Plenty of folks have solar PV experience, several guys run whole house systems

Tag : Wire Guide

Determine your mount, do you want a roof mount? Most likely.They make those you can buy, or you can fabricate your own, juststarting out go ahead and get the mount from the same place you buyyour panel. but make it accessible enough on the roof so that a fewtimes a year you can access it and adjust the angle relative to thesun. This is determined by your latitude, you can find maps onlinethat address this. Seat of the pants,this works just as good, oncea season (solstices and equinoxes, 4 times a year in other words)go out exactly at noon, adjust the panel so that itperpendicular/flat to the sun.

The panel itself will have a metal frame with a grounding holeindicated. You need to install a grounding rod at the shed base,big fun, you'll develop manly man muscles hammering that bad boyin. Here's a hint, dig a hole where you want the rod to go (afterfirst determining you are *not* going to hit a waterline or someother underground man made obstruction of course, common senserules there), soak that hole with a bucket of water (that gives youan idea on the size of the hole to dig, something that can take afew gallons and sit there and soak in) periodically for a coupledays before hammering in the rod. Man it makes it much easier.Where you buy the rod, they will have grounding wire and aconnector clamp. You'll need a nice maul to get it going, a normalhammer would be possible but I don't recommend it. alternatively afence post pounder, maybe you can borrow one. Lowes/ Home Despothave all of that. At the panel frame, just a good stout bolt withlockwashers and regular washers is adequate for the ground wire.For lead wire, welding cable you can buy off the roll by the footis good enough for your shed needs, and your run won't be that longanyway most likely. Conversely you can use exterior grade housewiring, again, by the foot. that is more resistant tosunlight/water/whatever. If you want or need by code conduit,again, cheap plastic pipe at the store and glue and a hacksaw andsome clamp mount action.

Next you need to run the raw output of your panel to a chargecontroller (those ship with wiring diagrams as well), then the feedfrom there will go to your battery. If you are using a smallishpanel it will nominally output 0VDC at night with no visible moonto around 17 (maybe higher) or so VDC at high noon on high summerday. The charge controller adjusts this, better quality onesmonitor the charge going to the battery and adjust as it is neededfor optimum charging, which is a three stage process of voltageregulation. It will shut itself off when the battery is full,indicated by the colored lights on the controller (some have alittle LCD panel with interesting little things to look at ;)). If you find yourself with extra juice potential (I bet you do)by early afternoon, lucky you, you can add an additional battery inparallel if you want that juice. I am a big fan of having lagerthan what you think you might need battery action, more and bigger.Makes them last longer.

For battery or batteries, now your choices get varied depending onneeds, but rule of thumb with batteries after all is said and doneand all the marketing BS is out of the way is you are buying leadby the pound. that's it. More lead, more stored juice. Yourcheapest solution is a normal 12 volt "trolling" motor battery theysell for boaters and fishermen. Those batteries are designed to runa trolling motor for hours, they should be sufficient for yourmodest lighting needs. You'll need ring connectors for your leadwires, attachment is straight up, positive and negative. Next stepup would be two 6VDC batteries, or golf cart batteries. Those getwired in series to give you your 12, then in turn are wired fromthe controller output, on one battery it is the negative, on theother it is the positive. the two others are connected battery tobattery, that is your series connection.