First Radio Running on Solar Power. And First QSO.

I have now set up my small 50W solar panel with a charge controller and lead-acid batteries with a combined capacity of - officially - 60 Ah, using two "30Ah 12V" gel batteries. A more realistic estimate, for avoiding draining the battery below a safe level, would probably be about 30-40Ah from a fully charged battery. 

In the summer months I would expect this set-up to power for all activities with my IC-705, so that radio has now been connected to the solar small power system. 

Now I will have to check how the voltage/capacity holds up.

I expect to have the 705 running for about 16 hours per day. The current drain at stand-by is about 300mA, so about 4.8 Ah is expected to be spent, with the transmit periods I would not expect the consumption to exceed 6Ah per day, except if I would be running a full contest, or the like. This should leave sufficient capacity for adding a few (very) low powered receivers for 24/7 monitoring.

When I have tested the '705 system for a few days, I shall see, if I can add more.

The batteries are meant as a large buffer for the solar panel. With the 50W panel I would expect the average capacity of approximately 16Ah per day, probably more in the longer and sunny days of summer, and less on days with heavy cloud cover, but hardly ever going down to zero per day. 

For the winter season I should probably add a bit of charging via the mains power supply. but it needs to be checked. For now I expect to be able to run my IC-705 solely on solar power for many months.

Further, other systems with small solar panels are in my thoughts, like some lighting for my workshop, with a small panel and some low cost, low power LED lights, mainly for finding my way around at night. This may not be so often, so a large-ish buffer battery with a small 20-30W panel should be sufficient for this.

Later, when I can afford it, I do intend to make a system with larger batteries, this time LiFePO4 type batteries. This will need larger solar panels. 

This may become a life long project. I suspect that I cannot become fully off-grid, but I would expect to be able to run some essenstials, like fridge/freezer and some light on solar. Heating is another matter. That may be beyond the limits of what I want to set up in the garden.