Solar Power

Portable Solar Power Systems


	Here are the latest updates on the solar power project.

One of our goals is to provide solar power to remote villages. There are only 3 big cities in Honduras and they have electricity, but outside those cities, electricity can be completely unavailable. Those with any experience with solar power are welcome to contact us and tell us your story. For now I have built a small solar system to test the feasibility of powering a small appliance, lights, a radio or in my case a notebook computer. Everything was easy to find and rather inexpensive when you consider how valuable it can be in a rural village.




		It was about 7 AM and the skies were cloudy. The solar panel was not in any kind of direct sun light and the measured voltage was 19.82. This tells me it should easily be able to charge a 12 volt battery.


	I started with a solar cell I bought at a Pep Boys Auto Parts store. This was packaged as a trickle charger for an RV. It generates 5 watts and is about 16” square. In the photo to the left, I placed it in the window, the back side is what you see.


	I stopped at an Electronics Supply store and found all kinds of 6 and 12 volt batteries. I took this one home. It is rated at 12 volts and 26 Amps.

I attached this Power Inverter between the battery and the computer. Not being an expert electrician and clearly seeing that the power supply on my Powerbook delivered 24.5 volts to the computer, I had this little feeling I would need to do what appears to be rather silly.

1) Start with a 12+ VDC current, generated by the solar cell

2) Use the solar cell to charge the 12 volt battery

3) Convert the 12 volts DC from the battery to 110 volts AC by the power inverter.

4) Plug the Powerbook’s power supply into the inverter and have the power supply once again, convert the 110 VAC into 24.4 VDC to power up the Laptop.


	As you can see from the photo, the Powerbook is alive and well. I will be posting my results in the next few days. If the results are positive, a village in a remote part of Honduras could have Internet access for their clinic. Naturally we’ll need portable satellite Internet access and that’s another project!