OMG i need help please

[k3sphone]

Hi
I am trying to set up a solar powered system to power a heated water bucket for my horse. Heres what i have:
-Solar Panel NEW(i dont have it right here but its the kind you set up for a motor home to power small appliances)
-Deep cycle boat battery USED (which started full)
-Heated water bucket NEW (200 watt)...also has thermostat so will only draw power when temp drops(which is often up here...just finished a cold snap of -25)
-Inverter NEW (have the 750 watt one in hopes i can get this to work and set up two buckets eventually)

Panel is on side of horse shelter(facing South...this is what i was told to do up here in Northern BC)
Panel connects to battery with aligator clips(think thats what they are called), inverter connects to battery(again aligator clips), bucket plugged into inverter(well, power cord since its all on roof of shelter to keep naughty ponies out of it).

When i originally set it all up everything ran great, power to bucket was good, battery showed full, panel seemed to be working. Over night(the first night) it died sometime, water froze and no more juice to bucket. Now, it seems that the panel i got should be big enough to keep battery topped up to run this bucket especially since it wont run all the time. I'm really hoping to find someway to get this to work. I'm sorry if this is long but hoping to get all the details out there so someone can figure this out for me.

Thanks in advance for the help
Kat

[Naptown]

The best solution I can offer is a long extension cord plugged into the house or barn.

That is unless you have many thousands of dollars to spend. (not a joke in the least)

[k3sphone]

i'd love to do that but im at a city owned facility and the cheap bastards wont let us. really? thousands? to run a 200 watt bucket?

[Naptown]

worst case and the bucket needs heat for say 12 hours to keep it ice free
200 x12 = 2400 watt hours
Since you never want to discharge your batteries and allow for a cloudy day you need 2400 watt hours x 5 or 12000 watt hours of battery
this needs to be a 48 volt system so 12000 / 48 = a 250 AH battery bank or roughly 8 6V golf cart batteries in series at 250 AH rating Actually more like 300 to account for the extreme cold and you should use AGM batteries as they perform better in the extreme cold.
now comes the panels
you will need to replace about 120% of what you draw
So you will need to generate about 3000 watt hours a day
Now up in the great white north you only get about 2 hours at best of sun that is usable per day
so this means 1500 watts of panels and a 45A Mppt charge controller.

Panels will run about $1 per watt =1500
Charge controller about $475.00
Inverter $500
Batteries about $3200 + shipping. This is a Concorde AGM battery
Miscellaneous racking wires etc $600.00

Offer to pay for the electricity.
Or threaten to sue if your horse dies because of frozen water.
Or move to a stable that allows you to plug in

[GridGrants]

i'd love to do that but im at a city owned facility and the cheap bastards wont let us. really? thousands? to run a 200 watt bucket?

Many people confuse power (watts) and energy (watt-hours). It isn't the "watts" that are relevant. On the generation side, you need to know how many watt-hours you are generating. Many motorhome panels are only 60W or 120W panels. Your location might only get 3 peak hours of sunshine a day in the winter. Your generation might only be 180Wh to 360 Wh. You will not get the rated power so that might knock you down to 150Wh to 300Wh.

Now you are using a battery which is storing this as amp-hours. You lose more energy in the conversion, but we need to look at the load side. Your bucket is 200W, but we need to know how many amps it is draining from the battery. Suffice it to say that anything with a heating element like your bucket can draw a healthy amount of amps from the battery. How long it needs to be on throughout the night gives you a total for amp-hours (Ah). It doesn't surprise me that your panel could not charge a battery sufficiently to keep your bucket operating for very long.

You may benefit from a site inspection where a professional could help you size a proper system, but as was suggested... what you want to do is probably not as cheap as you think.

[k3sphone]

Well...****
Obviously, you all are much smarter than me. I was so hopeful to make this work. And it's been a long battle with the city. Lol, we don't usually sue up here. I was just really hoping we could make this work somehow thanks for the lesson in solar, you opened my eyes and I appreciate the time from everyone
Cheers
Kat.

[thastinger]

200 continuous watts is a tremendous load to try to run from off-grid PV. As you have figured out by now, you have a terrible situation with low sun hours and a high demand load, coupled with trying to keep your batteries healthy in those temps. Solar is not what you want in this case.

There may be other ways though, such as burying the water trough and using a water circulation pump to keep the top from freezing, or a fresnal lens shining onto a glass water container? or a black water trough to absorb as much heat as possible. If you could get your load down to a 10W circulation pump then you would be in business and passively heat the water in black tubing etc....just kicking around ideas.