Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello:

Has anyone sourced a small photovoltaic system in the US or internet store to run a small pump and airstone?

Thanks

Yes Joel at the BYAP shop has a system set up...
Could pose a question, and ask him.

How small?

I've actually made some little solar air bubblers myself, unfortunately they only work when the sun shines directly on them since there are no batteries involved.

Next step would be those little solar powered things you put on your car dashboard to keep your battery topped up, something like that might be ok to float charge a battery hooked to an inverter that only runs a small air pump when the mains power goes out but you would need some sort of switching for such a thing. Truth is, a battery backup should really have a good deep cycle battery of some sort and those usually require a better charger than what would be used on a normal car battery. Thing with a car battery, if you drain it way down a couple of times, it might never be very good again while a deep cycle battery is designed to survive deep discharge much better and give longer life.

Costco had some little solar backup panels last time I was there but I don't think they produced enough juice to do much more than charge a regular car battery and were fairly large and pricey so I didn't really look all that closely at them.

A search on the internet will probably produce lots of options but,
Off the top of my head, I would say look at Northern Tool for the solar panel kits if you want something that will do more than charge your cell phone. I think they have the kind of kits for anything from keeping your RV batteries charged on up to solar arrays that can keep a small bank of batteries charged and could run say 60 watts of pumping perhaps full time. For anything larger than that, you would probably be better off contacting a local solar contractor to install a large system that could not only run your pumps but perhaps also a few of your household power requirements like fridge and freezer etc.

I'm working on an integrated plan for the largish system I'm building right now. No time to write details.. maybe tonight.

I have searched DIY solar and found a number of links with free info on building my own PV panels as well as wiring info. builditsolar.com is a good source for links.

Excellent calculator here ( http://www.sunsoglobal.com/calculator.html# ) to figure out needs and basic components to be grid free.

Searching ebay for evergreen solar cells yields a number of good hits for the parts to build low budget panels.

Best panel building links on my home pc... on road now for a few more days.... can post later if interested.

My integrated system will have solar water heaters to collect/store heat in barrels boxed next to the insulated IBC fish tanks. Also, prefer a submersible/external pump to capture the heat in the tank in the winter while pulling it out of the tank in the summer...

anyway, hope that helps,

CB

My system consisted of 10, 45 watt panels (found used, cheap) two shurflow RV pumps (12volt) a charge controller and three 120 amp-hour 12 volt batteryies. That is backed up by grid power with an Iota charger set at 11.9 volts so that if battery power falls below 12 volts the grid will supply up to 15 amps. With the flood and drain systems cycling twice an hour did not need bubblers.
After running the system a few months and observing that the grid power was called for often during cloudy periods I added a 12 volt wind charger. Now I can leave the grid charger unplugged for days, even when cloudy. Usually when cloudy or hot I get wind.
My costs were solar panels.................$1200
wind genny...................700
Batterys.......................300
Chage control................150
grid charger..................120
RV pumps.....................200
wiring fuses etc.............200
total..........................$2870

Is it worth it? It was a lot of work but I get to many power failures to ignor. You could go cheaper and use a smaller system just for back up to grid power. Which will require generator back up for lengthy outages. I could go off grid entirely with this system.