Jul 22, 2017 · 1 min read
Some suggestions/corrections:
- a modern, european-sized fridge uses 200 Wh/day, so would fit your power budget perfectly.
- for about the same price you can get a regular 100 AH lead battery. Won’t like deep cycling as much, but with 100 AH, you won’t cycle that much, so it will last you a lot longer.
- solar panels also generate power when it’s cloudy, 10–25% of max output (or do they calculate this in ‘usuable maar
- ideally panels need to be angled ofc, but assuming you did this experiment recently it doesn’t matter that much (optimum angle in summer in san fran is 14% - though varying this would be pretty awesome for the kickstarter. Adding the battery to the roof-station would stop them from blowing away)
- Hooking up devices that use power during the day would also reduce battery cycling - eg the fridge or perhaps even a water heater, though ideally it should heat with low intensity
- for the kickstarter: multiple of these could connect and thus provide power for devices that require more than 1 can provide
- the kickstarter roofstation I just thought up ^ could also track the sun and thus increase efficiency
Resuming: somebody should do this kickstarter! (I would, but I’m busy with a startup that could/should fight climate change even more than this)