Need Help with 135 Watt Solar Panel Ideas?

[gary350]

If YOU had 9 of these solar panels with no controllers what would you do with them?

I bought 9 solar panels at a discount price because they were returned because the controllers were bad. Panels are rated 12 VDC 15 watts each. The no load voltage is about 17 volts.

So far I have no good ideas that would be worth the effort. All 9 in series will light up a light bulb. All 9 in parallel connected to a 150 watt DC to AC inverter will light up a light bulb. That is about all it will do with no storage battery.

I am picking every ones brain. Need some ideas?

Notice the picture shows 3 panels and I have 9 panels.

 

[large_ghostman]

I would make a controller and get a deep cycle battery with a half decent inverter, 9 of those would run my 90' poly tunnel hydroponic system no problem. Use the battery when there is no light etc and use the panels to run what you can when the battery is fully charged, if the battery needs charging then switch over to battery power and use the panels to charge it. If that make sense??
I would love 9 of those

 

[nsaspook]

For panels that small you really don't need much of a charge controller for small gel cell batteries. You could make it or buy one for less than $20.
**broken link removed**

Those types panels (looks like Amorphous crystal) tend to lose their power capacity quickly if they stay hot for long periods of time so if you have a portable type application like camping they work well but it won't last long on a roof.

 

[large_ghostman]

No fear of them getting hot in the UK!! I am tempted to sell up alot of my equipment I dont use, I have seen a great diesel generator on ebay for £2,300. its an old lister 6 cylinder with 3 phase, apparently 91A per phase. The reason it interests me is because i have a cheap source of bio fuel, I could run the house and everything off that for pennies, it would also give me 3 phase power.
We never found a decent solution for 3 phase and up until now hadnt seen a decent cheap generator, I didnt have access or the knowledge to make good fuel cheaply. I might try and get some equipment listed over the next few days. We brought alot of the old farm machines up with us like a milling machine and lathe etc, its a shame them sitting there doing nothing.
**broken link removed**
some beast! I recently got a decent supply of animal fat and with a bit of messing about with acids and sodium hydroxide I can make a pretty mean Bio diesel. I get the fat from an abattoir for free , I just have to get it picked up. Not sure if i can raise enough in time but worth a shot

 

[audioguru]

Cheap diesel fuel? I was thinking about worn out deep frying oil from a fast food restaurant. Then I needed to look up "abattoir" in Google to see Slaughterhouse.
Yesterday I saw another (or the same?) Volkswagen diesel powered car smoking like crazy! It smelled like ordinary stinky diesel fuel was used, not fat.

 

[large_ghostman]

There is some pretty neat chemistry you can use to turn waste oil and fats into a fuel. Transeasterfication (sp?) anyway with solid fats you mainly go the acid route and with waste veg oil its better to go the methoxide route (Methaol and sodium hydroxide). The trick is to make sure you measure the iodine number and accurately titrate each batch. Properly made fuel burns alot better than fosil fuels and cleaner.
Its a shame that many make it to a poor quality, I make sure I wash it correctly and to be honest I actually enjoy making it, most the bio fuel sites are not that good. Its way more an american thing than UK and apparently they have access to good quality oil, the downside to that is most tend not to bother with chemical accuracy and dont worry too much about free fatty acids in the oil. Over here the main source is animal fats or heavily used oil, so you have be more careful.
Very few use old engine oil as a source but if you go that route you can vacuum distill it and take off just the fractions you want.
I have started to get a list of equipment together that I am selling, I will post on the forum and ebay. Would be good to have a lathe again

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

When we took our daughter to the open day at York University, one of the demos was of research been done to create diesel fuel from the remains of chip frying oil, AFTER it had already been processed to make diesel oil - so going a step further, and reclaiming even more.

Interestingly, the guy doing it was an actual dwarf, and the equipment was six feet high, so he had a step ladder to turn the taps

 

[sh.bilal001]

I am a final year student of electronics and telecommunication engineering. Please guide me about some advanced microcontroller/ arduino projects ideas.

 

[audioguru]

Here, cheap electricity and crude oil come out of the ground. So cars use gasoline and hardly anyone uses solar panels or a generator. Sometimes someone has a huge party in the park then they use a sound system powered from a car battery or a little Honda generator powered from gasoline.

 

[large_ghostman]

I think crude oil should be saved for plastics and things we cant make with other resources. oil also gives too much power to a limited number of nations, at the moment OPEC has the taps full on because they know they can put pressure on fracking ops.
The idea being they are trying to drive oil below the price its profitable to get from fracking, this gives them control and power. I read not so long ago that Saudi has around 30 years of decent oil left, they are already planning mass solar farms for the deserts to export electric, yes we will solve the energy problem without oil but what about the stuff we have to use for?
To me its ludicrous that we treat crude oil like gold and yet waste oil be it veg or used car oil is mostly treated as a waste product, in the uk it cost millions to get fat out the sewers, this could be avoided and turned into a decent cheap fuel. Oil will probably last my lifetime but hopefully I will one day have a family, its going to be really hard to look at my grandchildren and say yes we could have saved alot of the oil for you but we couldnt be bothered.
Maybe its an age thing I seriously dont know, maybe its just a me thing, but i look at waste and try to see a resource rather than something to be dumped into the ground or piled in a heap on foreign shore.
The north Pacific circle with a plastic bottle dump the size of the UK and 100' feet deep! No life lives it that huge area of ocean because light dosnt reach the surface. I didnt cause this it happened before I was old enough to talk, but even I feel guilt about the horrific things we have done. Look on google at the rivers of solid plastic in places Like Brazil, the Uk has shipped tons of waste plastics there and contributed to this. I just dont see how any sane human being can think its right to waste a resource and carry on as if these things dont matter. I am not having a go AG and I am sure when I am old my view may well change, but at the moment I see nothing but waste of resources and it makes me feel ashamed and sick that we live like this.
Supermarkets with packaging made of plastic we could easily do without, what exactly does it need to take before people realize we are not going to solve this with the magic of science or go live on another planet. You wouldnt S@@t in your house and use it like a skip and still there, and yet that is how we treat the planet we live on. I am all for technology and experimenting etc, I am in favor of nuclear power. But what I am against is just throwing away things we can use for everyone's benefit.

Nigel using oil like that is well cool, I am starting to have the other problem! I have to bend down to look at reaction vessels because the bench's here were dad height lol.
I am genuinely interested in peoples view on oil etc, I dont want to argue and I respect others have opinions that may differ from mine. But I would love to know how other people view some of the long term problems we face. One thing I will say is dont just say we have enough oil to last X years, that is not a valid argument because whatever X is it WILL run out at some point.

 

[tcmtech]

I have seen a great diesel generator on ebay for £2,300. its an old lister 6 cylinder with 3 phase, apparently 91A per phase. The reason it interests me is because i have a cheap source of bio fuel, I could run the house and everything off that for pennies, it would also give me 3 phase power.
We never found a decent solution for 3 phase and up until now hadnt seen a decent cheap generator,

Why bother with the generator if you only need three phase power unless you plan to run really large equipment?

If you didn't know this was here then you do now. https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/3-phase-converter-schematic-miller-system.100563/

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

But I would love to know how other people view some of the long term problems we face. One thing I will say is dont just say we have enough oil to last X years, that is not a valid argument because whatever X is it WILL run out at some point.

I would imagine that 'something' will happen in the future, the way technology is advancing means it's pretty well bound to, and there's an awful lot of money been spent on new energy sources (much by the oil companies, who would VERY much like something to replace oil revenues when oil runs out).

And who knows, it could be YOU!! that discovers it

I do think though that over the future oil is going to become less of a fuel (replaced by something else), and more of a source of plastics.

 

[large_ghostman]

Why bother with the generator if you only need three phase power s and me finding a way to help my mum make a livingunless you plan to run really large equipment?

If you didn't know this was here then you do now. https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/3-phase-converter-schematic-miller-system.100563/

some equipment is large but it also means we can go off grid as its big enough to run the house as well, I also have a free source of biofuel to run it on, what I dont want is to end up moving from here and that is going to mean cutting costs, making savings and me finding ways to help mum make a living.
I could do a great deal with a cheap source of electric.

 

[large_ghostman]

I would imagine that 'something' will happen in the future, the way technology is advancing means it's pretty well bound to, and there's an awful lot of money been spent on new energy sources (much by the oil companies, who would VERY much like something to replace oil revenues when oil runs out).

And who knows, it could be YOU!! that discovers it

I do think though that over the future oil is going to become less of a fuel (replaced by something else), and more of a source of plastics.

If I dont find a way it wont be through lack of trying!! I already have a bio methane plant (micro scale at the moment) that is more efficient than the commercial ones . I will keep plodding on and trying, I figure even if I play the numbers game eventually I might have a good idea

 

[tcmtech]

some equipment is large but it also means we can go off grid as its big enough to run the house as well, I also have a free source of biofuel to run it on,

Sounds like a fun goal but be aware that a diesel engine that size is likely going to burn 1 - 2 gallons of fuel an hour even with no load on it and that level of fuel consumption large volumes of fuel tend to disappear rather fast and trying to keep up with that sort of daily fuel consumption tend to get old and tiring even faster.

 

[audioguru]

Does a diesel generator engine have any air pollution controls? Black smoke exhaust?

 

[tcmtech]

Not the old good ones built before the EPA got their fingers in the stew.

Simple reliable and easy to work on. The way things should be.

 

[nsaspook]

Not the old good ones built before the EPA got their fingers in the stew.

Simple reliable and easy to work on. The way things should be.

We've got 3 1MW CAT generators in phase lock to the utility feed for total plant shutdown in a few days. They all have EPA ratings for emissions. So if you have the coin the EPA is not a problem.
https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/...eneration/diesel-generator-sets/18332039.html

Even better, I'm one of the guys who get to press the big RED buttons to kill the power to the equipment.

 

[large_ghostman]

Actually a decent biofuel dosnt give out as much emissions as normal fuel, If needed I can sort out emissions. 1-2 gallons an hour isnt as bad as I thought. I currently have 9 tons of fat to process but I have no idea how much fuel that is, I also have more coming Wednesday. The worst part is the rendering down

 

[large_ghostman]

I am unlikely to raise enough to get this one, but I will keep an eye out for cheap generators, just seemed a shame as it was cheap for the size. What kind of size generator to run a large house? We use around £8 of electric a day at the moment, obviously that will shoot up when I start to process oil