Thinking about trying to set up a small solar power system, ideally to remove an extension cord from the basement to the garage. Right now there’s a turtle pond out there being heated and filtered for 1.7kWh per day. I think that would be a lot for a battery to keep up with?
Solar update: the turtle stuff is not going to work, it needs too much continuous power.
New plan: size this only for our various power tool battery chargers and bicycle components. Start small with a 50W panel and DC-only load.
Later scale up to a larger battery and AC load. I think I can add battery in parallel instead of replacing it? I’m also not clear on how much loss to expect with an inverter + the e-bike battery charger. The math in this attached diagram is uncomfortably spherical.
Solar update: spent some money for the DC portion, starting with a 15Ah battery. Later when it’s time to connect the e-bike I’ll add an inverter and a second battery to connect in parallel. With the charger right there in the bike shed I might not deep cycle the battery quite so much.
Solar update: received the battery and charge controller, still waiting for the panel. Looking at the port on the controller marked "RS232" and wondering if I can connect this to an RPi for some kind of meaningful monitoring? Looks like it’s probably MODBUS output, and https://github.com/rosswarren/renogymodbus#rs232 says “Unfortunately the rs232 to USB serial cable has been discontinued by Renogy. It is possible to make your own”
Would it be enough to crimp an RJ11 onto a USB cable with the wires in the right order?
@migurski I don't see the specs but maybe, does it just match your model number? I don't think it sends 12V unless it's doing 5 -> 12 on the USB serial board?
@enobacon It doesn’t, my model number has discontinued their version of this cable. I might just buy it though, see what happens when I plug it into a sacrificial RPi.
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