Three years ago, I participated on a solar forum, so I could learn about designing an off-grid solar power system for a cabin. Over about 6 months, I learned enough to identify lithium iron phosphate batteries as the best choice for my particular use. They are not cheap, but they have several advantages. Flooded lead acid was always the gold standard. In that 3 years, at least one company has come forth with a well regarded 100AH LIFePO4 battery, with built in protection circuitry and a 10 year warranty. Another company was trying to develop a salt-based battery that did not have great stats, and they went bankrupt. There are constant developments in the industry.
Thanks for another great video Dave. Your videos are among the best because of the attention to detail you give. You also provide us with your unbiased honest opinion. Please stay safe and healthy.
David ! So glad I found you !!! A lot of the younger guys on the web, don't cover the nitty gritty good stuff like you do ! I will be taking both the Technician and General exams soon. Ready for fun ! In the past month, bought an Emergency Weather H/C radio, a scanner, a set of FRS and just received a Yaesu FT-70DR ! In light of our world today, I am interested in solar and portable power. Your info here is exactly what I was thinking about doing ! I have built power supplies and tube amps, so it only strengthened my learning as they are all connected. Love your stuff, Curtis, w/o a call sign yet 🤗👍
Thank you Dave on your long term insight & support of solar energy! It is great to see that some folks have that insight to prepare for situations like now where we may need to eventually be 100% energy independent; with no need for gasoline, propane, etc. Generators do not work without go-juice! While gas is still plentiful - now... that could change in mere weeks if things get really, really bad! I.e. no workers at refineries, or truckers & truck stops go down! Our systems are far more fragile than we think or would like to believe.
Thanks for making these videos :) They help to keep me connected to ham radio until I can get my rig set up. I can finally afford my first radio rig (been a tech for almost 10 years and never used a radio...a shame I know). All studied up for my General, and then just as I'm about to go take the test I found no testing centers open in Ohio. LOL Oh well, so is life. Well, I'm just going to have to start studying for Extra I guess ;) Just received a Ten-Tec Century/21 today in the post which I am going to start using as my first radio to force me to stick to CW this time - tried learning it before but fell off it. It's a little frustrating at first, but I took your advice from a previous video and joined the SKCC (22039). Having the Facebook group is incredibly helpful in keeping me motivated to learn CW. I'm thinking of converting the small cabin my dad built on the property before I bought it when my mother and he retired to FL into a small shack. I'm thinking of going solar so this was great timing on the video as the weather gets warm! Really helps me wrap my mind around what I'm going to be looking at doing...it's going to take some research for sure! Anyway, just rambling. Going to start building my first dipole antenna this week and then once my antenna tuner arrives with my CW key I should be able to finally use my Tech privileges :) Your channel has been a big help in encouraging me to stick with amateur radio all these years (although my account is new. I wanted to finally chat with folks on TH-cam so I made a radio devoted channel so I don't bug my husband by filling up our shared channel with radio videos ;P ).
Dave all I have is a set of harbor freight panels. they are only have forty five watts and they are still in the box. I have four deep cycle batters I used to charge them with a marine forty watt power supply until I got my 7300 hundred and it would not work on the twenty watt astron that I picked up at garage sale. I have a five ninety that works fine on the twenty power supply.
Great video. I’ve been kinda-sorta moving toward some solar for the new shack, and this educated me far more than any other single video on the subject. Most people assume you already have a moderate level of knowledge, which I lack. Thanks for starting at the beginning.
I enjoy your work. I have been doing solar for my station for 3 - 4 years. I love it. I got some good ideas from your video. I will share a couple of my ideas. Amazon has a 20 Amp boost device for less than $20 which I use. Also I use a device that disconnects the load from the battery if the voltage drops below an adjustable level. As you know the battery can be damaged if drawn below a certain level. (If I remember, 11.9 volts for a AGM battery. I run other stuff like home automation and VPN servers. Too many grey days in a row can be a problem. Doesn’t happen very often but not fun if it happens. Anyway, keep up the good work.
You need a MPPT charge controller. It should be RF quiet. Most controller generate a lot of hash. I have 925 watts of panels with a 45 amp and a 30 amp MPPT controllers. 2 L16 370 AH batteries plus 2 6V 220 AH AGM batteries for the HF equipment.
I have a similar setup , but using lithium 18650 cells. 3x12v panels in series getting 36v max. My MPPT charge controller takes that and bucks it down to charge 20p7s 18650s giving a max output of 28v. I then use a 24 to 12 buck converter to take that down to 12-13v for the radios. The 18650 cells are all from old recycled laptop batteries and give just about 1kwh of power.
The caveat with any boost controller is that they may take your batteries to a 30-50% state of charge. While the radio will be happy, the battery will take internal damage and lose the number of charge cycles that a lower discharge would have given it.
Hi , currently going through your general class sessions . Would like your view about the xiegu G-90 as a QRP radio . I'm currently working to build a moble ham shack for E-COMS and field day and this video gave me some new insite on solar powering it . thx kI7ClJ
Great video and something I have considered for a long time but never acted on. Do you have any guidance or specifics on fuse speeds as in "reaction" time ampere ratings for balance of best protection vs reliability? Many thanks, great topic. 73' de K4WRF
I run solar now, but for the next upgrade (I currently have 4 38Ah batteries out of an old PBX battery system with. 160w panel and EPEver controller) have been toying with using 3 x 6v cells in series (probably with a second set in parallel depending on what capacity I can get) and then simply using a couple of 24v panels in series, and run the radios off the load port of the MPPT controller, set for 13.8v, which would always be doable as the batteries would float at around 18v.
interesting episode. I have been thinking of getting a solar panel and a battery to serve as a backup JUST IN CASE.. and also for perhaps some field day shortware adventure. Just worried about the noise levels on shortwave from solar panel regulators. have you experienced that or are they "silent" ?
in case u did not know the closed captions have given you a new name "ass Dave" u might check the closed caption on this video. I was at work and watching this video with the captions on an the sound off at 0:15
The panels with built-in inverters are designed to plug directly into your utility power. For ham station use, you want panels you can use to charge batteries.
Three years ago, I participated on a solar forum, so I could learn about designing an off-grid solar power system for a cabin. Over about 6 months, I learned enough to identify lithium iron phosphate batteries as the best choice for my particular use. They are not cheap, but they have several advantages. Flooded lead acid was always the gold standard. In that 3 years, at least one company has come forth with a well regarded 100AH LIFePO4 battery, with built in protection circuitry and a 10 year warranty. Another company was trying to develop a salt-based battery that did not have great stats, and they went bankrupt. There are constant developments in the industry.
Thanks for another great video Dave. Your videos are among the best because of the attention to detail you give. You also provide us with your unbiased honest opinion. Please stay safe and healthy.
David ! So glad I found you !!! A lot of the younger guys on the web, don't cover the nitty gritty good stuff like you do ! I will be taking both the Technician and General exams soon. Ready for fun ! In the past month, bought an Emergency Weather H/C radio, a scanner, a set of FRS and just received a Yaesu FT-70DR ! In light of our world today, I am interested in solar and portable power. Your info here is exactly what I was thinking about doing ! I have built power supplies and tube amps, so it only strengthened my learning as they are all connected. Love your stuff, Curtis, w/o a call sign yet 🤗👍
Thank you Dave on your long term insight & support of solar energy!
It is great to see that some folks have that insight to prepare for situations like now where we may need to eventually be 100% energy independent; with no need for gasoline, propane, etc. Generators do not work without go-juice!
While gas is still plentiful - now... that could change in mere weeks if things get really, really bad! I.e. no workers at refineries, or truckers & truck stops go down!
Our systems are far more fragile than we think or would like to believe.
Thanks for making these videos :) They help to keep me connected to ham radio until I can get my rig set up. I can finally afford my first radio rig (been a tech for almost 10 years and never used a radio...a shame I know). All studied up for my General, and then just as I'm about to go take the test I found no testing centers open in Ohio. LOL Oh well, so is life. Well, I'm just going to have to start studying for Extra I guess ;) Just received a Ten-Tec Century/21 today in the post which I am going to start using as my first radio to force me to stick to CW this time - tried learning it before but fell off it. It's a little frustrating at first, but I took your advice from a previous video and joined the SKCC (22039). Having the Facebook group is incredibly helpful in keeping me motivated to learn CW.
I'm thinking of converting the small cabin my dad built on the property before I bought it when my mother and he retired to FL into a small shack. I'm thinking of going solar so this was great timing on the video as the weather gets warm! Really helps me wrap my mind around what I'm going to be looking at doing...it's going to take some research for sure! Anyway, just rambling. Going to start building my first dipole antenna this week and then once my antenna tuner arrives with my CW key I should be able to finally use my Tech privileges :) Your channel has been a big help in encouraging me to stick with amateur radio all these years (although my account is new. I wanted to finally chat with folks on TH-cam so I made a radio devoted channel so I don't bug my husband by filling up our shared channel with radio videos ;P ).
Dave all I have is a set of harbor freight panels. they are only have forty five watts and they are still in the box. I have four deep cycle batters I used to charge them with a marine forty watt power supply until I got my 7300 hundred and it would not work on the twenty watt astron that I picked up at garage sale. I have a five ninety that works fine on the twenty power supply.
I enjoy all your videos. You do a very good job on them.
Glad to see this video, @David Casler! I have a 12V AGM battery and am itching to charge it via solar power... 73 de W3DJS!
Great video. I’ve been kinda-sorta moving toward some solar for the new shack, and this educated me far more than any other single video on the subject. Most people assume you already have a moderate level of knowledge, which I lack. Thanks for starting at the beginning.
I enjoy your work. I have been doing solar for my station for 3 - 4 years. I love it. I got some good ideas from your video. I will share a couple of my ideas. Amazon has a 20 Amp boost device for less than $20 which I use. Also I use a device that disconnects the load from the battery if the voltage drops below an adjustable level. As you know the battery can be damaged if drawn below a certain level. (If I remember, 11.9 volts for a AGM battery. I run other stuff like home automation and VPN servers. Too many grey days in a row can be a problem. Doesn’t happen very often but not fun if it happens. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Thanks, Dave. This taught me a lot.
You need a MPPT charge controller. It should be RF quiet. Most controller generate a lot of hash. I have 925 watts of panels with a 45 amp and a 30 amp MPPT controllers. 2 L16 370 AH batteries plus 2 6V 220 AH AGM batteries for the HF equipment.
I have a similar setup , but using lithium 18650 cells. 3x12v panels in series getting 36v max. My MPPT charge controller takes that and bucks it down to charge 20p7s 18650s giving a max output of 28v. I then use a 24 to 12 buck converter to take that down to 12-13v for the radios. The 18650 cells are all from old recycled laptop batteries and give just about 1kwh of power.
The caveat with any boost controller is that they may take your batteries to a 30-50% state of charge. While the radio will be happy, the battery will take internal damage and lose the number of charge cycles that a lower discharge would have given it.
Hi , currently going through your general class sessions . Would like your view about the xiegu G-90 as a QRP radio . I'm currently working to build a moble ham shack for E-COMS and field day and this video gave me some new insite on solar powering it . thx kI7ClJ
Great video and something I have considered for a long time but never acted on.
Do you have any guidance or specifics on fuse speeds as in "reaction" time ampere ratings for balance of best protection vs reliability?
Many thanks, great topic.
73'
de K4WRF
I run solar now, but for the next upgrade (I currently have 4 38Ah batteries out of an old PBX battery system with. 160w panel and EPEver controller) have been toying with using 3 x 6v cells in series (probably with a second set in parallel depending on what capacity I can get) and then simply using a couple of 24v panels in series, and run the radios off the load port of the MPPT controller, set for 13.8v, which would always be doable as the batteries would float at around 18v.
interesting episode. I have been thinking of getting a solar panel and a battery to serve as a backup JUST IN CASE.. and also for perhaps some field day shortware adventure.
Just worried about the noise levels on shortwave from solar panel regulators. have you experienced that or are they "silent" ?
Dave on the twenty four volt panels if you four twelve volt deep cycle batteries would you put them in parallel ?
Two 12v in parallel, and that in series with two 12v in parallel, for 24v storage.
You need an programmable MPPT charge controller.
What do wives ans solor panels have in common? Both apper to be inexpensive but its the support equipment that really adds up! .
in case u did not know the closed captions have given you a new name "ass Dave" u might check the closed caption on this video. I was at work and watching this video with the captions on an the sound off at 0:15
Hey Dave, why can't you use one with an inverter?
The panels with built-in inverters are designed to plug directly into your utility power. For ham station use, you want panels you can use to charge batteries.