Cottage solar project

[Nupsy]

Hello. I need a bit of help with setting up solar system and i will try to give you an idea when i'm try'n to do.


I have this Cottage near the lake and i'm try'n to set the light, small fridge and TV so i can enjoy my time there.

Since its a project for now, this summer i'm looking to keep it as low on price for the system as i can. So if the fridge i got is 50L (smallest i can find) and about 6x6W LED lights + standard TV. Any idea what will i need, how many solar panels and battery's to make it all work

[Sunking]

You have to determine how much energy the fridge uses in a day and tell us the location and time of year use before anyone can help you. What I can tell you it will not be cheap.

[russ]

Look at the government Energy Star site for the fridge consumption - if you are buying be sure to get the "right" one.

[Nupsy]

says on the fridge:

Average power consumption 40 Watt

Current draw on 12V
5C inside, 20C outside approx. 0.7 Ah/h

location: Serbia, Europe and time, i plan to use it over the summer

[Sunking]

That will cost you around $5000 USD. Is that what you had in mind?

[Nupsy]

just panels? i got 2x tractor batteries that are ok. I know they are not good for solar power but for this year i think they will do. I foind charge controller on ebuy thats cheep (45$) and 1200w acdc inverter (50$). So if you can tell me what is good from this and list of components i will really need

[Mike90250]

I'll guess at 2KWh daily need. So, a quick assumption means you need to harvest about 4KWh total to allow for all sorts of system losses. A guess of 5 hours of sun = about 1Kw - 800W of panels optimumly mounted and aimed.

With this large of system you will want to use a MPPT Charge Controller

For the fridge motor, you want a pure sine wave inverter, or scale up the solar another 20% because of motor losses running on mod sine. (more heat generated in motor and fridge cooling loop, more power draw from battery bank)

And a 24 v system will be more forgiving, than wiring batteries in parallel.

12V @ 200ah = 2400watt hours, 1200 watt hours consumed = 50% discharge = short battery life
same results with 24V 100 ah - but if you go with 4, 6v golf cart batteries (6v, 200ah) that should give you several years on the batteries (wired in series for 24V).