A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners
Solar powered aquaponics
I saw there really wasn't a topic for this, with society becoming increasingly aware of their carbon footprint or lessoning their impact on the environment. Maybe this would be a good place to share info, knowledge, experience, equipment, suppliers, setup etc on solar applications......
In the next few weeks I'll try posting some basic solar info and general rules of thumbs, As and if this progresses, get into the sizing of equipment, types of equipment, pumps, panels, inverters, chargers, lighting and storage systems.
Hope to hear from others as well as input or questions.
Thanks
the mad german
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on
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They make black poly drinking water pipe which comes in rolls which is probably cheaper than painting rigid pvc.
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Permalink Reply by Kobus Jooste on
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I'll be reading through this with interest before posting any questions regarding pv costs for the type of unit I have. Perhaps it is in the thread already
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Permalink Reply by the mad german on
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Give me a round about on what your application is, if its constant flow, timed, or a float that cycles along with the equipment used and I can put you in the ballpark sizing wise.
I'm only using a 60 watt PV setup being my system cycles based on a float every 10 minutes. So far its been been consistant, storage is the biggest issue, I can't stress that enough when sizing.
Either way let me know If you need some assistance or have sizing questions.
Thanks
mad
Kobus Jooste said:I'll be reading through this with interest before posting any questions regarding pv costs for the type of unit I have. Perhaps it is in the thread already
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Permalink Reply by txdurk on
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Well, I'm all for solar if it is reliable but I can't afford to lose plants and fish from failed pumps or aeration. From the initial research I did, one sore point is the inability to charge the battery at the same time it is discharging to operate a device like a water pump. This means the pump has to be turned off while the battery charges. I'm not an electrical type so maybe I missed something. I hope I am wrong. I'd love to use a small 45w solar panel DC system instead of AC. TCLynx makes a good point about timers too. AC timers are easy to source but DC timers are not from what I could see. The closest are irrigation timers running off the AC mains. I'm willing to go continuous flow on the AP but that means more battery usage requiring more frequent recharging and down time for the pump and aerators. One work around is to have two batteries that are individually selected so the pumps run off the second one while the other is charging but the gold standard would have this done autonatically without human intervention.
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Permalink Reply by Averan on
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Dave,
Have you tried googling "12V timer"?? There's a plethora of results to choose from and all very affordable. ;)
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Making your own timer isn't all that hard either. PicAxe if you have any desire to play with electronics.
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,Ok. First of all, I never "google" anything. I like my privacy too much. I use ixquick. Having said that, of course I searched for 12v timers. IIRC What I generally found were timers capable of six settings per 24 hours. This is unsuitable for 15/45 hourly cycles. Am I missing something? As for making one, I'm an engineer but not an EE.
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Averan said:
That looks promising Averan but It only has 24 daily settings so it depends on how it programs I guess. I saw one similar to this but it ran off batteries & so was unreliable.
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looks like it functions as a normal plug-on on/off AC timer. set your 'off' and 'on's for whatever 24-hour cycle intervals you want. i could be wrong though. :D
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I'm a disabled veteran on a fixed income so so I'm not willing at this point to spend the money in the hope it works. Maybe one day I'll be adventurous though. Thanks.
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That $45 Redneck timer from Amazon is $9.88 at Academy:
http://www.academy.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_1005...
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