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My jukebox went green (Warning*Nerd Allert)

bentalphanerd

bentalphanerd

Drizzled rain all day so I dragged out the parts I've been buying one at a time all year and got to work on one of my projects.

Might be handy for running your hydro & lights setups, or just to do your bit for the planet.
Its a 10W polycrystalline panel with a 20 W regulator, volt meter, fuses, car cig lighter output/input, jumper leads, 50 AH marine battery, 300 W mod sine wave inverter.
I'm just testing it on the music machine....it's coming camping with us & when at home will power a few of the house lights.

I tested it out on my PII laptop wireless jukebox. The battery is dead in the lappie.

testrun_SML.jpg


regulator_SML.jpg


:lol: I'm not going to photograph the wiring on the back of the board.
 
Oh...way kewl!

So the solar panel charges the battery, and the battery runs the laptop? Was the battery already charged? If so, how long would it have taken the laptop to drain the battery? In other words, how long could you have run the laptop after the sun went down?

And, congrats on getting more rain! We're still dry as a chip.
 
Pam said:
Oh...way kewl!

So the solar panel charges the battery, and the battery runs the laptop? Was the battery already charged? If so, how long would it have taken the laptop to drain the battery? In other words, how long could you have run the laptop after the sun went down?

And, congrats on getting more rain! We're still dry as a chip.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's a new marine battery fully charged. The setup is overpowered for just running the laptop it'll probably get around 30 hours of play with the amplifier/speakers before things will start to screw up. It will happily run laptop, 12 V fridge & several flouro lights every night. The polycrystalline panel will still charge even on a cloudy day so worth the extra $. I added the car cig lighter so I can charge from car engine if it needs.

Just drizzle here but has been a few days every week. Plants are turning Triffid I've got to drag out the weed trimmer for a few hours just to find half my plants.

*Thats not a complaint :P
 
That's cool man.

Our next door neighbor is in New Mexico attending a year long series of classes on solar power. When we re-roof our house I'm planning on putting in a full solar electric set-up...and get him to help me!
 
Its the way to go mate. Even if you can only get a few parts at a time it pays it's own way. If you change your house lights over to CFL you will need surprisingly little solar equipment to have free lighting & thats probably 10 or 20% of your power bill you never have to pay again.
 
Bent ..I have used pretty much the same panel in the bush of Alaska. We would run sideband radios off a battery with the panel hooked to the battery. Worked great. Some mate's of mine also used a little 1200w genny for the laptops and subbed the battery when not running. Great for running laptops, digi camera's and charging sat phones as well. Cheers, TB.
 
Bent,great brainstorming on that. I may not be as hardcore as you for rigging up stuff but I do the same thing as you do in a sense for power supplies (for some things)
rigged up my jobsite radio to run XM radio for a extra external power source (since what I had would blow the fuse) plus rigged gamecams (hunting) for better power supply because of cold temps.
 
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