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Autonomous Solar Power


In 2010 I constructed a simple autonomous solar power system comprising a poly-crystalline silicon solar panel of 60 Watt peak, a charge controller, a maintenance free 12V lead battery and a car power inverter for 230V/50Hz AC output.

The goal was not to save or earn money with it, since the parts were not so cheap and the amount of electrical power from such a small system is only suited to power my laptop. It  also charges the battery powered gadgets one has nowadays, like mobile phone and so on.

It was relatively simple to construct and still works fine after 8 years usage. The inverter is a bit noisy due to the cheap fan, but it stil works. I cleaned this fan once.

The photo shows the battery system when it was still testing, so the wires were a bit messy and improvised. This was altered after the initial test and holes were drilled to feed the cables indoors. Used cable is LappKabel ölflex 2,5 sq mm, weather proof.






The Kensington “Ultra Portable Power Inverter 150w” can deliver up to 120watts AC continuous, and has a USB connector for charging gadgets. The inverter has enough power to feed my 50Watt Weller soldering iron. I tried some quite “green” soldering work on a sunny day, and it works quite well. The inverter not suited for inductive loads, so will not power AC motors/fans and such well.

The battery is a pretty standard 12Volt 17AH maintenance free lead battery, the Conrad CP12170. In those days Lithium Ion or LiPo battery tech wasn’t yet available to mass market in higher capacity. It maybe still a bit challenging to get your hands on, therefor I just took this option though after 8 years of service I’m still happy with this  battery. Don’t feel the need to replace it yet, the capacity is still good enough to use the system in a dark evening.

The IVT SC10 charge controller is a quite a bit over dimensioned, since it is capable up to charging 10 amps, whilst the panel itself could deliver 4 Amps at most. But I think its always good to  be a bit on the safe end with these things, also to prolongue the lifetime.




Because of the relative short days, powering the laptop in winter isn’t really feasible. The discharge indicator on the battery controller wil light up red quite soon, after maybe an hour or less of usage. However, charging the mobile phone and such still works quite well in this darker time of year on this point of the globe.

Many people will use such a system on their camper-van or allotment garden shed roof, however I just installed it at home. When there is an outage, I will  have my own stash of power, and I gained experience in using solar panels. The panel was by far the most expensive component and nowadays probably would get more power in same form factor.

I don’t have the urge to update it yet, or maybe will get a mains connected system in the future. However our government has total crap policies for this, and don’t want solar owners to have any financial advantage. That’s why they quickly shovelled smart meters into all homes, before solar takes off in an a larger scale here in the Netherlands.

Those meters differentiate between expensive consumed and cheap(to them) produced power. The good-ol' Ferraris meters, backwards turning when producing, were deemed “too old-fashioned”. This was clearly influenced by larger energy lobbies. It is somewhat slowing down solar installations since  there is no guarantee one will keep the right to simply deduce the produced from the used amount after 2019/2020.


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