May 12th, 2006
The charge controller arrived this morning so with a spare 30 minutes or so over lunchtime, I wired it in to the panel and the battery.
The unit is deceptively simple, yet actually feeds back a lot of information and does much more than I expected. Reading through the instructions, it’s also apparent that trying to create a PV system without one could seriously reduce the life of the battery (more on that below).
Wiring is simple - the unit has three sets of connectors with input from the panel on the left, to the battery in the centre and output to the right. The green LED on the top left indicates input from the PV panel - as the light levels reduce, so does the intensity of this LED. The LED on the right shows the state of battery charge and changes from red to yellow to green (in 10 steps) to reflect empty to full charge. More
May 11th, 2006
I got my Solar PV panel mounted on the shed a couple of days ago, but it’s not actually connected to anything yet! I wanted to give myself enough time to complete all the wiring for the lights etc and make sure everything was neat and tidy, but a two of days of glorious sunshine made me think about all the potential energy I was wasting (just having a PV panel is making me think more about electricity usage!).
I decided to temporarily wire the panel to the 85 Ah leisure battery so that could be charging in readiness for installation of the 12volt lighting system. Connection is very simply a matter of wiring from the + and - terminals of the panel to the relevant battery terminal using the clips supplied with my kit. In addition, an inline fuse is fitted on the + wire by the battery (supplied with the kit). More
May 6th, 2006
For a long time, I’ve had a great interest in alternative energy systems - Solar PV, Wind etc and have really wanted to ‘get my hands dirty’ and try something out. Currently, there is nowhere I could locate a wind turbine, so Solar PV was the obvious choice.
I know there are people who would argue that PV has a very long payback period and that the energy and raw materials used in the manufacture could counteract the good of free electricity, but you have to take a balanced viewpoint. Here in the UK, to be self-sufficent on electricity (assuming that’s what you want), you’d have to look a combination of reducing your personal electricity requirements, together with implementing wind and solar generation (and water turbine if you are lucky enough to have suitable land).
Anyway, after drooling over lovely Kyocera 40w and 80w panels I thought I’d just dabble a bit first to get experience - after all, I don’t currently ‘need’ solar and my budget is limited, so I bought a £100 complete shed lighting kit from the Organic Gardening Catalog. The kit comprises a 10w panel, two 9 watt CF (Compact Flourescent) bulbs (45w equivalent) together with all wires, switches and ancilliary bits. I know you can get cheaper panels, but with everything together, I thought it was an OK deal and it’s a starting point for me. The manufacturers claim that under ‘ideal’ conditions, the system would power both bulbs for up to 7 hours. More
