I finally got around to putting a few pics of the solar panel and lighting in my powerless garage. Don't be fooled by the diminutive size of the outside PIR, the performance of this little floodlight is quite impressive. The panel is oversized to take into account a few additions I have planned for later. DSC01553 by rushforthk, on Flickr DSC01549 by rushforthk, on Flickr DSC01547 by rushforthk, on Flickr DSC01545 by rushforthk, on Flickr
I did think about vandals but (touch wood) I live in a reasonably safe area. By the way these panels don't need sunlight just daylight
What can you run off it ? Currently I have in mine a 5ft strip light 2 double sockets and a green house tubular heater wired to a thermostat Steve
I think total setup was about £350 including the battery. I did get the battery from another supplier. You could do it for about £250 if you had a smaller panel and just have a couple of lamps.
Looks good that mate, how much charge should that hold? Couple of hours or more? I know nothing about solar stuff but a friend has no power in his and gets fed up when dark so could be ideal
It depends on a few things. The place where you get the kit from should help, but it helps to know what you are going to run off it. For instance how many total Watts you will be using. But in short I have a 100 amp hr battery and using a very blunt conversion means I can run a 1 watt lamp for 100 hrs or use 10 Watts for 10 hrs. I currently have 6 lamps at 7 watt each that should give me over 2 hours of lighting but I left them on the other day (admittedly it was during the day so the battery would continue to charge) on purpose for over 3 hours and they were still going strong when I got back. There is a safety device built into the charge controller that is designed to turn the lights off should the battery get too low. The battery needs to be a leisure battery. Everything is 12 volt.
If you mean 240 volt drill then yes you could but you'd need a suitable inverter. Different equipment require different inverters. Pure sine wave inverters are best for electronics kit or kit contains electronics, the other inverter, modified sine wave, is suitable for other types of equipment but always check with the supplier of the inverter that it is suitable for your application. I normally use my battery drill.
is the garage away from the house or any power? great set up and impressive. Just thinking if it was a garage at the bottom of a garden running power to it (if possible) would be better? and what I did. But the Garage is only 30 ft from my house
