Friday, April 3, 2009

Solar power for the solar powered workshop

Having an hour spare today I though I would test one of the Solar arrays that has been sitting in its box waiting for me to get some time to put it up.

The solar arrays came from Maplin in March when they had them reduced by £100 each making the price £3.80 a watt. Each solar array kit contains a charge controller with heavy duty plastic pipe frame. Any way here is a couple of pictures of the basic system.



As Im not sure what size of battery array I will need I have only bought one 220AH Solar battery. Now I have one of the Solar arrays connected and set up my next task is to use one of my collection of ATMEGA controllers to do some data logging. I am also looking at making a MMPT solar charge controller making use of the ATMEGA PWM outputs to do this.



The Solar Arrays will be fitted to the Solar Shed roof. The solar power is not only required to be environmently friendly it was also required as it will be located around 20m from the house. A secondary power source will be from a brand new petrol generator that I need to convert to run on gas.



Heating for the solar shed will be from a pot belly wood burning stove that has an estimated heat output of 7Kw. This was found second hand for £100 complete with a stainless steel chimney. I did talk the guy down from £160 though.