Thursday, May 26, 2016

Start of my Solar Energy Adventure Part 3

Here are some pictures of how I am distributing the battery voltage. I gutted a old router for the case and mounted a Voltage/Current meter, current shunt and a terminal block.

Here is a view of the inside:


Here is the back view:


Here is the front view:


Here is how I power my Raspberry Pi's:


I took an adjustable buck converter and set it for 5.1 Volts and connected the output to the power wires of a 4 port USB plug I salvaged from an old PC I recycled some time ago.


Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Start of my Solar Energy Adventure Part 2

Here is the panel I mounted on the wall to hold my breaker box, MPPT solar charge controller and a small 300 Watt inverter.



Here are the 2 - 12Volt 55AH AGM batteries that I am currently using to run some of the gear on my workbench and various Raspberry Pi's.


In my next post I will show how I am getting access to the battery power for my Raspberry Pi's and other NON AC bench devices.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Start of my Solar Energy Adventure Part 1

Here is my homemade rack for my 2 80 Watt Sharp panels I got from my brother. The picture below is the rack on it's back before I mounted the 2 panels (laying to the left in picture).


Here is a picture of the panels attached to the rack.


Here is a close up of the panel to rack mounting.


Here is the rack setup against the south facing side of the back yard fence.


In the above picture you can see the pvc pipe that I placed to route the PV cables plus a cat 5 cable that I currently have a DS18B20 temperature sensor attached so that I can monitor the temperature just behind the panels. The pvc pipe goes along the lower side of the fence and then is buried underground as it gets closer to the house as there is a slope to the back yard.

In my next post I will have some pictures of the Solar Charger and battery setup in the basement above my workspace.