Simple Solar System Setup Supports Sustainable Security

Today the sun is shining (somewhat) so I figured is was a good day to set up our mini solar system.  It consists of 6, 15 watt panels generating 90 watts of 12 volt power. This goes through conduit that we set into the concrete shell for just this purpose.The conduit leads into the house on the SE side.  I built a custom “power box” that holds two heavy duty truck batteries salvaged from our old truck Wally, which are charged by the panels.  They then provide 12 volt power for some low voltage lights and cell phone chargers.  I also hooked up an 1100 watt pure sine wave inverter to give us 110 volts  of clean AC power.

I mounted a telescopic pole with several light fixtures including a high powered LED spotlight that can be positioned in any directions up to about 9′ high.  The whole setup is mounted on wheels so that we can unplug the solar input and move it around the house anywhere we might need task lighting or portable power.  This will come in real handy when we have a utility power outage.  The set up is not large enough to power the whole house but it is a great little “portable” system that could even keep our refrigerator going for a while if needed. Eventually we hope to have a large solar/wind system intertied with the Grid to help offset our electrical needs with clean energy.

3 thoughts on “Simple Solar System Setup Supports Sustainable Security

  1. I like the portable power station. Have you heard about Outback power systems? They are from my neck of the woods, and they produce inverters and control stations for home power production. Everything I’ve heard is that they are the best.
    Thought you may want to look them up as you prepare for the larger system…

  2. Hi Jeremy, Thanks for the info. We eventually want to have an intertied system with either wind or solar, or both. In the mean time…. baby steps :-)
    Steve

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