Spring is not so far away. The solar panel output has been quite good.
The batteries are almost full in the afternoon.
It is time to connect more radios to the system.
The following radios are now connected to solar power:
- The IC705, mostly running 10m at the moment, but with antennas (switched) covering 10-12-15-17-20-40-80m The dipole can also run 50MHz
- The HB-1B running 20-30-40-80 with the 30m long wire antenna
- The 10m FM monitor (Old CB radio modified for 10 FM)
- The IC703 running 10m, monitoring the 28.200 (International Beacon Project)
- The IC7300, probably going to run 10-6-4m - not on constantly.
- The 10m SSB capable hand held for FT8 monitoring
When the system has been expanded I expect to have some computing power using the solar system, so something like FT8 or WSPR/QRSS monitoring can be included. At the same time, some of the monitoring receivers should be with reduced power consumption. There is a lot to do, but as you see from previous posts, it is not *all* solar power related.
2 comments:
Great to read Jan. Certainly we have some longer sun at the day now. I'm looking around at a bigger solarpanel to see if I can power my radios from a big battery fed by this. I'm thinking of one panel of about 150W. Are you going to post some photos on your blog in time?
73, Bas
The picture I posted a while ago are the panels I use at the moment.
Those are two 130W panels in series, feeding about 38V into the charge regulator. Yes to a set of 2x 100Ah 12V LiFePO4 batteries for a total of 200Ah, about 2.4kWh when fully charged. I stopped using lead-acid (GEL) batteries about a year ago.
I have more panels in the "shed", so what I have to do is building some support structure solid enough to stay up in a hurricane. We shall see. Transporting long pieces of wood is not easy in a small car, and asI said before, mechanical work is not my strong point ;)
Yes, when I have done more I will post some more pictures.
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