Solar powered Coop

[Chickenguy9]

Hi everyone, Just looking for some opinions. I have been playing with the idea of making my chicken coop fully solar powered. not individual components, but fully wired with electric. its currently wired via conduit from the house. I was wondering if anyone has done this and what your experience was. How large of a system would I need to power it? I would like to be able to comfortably run everything with out worrying about over taxing the system. Lights, heated waterer possibly heater etc. What are your opinions? Oh and its quite large.

Thanks!

 

[pfewless]

To figure out how many watts you need use this formula

Refrigeration Unit 125 Watts X 6 Hours = 750 Watt Hours
Lamp 50 Watt X 6 Hours = 300 Watt Hours
Heat source 65 Watt X 4 Hours =260 Watt Hours

Total Watt Hours Needed: 1310 Watt Hours

Multiply the number of battery amp hours by 12 Volts. This gives you the total watt hours. You don't want to drain the battery bank by more than 60% on a regular basis so X the number of total watt hours by 60% and this gives you the usable watt hours.

Example: A Battery Bank Of 200ah X 12 Volts =2400 Total Watt hours
Remember You don't want to discharge the batteries more than about 60% on a regular basis.

2400 Watt Hours X 60% = 1440 Usable Watt Hours. So, you need a 200ah battery bank to run those items all together.
Yes you can add more deep cycle Marine Batteries and yes you can add more solar panels to buld better systems.

The sun charges your solar panel which recharges your battery which in turn gives you your power. Also needed an amp control charger, solar cables with male and female connecters, a power inverter with digital power meter, smart surge control, voltage and overload protection, short circuit protection, and thermal cutoff. So yes we need all the right parts.

The battery will last between 5-8 years depending on how deeply you discharge it on a regular basis. If the batteries will not be connected to the solar panels for extended periods, a battery maintainer/trickle charger should be used to keep the batteries in good condition.

Hope fully this will help you figure out what you need. After all my research I have determined that for me a first time solar user I am buying a ready made kit that will meet my needs. LOL

 

[jason29252]

This sounds like a bad idea to me, let me explain really quickly here.


Solar may be a good idea if your coop is far from your house and you don't want to run power to it. However, if you can run power, or already have power run, and just want to save money, solar for just the coop isn't a good idea.

The time when you need power is during the winter, at least mostly. You need to power batteries, and you need to be able to provide power for a few days when it gets really cold and cloudy. You need a system that will recharge those batteries pretty quickly, and without the greatest amount of sun. Consider that you may have a day or two or three of virtually no sun, with tons of cloud cover, snow, etc, then a day or two of weak sun, followed by more cloud cover for a few days. This sort of thing happens. This means you need a fairly big system to guarantee that you will have the power needed during the times when you really need the power.

Now, I'm not talking about a system the size of a house system, but it will be larger than you think.

Now, we go to the summer time. Now, you really don't need power. You don't need lights, or heat, or anything other than maybe your electric fence, which should not be drawing any real power. So no you have all of this production going to waste. You have these solar panels just sitting there, not gaining you anything.

If you hook solar up on your house, you use it year round. You have the AC in the summer, the lights and possibly heat in the winter. You may not always be producing efficiently, but most solar set ups are set up to avoid wasting too much, and you tie back into the system to sell back power you aren't using.

When you are running a stand alone system, there is inefficiency built into the system, that's just one of the draw backs, and you are compounding that by using it on a coop.


If you want solar, get a small grid tie system, and put the panels on your house instead of on your coop, and leave the coop connected to your house power. That way you are always getting the advantage of the system you put in, and when you don't get any power from the system, your chickens don't have frozen water.

Agree with most of what you're saying, but I want to add that it depends on where you are geographically. In southern california, we get good sunlight pretty much year round. We get cloud/rain maybe 5% of the time. Heating is not necessary in the winter but cooling is important in the summer. In terms of inefficiencies, you can eliminate some of that by running DC appliances. Main positive for me in not having to run a long electricals from the house to the coop, which is a hassle, eye sore, and requires permits.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Not that hard but heat is likely a no no since generating heat with electricityrequires so much power.

 

[Chickenguy9]

Yeah, I know heat would take a lot of power I'm mostly just curious about what kind of system would be required to have it. I wouldnt go buy a $15000 system for my chicken coop

But I would like to know if thats what I would need.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

You would probably want to keep the current system for backup, especially winter water.

You could do some DIY solar cells, a cheap controller, a 12 volt battery and LED lighting. You'll need separate wiring and lamps but you could easily add a 12 volt automatic door and run that off the same system since the door only operates twice a day.
Here's a place to start.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/solar-cells

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...troller&_nkw=solar+charge+controller&_sacat=0

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chrome-12V-...US_Rechargeable_Batteries&hash=item43c5c028a0

 

[Chickenguy9]

Awesome thanks for the links. I like the idea of keeping the current as a back up, although down the road I'd like to convert my whole property to solar power, but I know thats big money.

 

[pfewless]

This is interesting as we are talking about putting solar panels on our coop. Just enough to run a bit of light on timers in the winter and heat the water to keep it from freezing. That would be a project for next year though. Keep us posted on your upgrades.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

To use solar for water you possibly get by with just adding storage. More batteries.

If you have consistent prevailing winds, it would possibly be cost effective to add wind power to the system. But you would need the power because that adds a lot of up front costs.

 

[Chickenguy9]

This is interesting as we are talking about putting solar panels on our coop. Just enough to run a bit of light on timers in the winter and heat the water to keep it from freezing. That would be a project for next year though. Keep us posted on your upgrades.

Yeah it seems like a good idea to me, I'd rather be a little more expensive up front and avoid nasty surprises on my power bill. Just in the planning stages at the moment.I may begin this year but next spring is most likely. But what I'd really like to know is how many kilo-watts I'd need to get from my system to run everything comfortably.