PV Gap

Tracy Said:

How many of my electronics can a basic solar panel power?

We Answered:

I'll guess that you need 500 watts of power for the TV.

6 hours is 500 x 6 = 3000 watt hours of energy.

A large marine lead acid battery (about $300 each) will store about 1000 watt-hours of energy (rated at 100 amp hours), so you will need 3 of these. And you will need a 500 watt inverter.

panels come in all sizes from a fraction of a watt to a thousand watts. So I can't tell you how many, just the total wattage.

Count on 30% loss at least, 10% each from the inverter, losses in the battery, and the charge controller. You can add that in at the end.

So you need solar cells of enough capacity to deliver 3000 watt hours. Now you need to know how quickly you want to charge the batteries. If you want to charge them in 3 hours, then you need:
3000 watt hours / 3 hours = 1000 watts of capacity in the solar panels.

But depending on where you live, you may get only half the rated power from an array, so to be safe, you need perhaps 2000 watts of capacity, or stay with 1000 watts but be aware it may take a lot more than 3 hours to charge the battery.

You need a charge controller to control the charge into the batteries.


hope this helps. If not contact me.

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