What to do with a 45 watt solar panel?

i have 2 solar panels 1 is (15w) and the other is (30w) they both produce around 3 amps together in good wether

Anyone have some good ideas on what to power with it. it is charging up a 17ah battery

Comments

[wogga]

Hmm. If you have access to an older 12v battery powered mower you could easily start charging it with even 15w, quite happily. with 45w you will need a charge controller (as you would for any large panel to battery combination). I've been using a solar-powered 12v Black & Decker for about 4 years on 10w solar panels. The added bonus is that you are trickle charging the batteries all winter, so they don't die early on you! If you google "solar power mower wiki" you can find some stuff I wrote up on this.

[frollard]

...charge up a battery :)

That's what they do! I'd recommend getting all your lower power electronics in the house hooked up to said battery with appropriate efficient dc>dc converters, and remove the parasitic power from your energy bill. A 45 watt source can't do much, but it can power things like your internet router, small nightlights, alarm clocks, etc -- stuff that is always on but doesn't take much. Saving on these small items means you spend less building/buying an inverter to run big power items.