Tuesday, August 2, 2022

I wonder how much of my house I could run off of a 12 volts solar panel system.

I'd bet a lot more of it than most people think.

The Big Three I use AC for are the refrigerator, the A/C and the furnace. Those likely ought to stay on AC power.

The TV, laptops and WiFi router might take a little doing but they can most likely be set up to run on some kind of 12 volt adapter. Looking at the laptop sower supply, it says this laptop runs off of 15.6 volts. A glance at TV power supplies says about 19 volts so I imagine there's a 12 volt adapter out there for a TV also. I have not looked yet. 

CPAP 12 volt adapters are out there also. I have run a CPAP off of an inverter a couple of times.

USB is USB and here are so many 12 volt to USB adapters out there that you can get them at any gas station and for about a buck or two in eBay. Twelve volt laptop adapters are also out there inexpensively.

It looks like other than the big three the rest of the place could probably easily be run on a 12 volt system. Maybe I can find a decent 12 volt refrigerator and/or a couple of 12 volt motors for the furnace and A/C. I suppose if I did that I would need a much larger battery bank and a lot more solar panels.

LED lighting would make things a little more practical. Back in the 80s I cruised a sailboat and ran it off of a 12 volt system fed by a solar panel. The running lights were incadescent and used a lot of juice so I had to be disciplined with them. Today with LEDs I could have easily run them all night.

While cruising I ALWAYS kept a radar reflector up on the mast and by night had a kerosene diopter lens lantern hanging on the aft stay after dark. It wasn't truly kosher by the Rules of the Road but it worked. If I saw anything the official running lights were turned on.

When one thinks about it, other than the Big Three a basic house doesn't really have a complex wiring system and really doesn't need a whole lot as far as things go. 

Much of a house is simply lighting and a 12 volt system running on LEDs could easily replace the standard AC system. Don't believe it? Look at all the switches and what they run. I'll bet about 90% of them are light switches. I can count only two downstairs that don't run lights. One runs a garbage disposal, the other runs bathroom fan.

I would imagine one would have to be a little more disciplined with lights, turning them off when you leave a room.

Still, it could easily be done with a reasonably small batery bank.

I'm going to mull this one over a bit and if I can do it and come out even close to on top I might give it a shot.

I know a guy that ran a lights for a cabin (and a couple of other things) off of a windmill made out of an old car's generator. This was back in the 80s.










To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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