Cabin Solar - How To -

[Chris]

(16 October 2012, 18:29)Skvez Wrote: Unfortunately you have made the very common blunder of assuming that you will get 70W out of a 70W solar panel.
Solar panels are rated under ideal circumstances. Ideal being equatorial sunlight, which we *never* get in the UK even on our brightest cloudless summer day.
A sunny cloudless day in winter in the UK (which lets be honest are pretty uncommon) will get you a lot less than 70W exactly how much less depends a bit on the technology of the solar panel.

On the tests I did back in 2011 I was getting about 12Wh *per day* from a 100W panel in December. Your calculations assume 280Wh from a 70W panel (or over 33 times more power than I measured in a real world environment)

People complain that I say Solar doesn't work, I don't, solar is great but you need to have realistic expectations of what it will provide, especially in Northern Climates in Winter when performance is very poor compared to ideal.

Thanks - now listen - Electronics scares people to the point where they will shy from Maths and even thinking about simple projects.
You do not have to worry yourself or even others about the Real world loss scenarios, as this clouds the the topic...
With Sunlight the odds are : - !!!!.
The point is realisation that you can create Voltage, even if it means jumping a car engine with cables to charge your system / using a wind Turbine, using a ceiling fan converted to a water turbine
In a survival scenario you will use whatever you can get and not give a plonk about Loss - You may not even have a meter to check -
- By the way - When you cook chips . . do you make sure the temperature of your chips are at an exact temperature so you can eat them ... Of course not . . .that is my point