Solar Powered Laptop, Computer Speakers, DSL-Router, Wi-Fi-Router, Network-Switch and External TV Tuner

Here is some serious project and also worth doing it. So no more issues with power-cuts usually happens a lot in India during every summer. Simply clean renewable power source all day and night. Whenever I am at home all these gadgets are turned on most of the time and all of them I connected to my 600VA UPS. Usually laptop I connect to the UPS non-battery backup surge protection port. So that even if there is a power failure, my laptop won't consume UPS battery power. So here is the power consumption per device:

Computer Speakers (4.1 Surround Speakers) 15 Watts
(being a music lover I better love speakers which are big and can produce excellent sound quality)

Laptop 35-90 Watts
(on a full charge it consumes just 35Watts but when its battery is getting charge it should consume 90Watts)

Wi-Fi Router+Wired Switch+DSL Router 10 - 15 Watts

External TV Tuner 6 Watts
(whether I turn on or off, anyway its power-adapter is on, so its the "phantom power" which is sucking power)

Total Usage: 66 - 126 Watts
UPS Load when there is power: 66 - 126 Watts
UPS Load when there is no power: 36 Watts (since laptop works on its battery)

Unfortunately I have not found any ready-made commercial solution which can specifically address this energy requirement. Either the solution is too expensive and far bigger than what is required or simply the small scale solutions which are not flexible enough if I want to upgrade or scale-up in future. So I thought let me design a clean energy solution myself.

Overall Setup before connected to Non-Renewable Power Source.

Step 1: Overall Setup After Connected to Clean Renewable Power Source

Step 2: 1000W - 12V DC to 220V AC Car Inverter

Bought a simple Car Inverter from the market to convert the battery power into usable 220V AC multi utility power source.

1000Watts 12V DC to 220V AC Converter Inverter
- whole kit contains

Inverter box
Connector wires with battery clips
Connector wire with Car Cigarette Lighter Port
Power socket converter
Instruction Manual

Step 3: 12V Old Rescued UPS Battery

Using an unused working old 12V Sealed Lead Acid Battery rescued from a faulty UPS. If needed even a new much more bigger battery can be used. Or even a old car battery would solve the purpose. Using a old battery is not a good idea, but again after-all if it solves our purpose with respect to our power needs its fine. Go-Green also means one should avoid wasting any resource or utilize the most of any resource before it is dumped.

Step 4: 12V, 10Watts X2 Solar Panels

2x 12Volt 10Watt Solar Panels
Set of Battery Clips + connecting wires
Blocking Diodes (31DF4)

Step 5: Soldering Wires to Solar Panels

Soldered the wire leads with the blocking Diode under the Panel. After the cable connected and finally secured with cable tie to prevent snapping off the panel or even loose connection can lead into any dirty short circuits in case if it gets twisted in that black box.

Step 6: Finishing the Jig-saw Puzzle.

Finishing the jig-saw puzzle. As you can see the battery is connected with the solar-panel terminals and that is in turn connected to the inverter. Inverter's output is connected to the power-strip. It looks pretty messy but anyways everything can be assembled inside a cupboard later once tested.

Step 7: Powering-up

Finally the power-strip gets power from the inverter. In the picture you can see my wired Ethernet switch on the left side and my external TV tuner box on the right extreme end. And all these are hooked-up to the power-strip as I mentioned in the basic setup picture. You can see the LEDs in the power-strip are on and so I can get power completely from those panels disconnecting whole thing from the grid power-supply.

Step 8: Panels Basking Under the Sun

Here is the main hero basking under the sun. Both I placed for now in my balcony and the cables from both the panels are connected to the battery, which is shown in those previous pictures.

Step 9: Closing Note

After a initial charge of 2 hours, I started using the panels from morning. Now while making this page in instructables.com its 4:05PM, still the system works perfectly fine.

***Check the next step and find out how this current setup have been upgraded after 3 weeks with additional 74Watts Solar panel, hence with the total solar power production capacity of 94Watts.

You can find much more exciting projects from my Traffic Squeezer Website - Go-Green section.
http://trafficsqueezer.sourceforge.net/go_green.html

Step 10: Upgradng a 74Watts Solar Panel

Here is yet another upgrade of the existing setup after 3 weeks. This huge panel is 74Watts panel which is connected parallel to those other existing two 10Watt panels. The total power output is increased from 20Watts to 94Watts.

So with the total power production of 94Watts is just self sufficient to power-up the load which can consume anywhere around 66-126Watts. If the power production goes up beyond the usage in that case an extra battery can be added to store that additional juice. Which can be used for other purposes too. Since currently the load is much more than the power production and even the battery capacity, I have not got yet any charge controller device/circuit. But getting a simple charge controller to charge the batteries is quite suggested since it should improve the overall battery life.

by
Kiran
Author/Founder: Traffic Squeezer - Open Source Network WAN Acceleration Solution
URL: http://trafficsqueezer.org
Author/Founder - CEO/MD - Doublefish JobsStore
URL: http://doublefish-jobsstore.com
CEO/MD - Doublefish Solutions