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diy solar

200 watt solar and battery system

magik20

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Joined
Jul 12, 2022
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Have a small wireless radio setup that requires less than 200 watts that needs to run 24x7.

The system can be mounted to the pole (it's a concrete steel pole) however it doesnt have any power to the pole (hence needing solar).

Any recommendations for a system?
 
First thing is to whip out the calculator and do a power audit (link in the resources section). The power audit is going to tell you 3 important things:

1: What size inverter (if needed) will you need to power your equipment?
2: How big the battery bank needs to be to provide power for $Number of days?
3: How much solar power will you need to recharge those batteries in winter when the sun doesn't want to play nicely?

Once you have all that info THEN you can start looking at what parts to get.

So, napkin math time here:

You have a 200w system running for 24 hours that's 4800wh of power Per Day.

As a rule of thumb most people plan for 3 days of krappy weather, so that's 14.4Kwh of battery.

Are you running this all from DC or is there an inverter involved? If there is an inverter and power supply involved, add another 15% to your Wh measurements. If you can go straight from DC to DC then that's going to be the most efficient way to go.

If you roll with the average of 4 hours of good sun a day, you're looking at 1200w of panel to charge every day, 3600w of panels to top up a 3-day supply of battery.

Can it be done? Yes. Will it be cheap? No.
 
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