We’ve been experimenting with solar power for a few years measuring the differences between cloudy days and sunny days and comparing how much energy we actually get from a solar panel per day vs its rated maximum power. Manufacturers have an incentive to overestimate these numbers, so real world testing is always best. As it turns out, though, Thailand is actually a prettyy good place for solar energy.

So now that we got some land to play with, we are going to start trying it out in real situations. Today, we are trying to drive a water pump with this 2 panel 30W max per panel setup. The target it to test out bio filtering the natural pools of water on our land as an experimental step towards a naturally filtered pond.

This is the solar inverter/charger we just bought.

Here you can see the pump drawing 11.3A from the battery. Since it is a 60W rated pump, I’ll need to figure out why it is drawing 11A*12V ~= 132W of power. The inverter can’t be that inefficient, can it?

Here you can see the pump operating off of the solar setup. The next step is to determine how much of the power consumption is supplied by the PV panels and how much from the battery.