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Solar powered hydro setup?

Had to put it on hold for a bit , but I think I have the setup all figured out, its gonna consist of 2 solar panels one to run pump during the day and one to charge a deep cycle battery (battery is for backup and running overnight cycles).

I am currently building a non-solar outdoor NFT system so when that is finished I may end up changing it over to solar power if I have the money for the panels I need.

I was also looking at something like this Solar Powered Air Pump for some DWC setups but that pump is pretty pricey maybe theres a cheaper alternative for that. too many projects not enough $$ or time lol :D

-Rich
 
redeyes said:
ok guys i have been following this for a while now and i have been looking for solar panels and pumps and just anything i could use with hydroponics.. i plan on having a hydro set up out side someday... any ways this is what i found ... go down the page a bit and you can see all kinds of good stuff.. also look at some of the tabs on the left side .. real nice web site.. IF i get 1 i will post up what i got ...:lol: hope this helps you guys out there...
http://www.siliconsolar.com/solar-fountain-pumps.html
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Thanks for the link this looks like the winner http://www.siliconsolar.com/night-and-day-18v-solar-pump-system-p-17865.html
 
I think it would be best to set up pump to run on battery, and have solar panels charge battery. As long as the amount of power (measured in amp hours) from solar panels is greater than what the pumps use over a set time period (24hours) your system will work stand alone. Where the touble lies is the days (like cloudy) where the amount of power is less. I don't know the specifications of the system you have chosen so this may all be moot.
 
One of the major drawbacks of solar systems is the 3 days in a row with no sun in winter. Electrical storage in batteries is expensive and inefficient.
 
There's a few youtube videos of people utilizing solar panels to power their pumps, etc for outdoor hydro set ups. The one I watched wasn't incredibly successful as they experienced a period of not so sunny weather. I'm sure it's doable if there is a way to store excessive power for back up.

I like your ebb & flow build, I might make one down the road.
 
Perhaps if you did something kind of like what some people do with larger setups. By that I mean if you have a couple batteries running (I don't recall if it would be serial or parallel) so that you have a higher capacity. This way if you increase your capacity and your usage is still the same then you have a little left over power for when you get days that are not very good for solar. Did that make sense? Another idea is to look into wind energy. Wind power is FAR more efficient than solar and has less of a "foot print" this is why we have HUGE wind farms in other states and not so many "solar farms". I don't know if there is a small scale wind turbine or not for this kind of purpose but maybe something to look into.
 
Now my electronic 101 might be way off since its not one of my strong sides even though Im a computer geek, but I think you want to keep the voltage the same otherwise if you increase the voltage you could cause damage to whatever you plug to the batteries. Am I mistaken? Please correct me if I am wrong.
 
crazy8 said:
Now my electronic 101 might be way off since its not one of my strong sides even though Im a computer geek, but I think you want to keep the voltage the same otherwise if you increase the voltage you could cause damage to whatever you plug to the batteries. Am I mistaken? Please correct me if I am wrong.
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Right, that's why I said parallel. :)
 
Why not just use a boat 12v bilge pump (make sure it's oil less) and build a flood table? You only have to flood a table long enough to wet the roots and let it shut off. 4 or 5 floods a day will be more than enough. Head pressure will be the biggest obstacle to hurtle. Cheap pumps just can't lift water
 
treemanjohn said:
Why not just use a boat 12v bilge pump (make sure it's oil less) and build a flood table? You only have to flood a table long enough to wet the roots and let it shut off. 4 or 5 floods a day will be more than enough. Head pressure will be the biggest obstacle to hurtle. Cheap pumps just can't lift water
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that was the original plan actually, however a flood table out in the open yard would fill up with up rain so I cant do that, but I was thinking of doing it as an enclosed flood and drain using pvc pipe, and putting rain shields over the holes, so it would look like an nft but with larger diameter tubing except instead of constant flow it would just fill the the pipes and then drain every few hours.
 
I dont have any way of illustrating this at the moment but I am hoping I can describe it good enough that you will get what I am saying. So with that said. If you were to do a flood table I do have one idea that would keep the rain out. See with flood tables the flood is enough to get the medium and roots wet and other than light that's all you really need. What if you were to make a flood table as normal and fill it with medium but then had a surface...or board for the lack of a better word that was slightly larger than the table and laid on top of the table and medium? I know your thinking "Well how do the plants grow if they are covered?" Well what if the board had 1" or bigger holes in it for the "sites" of the plants and had reflective material or something (with slits cut) that would allow for plant growth but keep as much water out as possible? This would minimize the intake of rain into the table. Im not saying the flood table is the best idea just an idea IF you decided to do it :D

Also a little FYI I did do some minor looking at windmills and it turns out there are some options. I dont know what your budget is or to what scale your looking for but I did find stuff from the $100's of dollars to $1000's of dollars. I was looking because I always thought it would be cool to have a wind turbine if it was a financially viable solution. :D
 
Noshownate said:
hows the pleants mojo
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doing pretty good lost a bunch of seedlings while I was away for week due to aphid invasion, the tomato plants in the buckets from the first page of this thread look like this now

hydro-toms.jpg
 
Rain water collected from a flood table will only help you. There aren't any down sides. All you have to do is drill a hole in the side of your reservoir and it will act as an over flow. The rain water might affect your PH a little, but it will not displace your nutes

Are you wanting to build a solar unit just to see if you can do it, or do you have an ulterior motive?
 
I wanted to build a solar unit so I can place a system or two out in the yard without having to run power to it. no other ulterior motive
 
So, have you done the math as to what the draw on the battery would be? And what size of panel(wattage) are you looking at.

We tend to look at the obvious bad side first, "what happens when there is no direct sunlight" but consider what to do if you have constant sunlight and overcharge of the battery. This will damage the battery - you may have to get a charge controller.
I have looked into solar solutions and how to complement it with wind power, new roof top wind power devices are pretty cool and can operate day and night assuming you have wind - some of the new wind turbines can function at 7-10km/hr; if you live on a farm and have a flowing stream there are some neat water turbines that can operate at low water flow rates.
 
If you haven't bought your batteries yet; look into 6v golf cart deep cycle types. Far better than all, but the most expensive 12v types. With an inverter you can run a 110v pump. But, you'd be better off with a 12v pump (cheaper than an inverter) which you can find in a marine hardware store (not a bilge pump but a 12v water pump). Good luck.

Edit: You're in Florida; go to a West Marine store, they've got everything. That includes some pretty cheap books on 12v systems.
 
Any updates on this? I to have been starting to look into this kind of stuff as my plans for next seasons setup seems to keep getting bigger some how...lol
 
crazy8 said:
Any updates on this? I to have been starting to look into this kind of stuff as my plans for next seasons setup seems to keep getting bigger some how...lol
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no update yet, it can be done though, I just dont have the time and $$ at the moment.
 
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