Well, that's what my long time friend has running his house on his 150 acre property at
Venus Bay.
780 watts @ 24 volts. Big arsed weapon batteries, computer controlled stuff, and
well, just waaay cool...........
I fabricated the aluminium heat-sinks for the bridged diodes, and placed it all in an IP 56 box for him.
All in all, a good system, runs the small house quite
well.
Whilst over there, I spied his new english wind generator, still in it's box.0 Quite a very heavy unit, as in it's construction. They use these very same units along the north polar regions, and they have proved themselves over the last 20 or so years. A bit Heath Robinson it it's construction, but that is why it's good, because it's VERY robust.
I asked my friend why he needed this wind generator.
Apparently, as good as 780 watts sounds, if there is cloud cover, he is only able to get maybe 3 amps charge!
So, solar is good, and it does work, but even a 780 watt system, can have it's downfall on successive overcast days.
The wind generator is also fraught with it's own inherent problems. It must always be on load, which necessitates a resistor heat bank to be inline when battery charge is sufficient. Seems nothing is quite simple.
Still, when we were over there just recently, we bought both of our fridges, and ran them exclusively on his system. This was to see wether he would opt to upgrade to electric fridges, or renew his gas fridges. Seems like electric is the go...
I thought I would post this, because there is a lot of interest, and discussion on the merits of solar cells whilst camping.
If I had my way, and I was a fridge mechanic, or whatever they are, I would design & construct a fridge that runs on my car battery, like a Waeco - Engel, like a compressor fridge. When we stop for a day or so, I would then use gas, so the fridge would need to have both operating systems inherent. I don't think it would be that hard to do, surely, and it would give us the BEST of both worlds, not like the 3 way units we have now, but way better.
Now..... L E D lights. I bought a 90 cluster unit a couple of months ago, from a camping store. It hasn't had that much use. Some rows of the LEDs now don't work :(.
Still, you have to try......
I wont be renewing it, I will buy another fluro instead.
Okay, that's all folks....
Wolfie