I bought HovaBator Genesis Egg Incubator 1588 & Turner Chicken help!

[mariolo]

I bought HovaBator Genesis Egg Incubator 1588 & Turner Chicken for a school in Malawi.is a good incubator?the problem is that often the electric current is turned off.I was thinking of putting solar panels.what do you say?the problem is that I do not know how much I need and what else I need.I would not spend a lot of money for these things.in Malawi there are other problems.Can someone give me advice on how can I do?I contact them the incubator and the supplier told me that it works at 12 volts and consumes 36w.
Thank

 

[ranchhand]

I have the same incubator and like it, but have no idea how to take it solar! Hopefully, someone will.

 

[Ryan McEachern]

Its a good incubator, I have one and have no complaints.

It is a good choice for an off-the-grid project because the bator actually runs on 12 volts, there is a 120 volt adapter that comes with it.

Unfortunately, the egg-turner uses 120 volts so you will either need to hand turn, or get a small 12-to-120 volt inverter if you want to use the turner with the power out.

For the bator, you will need a large 12 volt battery (think marine or rv deep cell) with lots of reserve capactity. The 36 watts of energy needed to run the incubator is only when the heating element is on, it will cycle on and off, but you should assume it uses the full 36 watts 24/7 when designing your system, then you will have some extra capacity. You need to plan for the battery to be drawn down in the evening, night, and morning, and then get charged up in the middle of the day. If you had 10 hours of full strong sunlight in your location, then you need to plan for 14 hours of discharging only, and 10 hours of discharging + charging. The battery will need to be able to supply 3 amps of current (36 watts/12 volts) for 14 hours without any assist from the solar panel, and you don't want to draw a battery down much more than 50% capacity if you want longevity, so I would say you need a battery with a reserve capacity of 100 amp hours as a minimum (you may need to make a bank of smaller batteries) If you have cloudy or rainy days I would double that. For the charger, you will need a large solar cell setup, plus a charge controller, the cells need to be capable of supplying the 3 amps of draw in the daytime, as well as charge the battery up at the same time. I would say 10 amps at 12 volts (120 watts) minimum, double that if you get cloudy or rainy days, probably more. That will get quite expensive.

A cheaper (better?) option may just be to have a large bank of 12 volt batteries that get charged up with a powerful car charger whenever the mains power comes on, assuming it comes on every few days or so.

Good luck!

 

[mariolo]

thank you very much
you could recommend a type of battery that I use and a good charger?
thank you