It does make sense to have a small inverter which powers only your LED or fluorescent lights, and if necessary a larger inverter for higher power loads.
A small (low power) inverter will use less power from the batteries when it is not producing output and can use smaller wiring to the batteries.
One thing that you have correct about your plan is to convert all of your incandescent lighting to either LED, conventional fluorescent (T8 or T5 tubes), or compact fluorescent (CFL). That will save you a large amount of power even if you still distribute the energy at 120 or 240V AC.
You will have a much wider selection of lamps and fixtures.
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Very flawed logic, as 12 volt systems are very inefficient. You had an extreme problem with your panel wire being too small at 30 volts. At 12 volts the losses will increase 400% for a given power level. To overcome those losses means much larger more expensive wire must be used. Just for a very small 10 amp circuit at 12 volts in a house means looking at 10 mm2 or larger wiring only to carry a maximum of 120 watts. At 240 volts AC you can use a 10 amp circuit using 1 mm2 carrying up to 2400 watts.The Problem is, once the sun is down, The inverter runs down in just 2 hours. I am still trying to solve the ampere issues. However, I still wanted to go Greener by going LED way. I am an LED lover and have created many projects on Instructables website Including Aut0motive and AC powered LEDs, Table lamps and more.
Today I thought about running Low voltage 12V DC wires across the house so we can use LEDs directly without losses.
Another flaw in your logic is a T5 light source is more efficient than LED. Your real issue is your design logic is flawed, and not knowing what it really takes to do what you want. If you have commercial power available you do not need any solar to do what you want to do. All you need is a rectifier to charge batteries when you do have commercial power. Would be a lot less expensive and way more reliable.Leave a comment:
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12V DC wiring for LEDs around the house (for solar use)
Hello friends,
I live in India and we suffer about 8 hours of random power cuts over here. As A result i have invested a great deal of money in Solar power
My thread here-
http://www.solarpaneltalk.com/showth...solar-Amperage
The Problem is, once the sun is down, The inverter runs down in just 2 hours. I am still trying to solve the ampere issues. However, I still wanted to go Greener by going LED way. I am an LED lover and have created many projects on Instructables website Including Aut0motive and AC powered LEDs, Table lamps and more.
Today I thought about running Low voltage 12V DC wires across the house so we can use LEDs directly without losses. The Lights we use currently are 28W T5 or 11w CFLs connected to Inverter.
I am worried about how to run so many wire across the whole house (which has 5 Rooms, 4 baths, 2 halls and 1 Kitchen). A person suggested me to re-use some telephone cabling i have already installed. I have 4 CORES of telephone wire running and the junction board is just near the battery. I was thinking of Joining these wires to battery (Via appropriate fuse and cutouts) and hooking up 10~20 Watts of High brightness LED lights to the other end in each room.
Feasible?
Inspiration-
wire-
24AWG 4 core or 8 core (I could group cores in parallel)
Battery-
165 AH 12v DC (Planning to upgrade)
Solar energy- trial and error with About 500~1000w (brought 250w x 4 panels)
Lights-
Self made and designed 12V DC leds using 1w Luxeon High power LEDs or 5050 SMDs mounted on appropriate resistors/Drivers and heatsinks.
Running time- About 3 hours for hall,1 Hour for kitchen, Half hour for rooms, few minutes for bath.
Lumen requirements-
5k lumen for hall (only 1 hall is used at a time)
2k~3K Lumens for Rooms
4k Lumens for Kitchen
1k Lumens for bath
random 1k lumens total for Outdoor,terrace, security and night lamps.
Inverter- 800VA , 12v Pure sinewave inverter. (planning upgrade)
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