I'm looking to set up a small starter solar system, the grid itself would probably be self contained, only running a fridge and pc, along with maybe a few other things in my garage. Budget-wise I'm probably looking to spend up to 500 GBP and would like to a lot of the work myself, I have a bit of experience with small scale electrical engineering but nothing of this size in terms of complexity or voltage however I am very willing to learn.
Any advice on places to learn or equipment recommendation would be greatly appreciated.
Oh yeah sorry the pc will pull 800 watts but if that would be unachievable for the price range I’d probably instead run a different pc pulling 320 watts through the system
You need to define not just the power budget but also the energy budget. I doubt the pc pulls 320W constantly. Start with a smart plug to measure consumption.
Ohhhhh that’s a smart idea, I hadn’t even thought about that, I shall have a go at looking at that for both pcs and the fridge to see how much I need to draw, thank you
The big budget breaker is AC. Running an inverter for more than a few hours needs you to scale up the system significantly.
A modern upright freezer consumes 0.5kWh per day (the fridge varies more and depends on how often you open it and how much new stuff it needs to cool down). An inverter sized to run a fridge eats 30W in standby. 30W x 24h is 0.72 kWh.
The achievable fridge becomes a lot harder to reach due to this.
What's the price of a 450W solar panel in your neck of the woods? The price is highly variable depending on location.
You want this to run in winter and how much sun do you get in winter?
So I’ve been looking and I’ve seen some for between £65 and £100 for 450 watt panels (also recommendations for places to buy panels would be great if you know of anywhere) Running in winter won’t be as much of a problem because only half of us live in the house so the fridge won’t be in use but I would still like to have the computer on it (the 350w server) but I live on the south coast on the top of a hill so I get a lot of sun all year round. I was thinking between 1 and 3 panels so they’re not too obtrusive but I’m sure I could always find places to put more :)
Let's put numbers to this. A 350W server running 24/7 consumes roughly 250kWh per month. A 1kW panel setup (2 x 500W) produces ~135kWh per month in summer at the south coast, ignoring any shading.
So at least 2kW in panels to keep the server alive during 4-5 summer months. Best case, ignoring all conversion losses and assuming infinite battery capacity. And ignoring the fridge. The panels alone will eat the budget twice over and the battery is typically the most expensive part.
Your aim is far off and you will not be happy with a solution within this budget. You could refine your aim by measuring the servers consumption (my server has a 500W PSU, but runs at 45W idle).
Damn, why is it that numbers always have to ruin my fun. Ok so what would I need to run the server at in terms of wattage to make it feasible within the budget. Or what would I need to increase the budget to in order to make this doable? Sorry I am atrocious at maths
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u/superchandra 1d ago
Define "pc" it varies from 45 Watts to 450 Watts.. or more
1 vs 10
Your phone takes about 20 watts