery. I also added a computer fan to the UPS to cool the transformer which does run hot. I also got a change over switch, this allows me to switch between my main power and battery power without turning my devices off.
With this setup I am able to get 4 hours of use when I run my computer or about 12 hours when I run my smart TV and sound system. I also have the smaller inverter running indefinitely which powers my router and the LED strip I have setup in my room. During the day I am able to run all these devices on the panel alone and still have the battery charged, on cloudy days I may not have a full battery by nighttime if I use the solar system during the day.
Here is a cost estimate for all the components
- Solar panel 15k
- MTTP charge controller 15k
- Inverter (The fake one cost me around 1500 but my DIY UPS inverter was free)
- Battery 100AH 15k
- Changeover switch 2k
- Cabling + miscellaneous (On a 600W panel the wires get hot so you will need those 6mm thick cables) Cost me about 3k
I have really been enjoying my experience. The area I live in has blackouts often especially on rainy days you might have multiple day long outages throughout the week. Not having to worry about what KPLC is up to is nice. It also saves me a lot especially with the rising power costs. The cost of power for running a computer all day really adds up.
I plan to refine and upgrade this setup in future. I am looking to setup a lithium battery maybe 200AH, I have a 24V 900W UPS that I want to use to transition to a 24V system which my charge controller does support. For safety, I also want to have fuses on all connections so I don't burn this house down with my experiments. Having an automatic changeover switch that switches between main power and battery power if one goes out is also nice. I also run a home-server and this charge controller has a comms port that I can use to setup remote monitoring to my home-server for the system. It's a whole project that I really want to work on when time and money allows.
That was a lot of info, thank you for reading. Feel free to ask questions.