has anyone tried using solar power on a tower site?
Power or not to power?? That is the question.
It’s not hard to setup. Maintenance can be tough if you made make any shortcuts in setup!
1. Make your battery space large enough to work in (Even in wind or ice storms!)
2. Over-engineer your battery (reserve) capacity and your solar array. Use an on-line solar calculator which combines your “sunlight hours”, battery capacity, and panel size to give you a number of panels for your area. And then round up, not down.
3. Use fuses. It would suck to have your equipment burn down because of a single short.
4. If there is any wind at all, use the strongest, sturdiest solar panel mounting hardware you can get.
5. Use a good solar charge controller and proper batteries. If you use flooded batteries, plan on topping them off with distilled water 2 or 3 times a year. If you use sealed batteries, plan on replacing them once every 1-3 years (depending on how much you spend on them)
I use a 24v array pulling juice directly from 12v series of batteries, for instance. I originally expected to power the whole system with 24v but the 24v panel charging side exceeded 35v a few times during the summer and burnt out an SM at one point. So I moved the canopy equipment from the ‘load’ side of the solar charge controller direct to a 12v section of the battery array (two 6v batteries in series) and now the charging controller just turns on and off power from the solar array to the batteries.
We made the mistake of using a mid-grade solar panel mount which failed 1.5 yrs later under wind load.
in my mind you have to do a blended alternitive energy project.
i went through the growing pains of just solar and got burnt the first year whe n we went to -35 c and the clouds came in and then no sun.
i then installed two 750 w wind gennies into the mix with a good charge controller and we are rocking right along.
i agree with the comment about over engeneering the battery’s and making the mounts more beefier than you would first think.
wind is a power full medium and once any ossilation starts then damage is the only outcome…
Can you share the manufacturer of the wind gens you are using?
i have been using the air x brand for several years now.
with good sucsess…