Has anyone setup any solar or solar and wind powered Canopy POPs? If you have, please post some pictures and a how-to if you have one.
I’ve found a great site for my next POP, but I can’t get any power there easily.
I have not run a solar powered PoP but have been running a solar powered canopy repeater for couple of years. I have a backhaul slave and an AP only and I dont even have a switch between them. They are connected with a cross over cable.
I am using 150 watt solar panel which is a 24VDC panel and I have 200AH of battery capacity@24V. I have a steca PR3030 charge controller and a custom built distribution box which is nothing but 8 power sockets with a 1 amp fuses in each socket.
I usually have 4 hours of peak sunlight, and another 4 hours of slanting sunlight on the panels. It works when it gets sunny, when it doesn’t get enough sun, I have a person who fires up the generator and charges the batteries.
Last time I checked the backhaul, the uptime was 40 days.
Wish I could add more panels and batteries but money is the limitation and as I would be adding more equipments I would need to add more panels and batteries. I am thinking of investing on grid power than on panels.
I have a very simular setup:
2 x 150 watt 12 volt panels (configured for 150watts at 24 volts)
4 x 6 volt golf cart abtteries configured for 24 volts.
1 x Charge controller, I cant remember the brand but looks almost identical to PR3030
This all runs a 2.4 backhaul, a 5.7 AP, and a cheap linksys switch I modified to run on 24 volts… I could just use a crossover cable but I had to split a connection for a freebie customer at the site.
We have a lot of sunlight in Arizona and we have never had an issue with power. I couldn’t even tell you how low the batteries get because they are still above “float voltage” by dawn.
Nice design - simple
dsginc,
I guess you have 300 watts of panel power which would give you around 10 ampere@24 V.
300 watts of Panel and 300 AH of battery capacity@24 V should be enough to power 2 canopy radios if there is plenty of sunlight without having to worry about downtime due to power failure.
Do you ever have 7 days of cloud? We sometimes have 7-8 days of cloud, its top of a 1600 metre mountain during monsoon, we have no other way except for generator.
Sorry… I am mistaken… I am running about 150 watts total, so my panels must be around 75 watts each. I still have plent of power for the setup I mentioned. In your case you may want to go with 300 watts and more batteries. Even with clouds you might have enough to run if you go with 300 watt panels.
Also, I didn’t fully answer your question. We have a lot of sun and there are hardly ever clouds here. I could help you do the calculations of what you would need for panels and batteries to last 7 days, but we would have to know the amount current draw first. Exactly how many, and what type of devices are you running?