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!

 

[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.

 

[Trefoil]

This is something I've thought about but haven't got the expertise to go any further, so I'll be very interested in what you find out. To figure out what kilowatts you need to generate, you'll need the wattage of everything you need to run on it + adding a "safety margin". What is your coop size? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you intend to use a heating element 1Kw would probably work out .

 

[jason29252]

I just completed a small solar panel setup. I use a 100 watt panel with a 35AH battery. It is used to power an automatic door, wireless camera, and LED lights. I also plan to add a venting fan in the near future.