Finally Going Green

[Leslie]

A lot more has been going on at the 317537 residence than MP setups.




Here is a picture I took today is of my current going green setup.  Im running about 120 watts of true solar power on the roof and this enough to keep both bikes on the road during sunny weeks.

The old SLA's I purchased are no longer good enough for running a bike but still good enough to run in parallel solar charged to charge my pack,

So much pride comes with traveling on sun power.  This system is capable of supporting 2 x 2 amp chargers and a few lights I have around the home.  With another 40 watt panel on the roof may get me through a few cloudy days.  I can get 3 average charges from these

[Leslie]

Just did 18kms hard ride no pedals, used 5.6 ah. now charging from the sun charged SLA and rays from the roof.  Battery is still charging at 54v

If I used 5.6ah and I am using a 2 amp charger.  I should do it with 6ah from the charger.

About three hours it should take.  The SLA's on the solar panels are sitting at 12.68v

And the 300 watt solar panel DC to AC inverter fan is blowing just off cool air from its box.

[Leslie]

The charger must be using about 11 amps through the inverter.  I have six 24ah SLA's probably lucky to give 15ah at 1C.

So all up I may have a 90ah SLA block and I use 33 ah to charge an 18km hard run,  The 130 watt solar panels on a full SLA bank can provide 82% of the power needed to charge a single bike too.  The Solar panel charger can induct 8 amps @ 14v from the panels.

So every 2/3 days I need to use the mains outlet.  If we get no clouds we can see how many watts 130 watt panels gives to an ebike through the CA.

[Leslie]

Done and Solar batteries is still soakn up the rays at 13.15v.  Its late in the afternoon.  Im only getting 2 amps from the panels.  So thats not bad for my slab of lead.  

I just found another two old SLA's that are going onto my 6 connected in the picture.

[Leslie]

Ok here it is.  The final touches to an Ebike I do not want to alter in any way more.



The White wall tires add a nice touch.

I cleaned the frame with eucalyptus oil rag and baby wipes.  Baby wipes are no.1 for cleaning LCD screens too.

[Leslie]

The front light system.

A P7 in the middle 10 watts and two 3 watt side scouts.  We need a night shot of them next.



Two hose clamps interlocked made the best ever torch holder.  Nothing Ive used has been stonger than this.

I have a left thumb throttle and a GM "half hand modded" right hand twist throttle

[Cornelius]

Nice setup!

As you imply, the pride and satisfaction to ride a 100% solar charged bike has no end...
I also always charge my bike from my solar setup; 300W panels via a Steca pr2020 controller, into a Rolls S4000 series S530 bank (530Ah, 2x6V batteries) connected to a 1000W inverter.

It's nice to be able to squeeze some more juice out of some older batteries not useable for its primary function anymore.
But do you have a solar controller, or do you just manually monitor your sla's charge? 120W solar are more than enough to cook your sla's without a controller...

[Leslie]

I have a 10 amp PWM solar charger that seems to squeeze a few hundred milliamps out of the panels than they actually give straight onto terminals.


I use a Dick Smith 300 watt square wave inverter that has a low voltage and high current alarm and cut off.  It can run both 48v 2 amp and 36v 2.5 amp charger at the same time but not the 48v 5 amp charger.  If Im lucky I may get 500~700 watts off my panels over the whole day and a single ride can use between 240 to 400 watts.

Plus over the week I don't seem to pull the voltage down on the SLA's unless the clouds come out for two days.  But it may take two days to restore the SLA's to full voltage after cloudy weather.

So I am not 100% on green power.  Most weeks I am.  As I said another 40 watt panel and the 2 extra SLA just might seal the deal.

[Leslie]

Here is a night shot of the lights, hard to get a good shot to do it justice, but these are a good enough indication.

These lights here are running off the power from the pack.  So these lights too are using sun power.

[MonkeyMagic]

JESUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Les man that's crazy!!! And 20W too haha you are laughing in the face of any halogen user.

Fantastic work mate, creating a man made sun, powered from the sun and all -- hehe

 

[Sundsvall]

My likes on your bike

Solar charging
Halogen-killer lights
Interlocked hose clamps
White wall tyres

My wonders on your bike

Two throttles - Why?
10w P7 - Does these exist?
The motor, the battery and you, all over the rear wheel - Does it have any effect on the road manners?
Some pleated thing on the seat post - Does it contain a seat suspension?

Peter

[Leslie]

It is a little back heavy but we can relax riding at high speed.  It is a very heavy bike even without the motor and pack.  It's only a 15ah ping still in the box it came in, anyway they are pretty light.

If I lift the front wheel off the ground it seems to be easy to manage the bike back down.

http://www.seoulsemicon.com/en/product/prd/zpowerLEDp7.asp

The Seoul P7 is like 4 leds in one light.  Im running mine at 3.45v so it runs at about 9 watts, and the other two torches I have no idea what they are but they run better on the DC converter that they do on any AAA batteries.


Yeah thanks Peter I havent seen you here for some time.  Seeing your bike at least inspired me to clean my old one up.

I think more I will take a close look at the solar system.  With the CA with an evolving solar system at hand we can at least make some ground rules to get an entry level solar system up and running.

From doing this on and off for a few months now I could say a single pack 48v 12ah pack be adequately charged with a 2 amp ac wall charger hooked to a 150~200 watt DC to AC inverter.

I am going to do some load tests on the SLA pack that the inverter load has on the SLA bank so we can get a entry level size SLA bank.  I would guestimate between 50 ah to 100 ah SLA bank with at least an 80~100 watt panel could see the average solar enthusiast fortunate to live at good sunny locations get piratical use from using solar charging..

[Leslie]

JESUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Les man that's crazy!!! And 20W too haha you are laughing in the face of any halogen user.

Fantastic work mate, creating a man made sun, powered from the sun and all -- hehe

 

This conversion from light to re-conversion to light is a fascinating concept.

I also had some success powering peltier heat pumps with 12v panels to amplify solar heat through the peltier.  

One hand we have a large black solar heat collector and a peltier connected to it.  The whole point of peltiers is for cooling right.  But in this situation we can use it for heating.


The Peltier in normal config generates heat on one side of the module and the heat is taken away via a heat sink while the other side become frigid cold., But I purpose instead of cooling use the peltier for heat because thats what they do best, heat it up by solar radiation and cool the heat collector with solar panel powered peltier and transfer heat from the module hot side through to a water conduit.  In essence we gain the heat the peltier generates being powered by the solar panels and the pump effect is drawing heat from the black solar heat collector to the water too.  No energy is wasted if done with good engineering and the peltier can be run efficiently for the first time after its inception. Its uses could be good for pre-heating water before it enters a main tank.   And the designs purpose is to pum[p heat from a heat collector that may otherwise convect off any heating conduits used for preheating.  Focusing solar radiation and cooling the solar heat collector to accept more heat for transfer to the water.

The peltier substrate semiconductor could be incorporated in to a high surface are design fabricated inside the conduit water system.


Its similar to Peters work on the vertical wind turbines exciting water to a warm state before it enters a heating tank.  But solar idea IMO in my sunny area with heat may be non wind power alternative.

[Leslie]

The 3 amp peltier works well on a 40 watt panel and a small black heat collector almost had me boiling water. Much more thought needed to be put into how I set this up.

Like I am eyeing off a peltier 5 amp module for my next experiment and a better dish and heat transfer method..  The large modules will require more amps but they make more heat per volt as I think they have a lower internal resistance and lower working voltage..

[Leslie]

Here is the close look at where I store and distribute my solar juice.




The panel controller is a Sunsaver 10 amp flooded/lealed lead acid charger. I got all my solar gear and SLA's from the local Solar Hart store Dick Smith and Jaycar..  You remove a post joiner to select from flooded or sealed lead acid..

The Dick smith inverter, the first one failed upon connection at one time with no load so I returned it and they replaced if free  with a new one that seems to be better.

If I put a 48v 5 amp charger on it it makes a warning beep, if I plug 2 two amp chargers into it the cooling fan operates immediately how ever the inverter never gets close to what I would call hot.  Barely warm is a better description.

The square wave is safe with most pre-rectified before induction battery chargers, meaning most if not all standard E'bike chargers will not mind the output of this type of square wave AC power wave form.  Certainly all my chargers accept the 12v ones with a heavy power transformer work perfectly with this inverter.  The power transformer chargers make a 50hz buzz but I have still used them on this inverter.


Two wires also run off into the roof where there is a DIY 12v to 3.2v simple switcher to run white leds at their native voltages and a 12v rail for auto stuff, like lights and car stereo's.