This article speedily explains the basics of making a little solar power system; that charges laptops or cellphones for example. A solar power system can be great for camping, emergencies, trying to cut back on your carbon footprint, or just for fun.
Diagram
Parts List
Below is a sample parts list. These are the online costs, but things can be cheaper if you reuse, recycle or shop around a bit.
Custom Design
These types of systems can be easily customized. For a portable system, like I made, I was primarily concerned with size and weight. Here are a few factors to keep in mind when picking parts:
· Inverter power rating (what you will be powering)
· Battery capacity (how long you can go without sun)
· Panel size (how fast the batteries charge/available sun-power)
· Size/weight (higher power and capacity obviously bigger and more expensive)
The inverter power rating can be determined by what you plan on plugging into it. The power rating of devices is typically written on wall adapter or you can look it up online. Sometimes the power is described in voltage and current draw and you can use this equation to estimate the power draw of a device in watts.
Battery capacity is mainly limited by size and how long you’d like to go with out sunlight. The battery capacity is typically rated in Amp-hours, Ah, and the energy capacity in Watt-hours (Wh) can be determined using,
Then you can estimate how long your batteries will last (in hours) using,
The “0.8” is for efficiency and the last little bit in the batteries that not good to use. You can think of the power output of you solar panels as “subtracting” away the power from the other things you are using. There are a lot of different factors to choose that’s the main reason for building your own instead of buying pre-made one. That and its also fun!
