Building a portable solar generator

Trace Rinaldi

Trace Rinaldi

Joined
Oct 3, 1998
Messages
1,774
I have a Solorex 20 watt panel and would like some advice on a charge controller and inverter.. It will be a simple system for powering electronics, and maybe a couple lights etc... I want to mount it all in plastic box with wheels and a handle. It will probably have 2 deep cycle marine batts..

I want good stuff but it dont have to be the MOST expensive super duper uper stuff..;) I figure a 500 watt or thereabouts inverter is about all it would need.

Anyone ever build something like this? Any insight is appreciated..
 
I don't know if this is really the place for this thread, but here goes.

Your panel is most likely *too* small. You have a 20W power source vs. a 500W power sink. That means for every full-power hour per day you run your inverter, you need to run your panels for 25 hours at full power, plus a little extra for conversion losses - per day - to break even.

The other point is that planning a system like yours requires that you sit down with a pencil and paper and list all of your loads, with their power requirements and expected daily usages in hours. Take the number of watts times the number of hours for each gizmo, and then sum all of those products to get a watt-hour total for all of your loads. That will tell you how much energy you'll need to make every day. Divide that by 20W to find out how long your panels will have to produce full power each day to make up that difference. Then go buy however many more panel you need to realistically cover yourself. It's a little number intensive, but you need to do a few back of the envelope calculations before you commit to hardware. Also, some folks find that it works in their favor to just stay on a 12V or 24V system, and forego the whole inverter thing. There are several other points that deserve more space to be explored, but for the sake of my fellow forumites, I will leave it where it is for right now.

Hope that helps. Good luck. YMMV
 
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