Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Solar pond aeration system

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Solar pond aeration system

    Hello everyone. I am a new homeowner in northeast Wisconsin and am fortunate enough to have a pond on my property!

    I am hoping to build/buy an aeration system down by the pond. I have been doing some research and think I am going to make an attempt at using a solar panel to charge two 12v batteries with an inverter to run the AC pump.

    My issue is, I would like to use the solar panel to run the pump during the day as well as charge the batteries, and use the batteries at night, I am just unsure of how I can make that happen automatically without over/under charging. I travel for work and am gone weeks at a time, so it would have to be an automated system on a timer. Below is a link on the kit I will probably end up buying/building, but they do not offer an option to add in batteries.

    Any help is greatly appreciated.

    Thanks,

    Mitch

  • #2
    Skip the inverter and you will have an excellent pond set up. Depending on the size of the pond, select a 12 or preferably a 24 volt pump. 2X 12volt batteries or 4X6 volt. and an appropriately sized charge controller and solar panels. Your system will have about 8 hours to charge the batteries wile also running the pump, then 16 hours completely on batteries. So you will need to do some basic math. If you design the system to run 24 hours, some evenings after cloudy days This system will shut down when batteries reach 50%. I would not oversize a pond system since mosquitos can not breed during a few hours of lapse of aeration. If you live in an area that is often cloudy, then consider 30 to 50% oversize. Fleabay has a multitude of 24 volt pump options. Make sure you use a good quality charge controller, redundant fusing and heavy gauge wiring. Don't skimp.
    4X Suniva 250 watt, 8X t-105, OB Fx80, dc4812vrf

    Comment


    • #3
      It can be done, but can you afford it?

      You first havee to determine exactly how many watt hours the aerator will use and what you want to use at night. Since you are in a place that has two seasons, 4th of July and winter, it is going to demand a very large solar panel, and very expensive AGM batteries. One cloudy day and you will have to shut down and do without and wait for the sun to fully recharge your battery. Get it wrong and the lesson will be painfully expensive destroying a very expensive set of batteries. You kind of got to get use to the pain because you wil be replacing a very expensive set of batteries every 2 or 3 years or less.

      DON"T DO ANYTHING until you run the numbers. Most likely when you discover how much it really cost, you will quickly realize it is a lot less expensive and easier to just run an AC line down there and call it done.
      MSEE, PE

      Comment

      Working...
      X