Experimental Solar Bacony Setup

Around 2012 I wanted to see if I could pull off making my own electrical power in some shape. Since I could not see any use aside from my personal edification I wasn’t willing to spend a lot of money on it but also wasn’t that worried about the results.

The basic plan was to get cheap solar panels from somebody re-powering their setup and making my own MPPT tracker. The power would be stored in some cheap lead acid car batteries I managed to get from a recycler.

I would then use a UPS to create 240v from the car batteries injecting it into a power circuit i had isolated by screwing out the fuse for it in my flat.

I managed to get the batteries to charge and also got the silenced UPS to inject power into the light circuit of my flat with a horrifying cable construction I made no pictures for legal reasons :)

Anyway I chickened out of this setup in less than an hour and basically pulled it apart right away. Over the next few years I got rid of the panels and other odds and ends. but then the rise of the balcony solar installations happened. Sadly I had moved and was now living in a flat that hardly got any sunlight during most of the year onto its balcony.

A real balcony system made no sense here. I decided to redo my 2010 experiment just with the help of cheap Chinese parts. To start I got a cheap panel locally and attached it via a micro inverter to an electrical outlet.

At that point the time where my balcony would get sun was already partially over so I decided to just see how much power I could really expect. Not that much it turns out - the first summer (2022) netted me about 8kwh of power as measured with a cheap esp8266 based plug running tasmota.

Next I will setup some kind of battery system again.