Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all,


This is a 120V/92W, 1110GPH submersible pump that I hope to use in a 275 Gallon IBC Tote.

Originally I wanted to make the entire system solar powered but this is a start just to understand the basic mechanics or Aquaponics.

I have a timer that I will plug the pump into so the pump turns on every 15 mins and that timer is what I want to plug into the solar panel.


Do I need a battery, charge controller, and the works? Or can I just get a solar panel and connect it directly to the timer?

What size solar panel do I need to power this system?



I've tried using a general solar calculator to find the right size but.. I'm thinking I am very off.

So any and all input/help is greatly appreciated!!


- Javaloach




For specific information,

Timer : FD60-U1 [Hydrofarm horticulture products]
http://www.electric.co.th/product/892.gif

Pump : AAPW1000 [Active Aqua Submersible pump 1110GPH]
http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/ ... GB0UVQ.jpg

You'd be better off getting a pump made to run on 12V
If you want the pump running at night or cloudy days, you will need a battery bank and charge controller. Otherwise, you may want to have another power source on standby.

Looking forward to reading these comments!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You will need a battery, otherwise the pump will only run when there is sunlight and only when there is bright sunlight. You will need a small inverter(110v from 12v) to power the pump and you will need a charge controller to control the charging of the 12v battery, for this you could go a cheap controller that uses PWM or a more expensive one that uses MPPT which is about 20% more efficient but they are about 3-4X the price, anything under $100 is more than likely a fake MPPT, PWM with a sticker on it.

as for panel capacity that depends on your location a bit, i assume texas is quite sunny and hot? and how long the pump is planned to be used in a 24hr period, you say it will turn on every 15mins but for how long?

Hi All,

I have the same question as Javaloach, I live in the Philippines and here we worry about warm weathers shorting us out in power, I have a very small system of 268 gallons with kois and still experimenting with it. I am just using an 18 watt power head and my FT as sump and I have barrels atop the FT going to GB and GB to FT.

Since this still experimental I would like to know about your say on Solar panel to be used on my small system.


system:

300 gallon tank
1x10 gallon swirl filter
1x10 gallon matt filter
2x25 gallon GB
PUMP:
420gallons/hr powerhead pumping through 3ft 20mm running at 18 watts

Aerator:
hailea ACO-308 --- 55L/Hr 30W

Ammonia: 0ppm
nitrite: .2ppm
nitrate: .25ppm
PH: 7

Plug it into your 110V power.... Unless you are a very long way away from mains power, judging by your comments, you are FAR better off just running it normally on mains.

For tasmania where i live it works out roughly like this:

Assuming 24/7 operation - 38w
24 x .038 = .912kw/h per day
Solar panels give you roughly 3.5x their power where i live(my 1kw system gives me 3.7kw/h a day)
so divide 912/3.5 = 260W - maybe 2 150w panels one facing more morning sun, one facing afternoon sun.

As for battery 38/12 = 3.16amps x 24hrs = 76amp hours so you would need about 150ah to account for nighttime and potentially cloudy days etc. You can either upsize your solar or your batteries to account for this, personal preferance but batteries is probably most sensible.

Hi Javaloach

I have a
- 1000W pannels,
- 2 X 12V 200AH batteries
- charge controller
- inverter


This provides power to a 200W pump.


It only runs the pumps about 65% of the time.


This should give you an idea of the size of the system you will need!

As EB says, if you're going to run a pump you are better off just using mains power.

But...

If you go constant flood, (see BYAP system trial thread (can someone link to it please, I couldnt find it (my younger brother is leaving the country tomorrow for ever and it's 9am and still a little sleep deprived and hazy))) you will find that you can run a perfectly useful system by letting water flow through a growbed like a stream.

If you have a fishtank and growbed at exactly the same level, you can move a lot of water through the system without having to push water uphill.

What all this means is that you can shift water with an air lift for a very low energy budget.

An air lift uses air bubbles in a tube to create directional flow of water by employing the fact that bubbles rice in a tube, and take water with them as they rise. You put something that makes bubbles in the deepest part of your fishtank, inside a tube, and make it so any water that moves up the tube with the bubbles dumps to your growbed.

The downside to an airlift is that they cant really move water higher that the water level very well. You can get a little lift, but not enough to run a conventional system.

But if you run a growbed constant flood, and you have a fishtank at the same level, you can easily move enough water from the fishtank to the growbed using perhaps as little as 10% of the wattage required to run a normal pump.

My brain is too addled to link to the stuff, but do a search for "low energy system", "ultra low energy" and "LEAP" (Low Energy AquaPonics)

Lowering the required amount of energy to run a system makes it viable to run a system as off grid solar.

How is it not viable now? Energy savings that you talk about for most of your reply apply just as much to mains power as it does to solar, it does not make one nor the other any more competitive. Being energy efficient is something we should all strive for regardless of where our power is coming from.

If anything the more power you use the more viable solar becomes because it dilutes the cost of things like inverters, solar controllers and batteries which get cheaper as you scale up.

Solar also has the advantage of taking away the need for backup for the unreliable grid power, not saying that solar is infallible but its certainly a lot more under your own control.

I was wondering how I can set my system up with Solar power as back power since we run into 2-6 hour blackouts from where im at. This only happens 2 months in every year.

I would suggest you get a battery charger, some batteries, an inverter and an automatic switch which detects when the power goes off and switches over to the battery.

it is viable now

just go constant flood, and keep the fishtank/sump/growbeds at the same level, and use an airlift to shift the water.