Portable Solar Generator - The Solartron!

[CovertRunning]

Ok this is an earlier build but one that's kinda cool and useful.









Essentially I bought a battery box off Ebay.

Stuck a small leisure battery in it.
Wired in a voltage meter and solar panel onto the plastic lid.

The solar panel being bolted on to a small wooden board that went onto the lid.
Finally on top of the PSG I stuck an inverter.

All portable and very handy for jumpstarting cars, electrical testing.

[Bjm]

cool mate

[Scythe13]

Is that a trickle charger for a normal car battery, or is it a different style of solar panel?

[uks]

We made something like this for the chicken house so the hens have a longer period of light during the winter and keep laying.

[CovertRunning]

(19 November 2012, 10:06)Scythe13 Wrote: Is that a trickle charger for a normal car battery, or is it a different style of solar panel?

Kind-of inbetween.
It's somewhat faster than a trickle-charger...

[Skvez]

Important questions are:
What was the laptop doing? If it's stopped working and stopped spinning the HDD then its consumption is much smaller to running hard.
A little simple maths could answer how long the battery will last.

The more interesting question is how many days does it take the solar panel to charge the battery up again?

[CovertRunning]

(19 November 2012, 18:51)Skvez Wrote: Important questions are:
What was the laptop doing? If it's stopped working and stopped spinning the HDD then its consumption is much smaller to running hard.
A little simple maths could answer how long the battery will last.

The more interesting question is how many days does it take the solar panel to charge the battery up again?

Depends on how sunny it is