Shall we play a game? hey guys, welcome to the channel. I just wanted to do a quick review, or at least talk about solar. This is a solar array. It’s. A Harbor Freight 100 watt kits built on a yeah wouldn’t, a frame that I made and edit in some rigid conduit just to keep it straight because it was a little flimsy at first, but it’s on a antenna tripod That I had which allows me to spin it back and forth to follow the Sun for the day, so that’s, the front of it be straightforward, truck owned by that’s, the array there and again that’s.
To 100 watt kits, currently it’s, pushing out about not in ten amps from the Sun. This is the back that’s. The frame that I made they added the rigid conduit in there to help, keep it straight, because this wood is a it’s, then I want to try and keep it light.
It’s, also pressure treated, which makes it very pliable. So I needed that extra metal in there and I’m, going to actually add two more to help. Keep that array straight. But, as you could see, I just hammered down some kind of it.
I had ton of it laying around so screwed that in there that’s, my angle and then that goes into another piece of conduit that it can spinning and then into the tripod and then the players just keep it stable.
It’s a little bit windy today, so it wants to tend to move around a little bit and actually turn that up here, but uh yeah. So that’s, my setup and then that’s. The the charging hub, the solar freight panel hub that you can plug everything into and then what I did was the output of that the red and black wires there.
I basically cut those and put those on this thicker wire that I have for carry amplifiers that basically just runs right into the house into the charge controller, so that’s, that this is the array itself.
Next up, we’ll, go inside and look at the batteries and talk about the charge controller though she is hey guys, so welcome back. We are currently in my basement, and this is a repeater system which the solar panel is powering.
This is a UHF, DMR ham, radio, repeater system that covers the area that I’m in it’s, part of a big linked system around the city for ham operators to communicate with each other, and currently this is running off of The batteries so a little story about the batteries, so these batteries are 320 amp hour batteries, so all of them tied together.
You’re. Looking at about 2,000 amp power. Now the 200 watts of solar I have outside is pretty much never going to charge this and left. I let, unless I left it for like a year charging it. So what I ended up doing was actually scaling it back just to the one battery here and making that my starting point now this battery is a 320 amp hour battery, so it takes a lot to charge it, and you know it would take a good day Of Sun to charge it, which we’re getting so today we’re.
Getting you could see here. We’re, getting 10 amps coming in right now, so those panels out there. Each set of panels are producing about 5 amps, so we’re, getting a solid, roughly 10 amps and we’re at 12.
Point 5 volts in charging this charge controller. Many don’t know, but it has a 20 amp fuse in it, so it will essentially handle up to you know, probably about 18 amps safely without starting overheat and melt stuff, but the the cabling this is the black cabling coming in from outside And that goes into the solar panel connectors and then I have proper DC cabling.
This is aluminum DC power, cabling that comes out and basically goes into the batteries. So this battery right now, like I said as 10 ants going into it being charged there, you got 10 amps fluctuating there, but that’s coming in and this repeater system.
What a lot of people don’t tell you is that you know when they use solar. They’re, essentially charging something you know, spending time, giving it time to charge. For instance, you know a lot of people are charging like a shed or an RV, or something like that where they’re, essentially leaving the batteries to charge.
You know throughout the day or for a week or two weeks, and then they come back and use the the charged power and then they go away and give the batteries time to charge again and then come back and use the charge power.
That’s. What a majority of the videos are out there when you get into real-world applications like this, where you’re, trying to power something full-time like this. Repeater is powered full-time by this battery array.
There’s. No AC power coming into it and you can hear the fan in there, which is sucking a majority of the power. So one of my project is to put an Arctic fan in here. Take that fan out put a lot lower power fan in here, which will help save my battery, and it will help charge up this battery a lot faster, but right now you know that normally this would go up to 14 volts, but being that it’s it’s constantly using power as powers coming in it just kind of balances out at you know, between 12 3 and 12 5.
It hardly ever goes up much higher because it’s constantly being used. So you know real-world applications that’s. What’s? Gon na happen? You’re, never gonna. You know. If you’re, getting sorry about the fingers.
They’re. If you’re, you know running real world applications that are running all the time you’re. Almost never gonna see your batteries go up to full charge. Unless you have a huge panel array, for example, a typical car battery, or even these batteries, the recommended manufacturers charge voltage is between 32 and 39 amps.
Now I’m, putting out 10 amps. I would essentially have to replicate my sent my solar panels outside three times to even get what the recommended charge voltage is for one of these batteries. You know, if I did that yeah then I would.
These would charge up a lot faster. Obviously, but you know a lot of the videos online people don’ T really explain that stuff to you. You know they basically show you, the solar or she’
Ll show you that they’re using at one time and that’s. It and a lot of that stuff. You have to. You have to remember a lot of those people, not all of them, but a lot of them are being paid by the manufacturers to portray their equipment and to make sales you know, so you have to kind of take a lot of these.
You know videos with a grain of salt because a lot of them are just you know, just not really realistic. Like I see a lot of videos of people running in air conditioning, you know I a battery running with solar, which really isn’t realistic yeah, you’re gonna run air conditioning for maybe 20 minutes.
If that and that’s about it and then another thing I see is a lot of people running the solar, but they’re using a 35 amp hour battery like yeah, you can charge that in a heartbeat because it’s only a 35 amp hour battery.
Nobody like in real world applications, uses a 35 amp hour battery. I mean you know this. This is real world right here. These are 320 amp hours. You know this is what most stuff uses. You know a lot.
Higher-End batteries, but you know, like I said, to each their own. You know I’m, not knocking anybody, but you know a lot of the stuff you see online with solar and everything you have to really take with a grain of salt and talk to somebody that really knows what they’re doing With solar, you know somebody that’s, not trying to make a sale away, somebody that knows what they’re talking about, because again just real world stuff.
You know like I said this is real world right here. This runs full time and solar is great, but you know my plan is to try and get even one battery to last. You know at least about a week running this equipment because then, if we don’t have Sun for at least a week.
It’s still gonna run. I’m. Not gonna have to worry about it, so that’s. That’s. The plan for this you know as long as I can get it to run for about a week or so or even longer. Then you know the days where there’s.
No Sun, it’s, not a big deal. Then we just wait: it keeps running until the Sun comes in and they replenishes itself, so that’s. This project, and another part of this, I think I may do – is supplement incoming power with they got the small windmills that you could buy as well, which produce power.
So I think, between wind and Sun. You know I’ Ll have a lot better power coming in, but this is a project that I’m working on and you know nothing’s perfect, like I said this, this repeater systems running solely off of the battery here and that blue cable.
There is the battery cable going to the repeater. I just added a regular house switch in there to shut it off. If I need to work on it or do anything but um like I said, the next project is to replace this fan again.
You can kind of hear it whirling away in there, so the next project is to replace that what should help bring this charge up a lot faster like I said it’ll, pretty much sit here most of the day and you know still at 10 10.
1 amps fluctuating there, so power is definitely coming in, but again 10 amps really isn’t. You know that’s, pretty on the low side of the recommended charging voltage. So it’s, going to take a while to charge that now the flip side is.
I can go with a lot smaller battery. You know I can go with you know a 35 amp hour battery or something like that and yeah. The solar will charge it way faster, probably within a couple hours, but guess what a real-world application like this repeater is not going to run a 35 amp hour battery.
That thing will be chewed up in probably a half hour, and then this repeater system would be dead and nobody can communicate. So you know it’s, just kind of things you got to think about so take everything with a grain of salt, and you know this project will keep going.
I’m going to work on. I may eventually upgrade those panels out there and add more just because I’d like to be able to get enough power in here to properly charge these batteries. So I’m, probably going to end up building three or four more of those arrays out there.
At some point, one of my other project is to put a rotor on that tripod also to track the Sun. So I get solid amperage all day. So that’s, another project part of this but uh – I probably will at some point upgrade you know, add more panels out there and then have to upgrade the charge controller to a proper MPPT controller which can handle all the input.
This is great for what we’re doing now, but that’s, definitely not going to last. If I grow this system, so that’s all for now. I just wanted to show you guys this setup here. Yeah, Solar is definitely pretty neat.
You know it’s, a lot of fun to play with, and you know it’s great for charging cell phones and small stuff like that and perfect for that stuff. But I’m. Just wanting to show you the project here and that’s about it.
You guys have a great day thanks for watching the channel. If you like, the video click like and don’t forget to subscribe, and you know, keep posting more stuff as I do stuff, but this is the kind of stuff I love to do and part of all my hobbies, so more will definitely be Coming have a great day:
