edamame
10 W
Hey y'all,
I wanted to make a quick post for anyone wanting to run their bikes on solar power only. I built my A2B Metro a few months ago with 72V power and wanted to utilize a 135W Kyocera solar panel I had for charging my R/C batteries. The setup cost me around $1000 so it wasn't cheap but I don't use any grid power for commuting to work every day which is just over 9 miles per day. Please feel free to ask any questions. (I have since switched to a 24V garage system with a damaged but functional 235W Schott panel that given to me by my solar installer.)
Here is a shot of the whole system showing the panel on my new garage roof. I am in the process of having a 6.5kw grid tied array installed on my house roof but I wanted to run the bike off grid. As soon as the grid tied sytem is done I will move the Kyocera panel over there and try to run all of my office equipment on that panel as well. (The Kyocera panel now runs just my office equipment.) The bike uses 300wh/day and the office uses maybe 450wh/day. My office devices use the following on 12VDC:
Computer using M4-ATX power supply 25w
Dell 2340M monitor 15w (very nice quality)
Altec Lansing USB powered speakers .5w
AT&T cordless phone .9w (8vdc running with old car phone charger)
Logitech mouse charger 3w (8vdc running with old car phone charger)
Netgear N600 wireless router 6w
Nokia cell phone charger 3w while charging
I picked all equipment based on being able to run on 12vdc. I want to maximize the use of this 135w panel. This is all for my learning more about managing loads.
Here is a look at the bike at the charging station. I have a Morningstar Sunsaver MPPT charge controller mounted on an aluminum plate on the left. This gets power from the solar panel. It is pretty efficient and I've seen up to 121W peak charging from my 135W panel (with an 80-100 watt average in good summer sun). In the middle on the ground is the iCharger 3010B which feeds both of my stock A2B 10S battery packs in parallel (I've recently switched to using 12AH of RC Lipos). I try to charge in the daytime when the solar resource is greatest and the charge controller can pump out the juice. Finally, I have one big 100Ah Sears Diehard deep cycle battery with two smaller UPS batteries in parallel to store the solar power. I bought this battery since it was reasonably priced and locally available.
Here are the batteries I now use instead of the stock A2B ones:
Here's a pic of the bike next to it's big brother, our Nissan Leaf:
I wanted to make a quick post for anyone wanting to run their bikes on solar power only. I built my A2B Metro a few months ago with 72V power and wanted to utilize a 135W Kyocera solar panel I had for charging my R/C batteries. The setup cost me around $1000 so it wasn't cheap but I don't use any grid power for commuting to work every day which is just over 9 miles per day. Please feel free to ask any questions. (I have since switched to a 24V garage system with a damaged but functional 235W Schott panel that given to me by my solar installer.)
Here is a shot of the whole system showing the panel on my new garage roof. I am in the process of having a 6.5kw grid tied array installed on my house roof but I wanted to run the bike off grid. As soon as the grid tied sytem is done I will move the Kyocera panel over there and try to run all of my office equipment on that panel as well. (The Kyocera panel now runs just my office equipment.) The bike uses 300wh/day and the office uses maybe 450wh/day. My office devices use the following on 12VDC:
Computer using M4-ATX power supply 25w
Dell 2340M monitor 15w (very nice quality)
Altec Lansing USB powered speakers .5w
AT&T cordless phone .9w (8vdc running with old car phone charger)
Logitech mouse charger 3w (8vdc running with old car phone charger)
Netgear N600 wireless router 6w
Nokia cell phone charger 3w while charging
I picked all equipment based on being able to run on 12vdc. I want to maximize the use of this 135w panel. This is all for my learning more about managing loads.
Here is a look at the bike at the charging station. I have a Morningstar Sunsaver MPPT charge controller mounted on an aluminum plate on the left. This gets power from the solar panel. It is pretty efficient and I've seen up to 121W peak charging from my 135W panel (with an 80-100 watt average in good summer sun). In the middle on the ground is the iCharger 3010B which feeds both of my stock A2B 10S battery packs in parallel (I've recently switched to using 12AH of RC Lipos). I try to charge in the daytime when the solar resource is greatest and the charge controller can pump out the juice. Finally, I have one big 100Ah Sears Diehard deep cycle battery with two smaller UPS batteries in parallel to store the solar power. I bought this battery since it was reasonably priced and locally available.
Here are the batteries I now use instead of the stock A2B ones:
Here's a pic of the bike next to it's big brother, our Nissan Leaf: