Comment

Comment by Rich Milliron on May 15, 2011 at 8:08pm

Thanks Dan, I'll look forward to more details as you expand. 

 

Comment by Dan Wulff on May 15, 2011 at 8:11am

Hi Rich, I live in the Denver Metro Area and we do have outages on occasion. Being the pessimist that I am I intend to eventually run the system completely off grid. The deep cycle marine batteries are the type 27 and have the capability of 275 amp hours each. They are connected in parallel and give me a bit over 800 total amp hours to work with. The system as it sits draws 8.5 amp hours thus the backup can give me a reasonable 48 hours minimum operation without charging. the solar panels (for the moment) are 3 el cheapo Harbor Freight 15 watt (45 watt total) and a small charge controller (the silver box). I got them on sale for $150. I originally meant for them to power my Ham radios out in the field when I go camping but decided to use them for the system as a proof test. Once I finish the testing I will install six 200 watt panels and a new charge controller. I will also add several more batteries which will enable the system to go completely off grid.

Comment by Rich Milliron on May 14, 2011 at 10:14pm

Ahhh, I looked at your page and see you have tilapia, and live in CO, so I guess you would need to keep that heater going. Very curious to hear about that, in conjunction with your battery backup. Do you live in an area were power outages are common?

Comment by Rich Milliron on May 14, 2011 at 10:10pm

Very nice setup.  Your air pump doesn't look like it would take too much to run it, and I'm sure the pump would not be a problem, but you mentioned a heater on that power strip - I assume you wouldn't be running that off this system.  I'm really curious how much and for how long, you can get out of 3 good batteries.  What's the wattage on your solar panels?