Newbie
Joined: 28/05/2024
Location: United StatesPosts: 2
| Posted: 06:34am 28 May 2024 |
Greetings from the mountains of California, USA.
When my dad moved to the mountains 30 years ago and set up his own solar system with parts he cobbled from hither and yon, one of the things we did (later) was to set it up as a potential based system. It was composed of solar panels, a controller/regulator, a buck module, an inverter, and a battery bank. There was some switching I will get to in a moment, but basically a very simple system. I have been looking over sone of the stuff going on here, and you folks are way beyond me, but I am in the process of setting up solar on my own place at the moment, and have every intention of setting up a similar system. I also have a friend, Bob French, that I shared this basic idea with when he lived back east. He set it up on the small system he had at his cabin and was very, very, VERY happy with the results it gave him.
For those not familiar with a potential based system, here is a short video where I show how to run loads between they positives.
Runniung on the Potential Difference
All it does is take advantage of the fact that many electrical devices work simply because you send voltage and amperage through them. They don't care where it goes once it has passed on through. They don't "convert it to mechanical energy" as we have been taught. They wouldn't work this way if that was true. So you can send it through a load to ground where it dies the way most folks do with DC circuits, or send it to a lower potential positive to charge it. Your choice. Does ALL of the energy input THROUGH the load make it through and out the other side to charge the battery? NO IT DOES NOT. But you CAN extend run times with this kind of system, and when you are trying to make your charged up batteries last as long as possible, especially when they are the ONLY source of power other than the sun, it makes a lot of sense.
In the case of his solar system, we bucked down the output of the controller/regulator and sent it THROUGH his inverter and out the other side to the battery bank. The inverter ran while the battery bank charged, but MUCH of the energy that went through the inverter was recovered in the batteries and they charged up. They didn't charge quite as FAST as usual, but he was running his inverter the WHOLE TIME. At the end of the charge period there was a double pole double throw switch or two that hooked the inverter up the normal way to run off the batteries. Now later on, as things changed and improved, he was able to eliminate the buck module completely and control the output voltage with just the voltage controller, but I included it in the drawing because that's what we had at the beginning.
That's about it. I was hoping with all the great minds here that you guys might have enough experience with solar systems, charge controllers, inverters and buck modules to put together a really efficient system that I can take advantage of as I add solar to my place. You know, you do all the work and I reap all the rewards. Actually I am working on some stuff right now, but the folks here will probably put what I have done to shame.
