Solar panel

[Bear Foot Farm]

Wouldn't a small kerosene heater or wood stove be cheaper?

It would be cheaper, but it would be an "uncontrolled" heat source.
A brooder needs to be between 90 and 100 degrees ALL the time, and you can regulate any electric heat source with thermostat.​

 

[Mac in Wisco]

How do you think they did it back in the day? There were plenty of coal and kerosene fired brooders around early in the 20th century.


There are propane fired brooders available that don't use any electricity:

http://www.spaceray.com/poultry_and_pig/ssj-single-jet-brooder.php

 

[SowdersHomestead]

Schweet!!

 

[swamy]

We have a small creek near our coop...have often thought about tinkering with a hydro-electric system to power the coop. Might be a fun project, until a flood, or log came floating downstream.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

The propane brooder I pointed out runs about $150, plus plumbing and tank lease costs. The only problem is it's size. It's a 30,000 BTU brooder, about the equivalent of 8 kilowatts of electric heat. Unless you are brooding hundreds of birds at a time, it could get quite expensive. While they sell thermostatically controlled and modulated versions, at a continuous burn it would burn about 8 gallons a day.

I know Farmtek sells some smaller ones, around 3,000 BTU or about the equivalent of three 250 watt brooder lamps. Running continuously this would burn about .8 gallons per day. Using my cost for propane that would be about $1.50 a day, which would be pretty close to my cost for running three brooder lamps continuously.

 

[shella]

Quote:
No, that isn't what he said, and that's not what the chart said either:

This chart shows solar insolation in kilowatt-hours per square meter per day in many US locations. For simplicity, we call this figure "Sun Hours / Day."

He's talking about the AMOUNT of electricity you can generate in the average day at that location with a square meter of cells.

It's barely enough to power a couple of big light bulbs for 24 hours without investing a lot of money, not just in the cells, but in batteries, inverters, and charge controllers.

Solar panels are only about 20% efficient, inverters about 90%, and you lose about 5% power in the wiring.
A good Deep cycle 100 AH battery will cost at least $150, and you'd need several

No matter how you spin it, the fact remains that it's not worth the money required to set up a solar system to run heaters 24 hours a day.

If all you need is some low powered lighting, solar can be cost effective.
Otherwise, it's better to run the wire and tie into the grid

You did make one comment in your first post (#6) that I believe to be accurate:

I've never done it
​

i to have looked into solar power and no one has mentioned the fact that the solar energy is stored in the battery and its the battery amp hours that supply the power to the lights/heater
you do not run solar on the grid power you run it with battery power so the items you put to run things will be dictated by the out put of the amount of battery power you have.
hope that made since. What about if you have a black out
thats my £2 worth​

 

[shella]

Quote:
what ChickenCanoe said

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Here's a small propane-fired brooder made in the UK:

https://www.suppliesforsmallholders.co.uk/gasolec-sa2-gas-brooder-p-304.html

 

[Ivanturpin]

Hi there, I want to know about residential solar systems. How they work and what cost one has to pay for it? Well, I know that this is really beneficial for the resources and for human beings.

________________
solar panels oregon

 

[ChickChickChicky]

I know nothing about brooders but do know a little about off-grid power, because we outfitted a WAY off-grid cabin for very comfortable living. Somebody wrote that solar is not a good fit for heating, and they're absolutely right. You'd have to have a gigantic battery bank to run most any type of heat source, and batteries cost as much as (or more than) solar panels. Electric heat consumes A LOT of electricity. Solar is excellent for running things like lighting and small dc motors (like an RV water pump), though, because the demand is not so high.

Wind power has the capacity to generate more energy than solar, but again if you want to operate high energy demand items you're going to have to have a giant battery bank.

Hydro power can be great if you have access (I've always been intrigued by ram pumps), but again, the battery problem would come into play unless your electric needs were situated close to the water.

You can also do what we did many times for recharging a battery (which we used only for lighting and a small dc water pump), which is to run a generator and hook it to a battery charger. We also had solar panels but unless you have lots of them it can take (what seems forever) to recharge your battery(ies).

Another thing about batteries is that they have to be maintained, they definitely are not just plug-in and walk away.

Like I said, we used batteries to run lights, dc ceiling fan and water pump, and propane to heat the cabin and cook with. We also used propane for heating water, although if one takes care to build the proper setup then solar water heating would be quite practical.

I would HIGHLY recommend you read these http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volt.htm , http://otherpower.com/, and http://www.amplepower.com/ (AmplePower's cd is especially worth having if you're at all serious about off-grid power). You might also google masonry stoves for heating (a masonry stove is something I want REALLY bad). And for solar supplies (and info) we found Kansas Windpower http://www.kansaswindpower.net/ to be helpful. They have a very useful catalog, and you can always call them with questions, though be advised they might be a little slow on phone calls because they are very busy!