Solar panel system to power 12v Wifi Router

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gareth41

742 posts

Ultimate Geek

#97505 16-Feb-2012 00:46

Im investigating setting up a wifi link for friend of mine who cant get adsl broadband at his place and is using two-way satellite broadband instead (very expensive) as its the only option, not even cell phone reception. However he leases a factory about 9km away which does have adsl broadband. Its not line of sight to the factory from his place, there is one hill in the way, but we could easily put a repeater on top of this hill to bridge two point to point wifi links using grid antennas. Its line of sight to this hill from both locations. Trouble is there is no power at the top of hill or close by, which is in the middle of a farm, so we are looking at possibly solar power. AP's will be TP-link high power ap's which require 12v at about 1amps each. Whats the best way of doing this as far as solar power goes? I'm also going to take a few batteries up there first with 12v regulator to run AP's and do a test run.

sbiddle

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Biddle Corp

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#582142 16-Feb-2012 06:14

Ditch the TP-Link and use Ubiquiti. It's vastly superior gear.

Your only requirement is to spec the right storage and solar capacity, factoring in the shorter days and Winter and liklehood of many days were there could be minimal charge to the batteries.

LookingUp

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#582148 16-Feb-2012 07:14

When sizing solar powered systems for work, depending on the site, we size the solar panel at 10x ~ 20x the load. In your case, if you're looking at 12VDC @ 1amp you've got 12 Watts of power consumption, so are looking at a 150~200W panel, which unfortunately is not small or cheap. You'll also need a solar panel regulator to control the battery charging voltage and current.

The reason for overrating the solar panel is that on average it will be dark 50% of the time, cloudy a good percentage of the time, and you've got to work on worst case where the weather is bad for many days in a row. This will also be a factor in battery sizing - for eg. if it's possible that the site will have 5 bad days in a row you need 1amp x 24hrs x 5 = 120Ahrs of storage, which again, is quite a lot.

Another issue is security - large solar panels are very attractive to vandals and thieves.

This all being the case, it would be well worth establishing the lowest powered device(s) you need at the repeater station.

As sbiddle says, there is potentially better gear out there - have a look on gowifi.co.nz

Things are LookingUp.... A photo from my back yard :-)

raytaylor

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#582328 16-Feb-2012 13:07

PM me the details of your link.
i can send you a link to a solar panel guide that i wrote which covers exactly what you are doing. Most of my rural repeater sites are solar powered.

Ray Taylor

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kiwitrc

4123 posts

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Inactive user

#582329 16-Feb-2012 13:09

raytaylor: PM me the details of your link.
i can send you a link to a solar panel guide that i wrote which covers exactly what you are doing. Most of my rural repeater sites are solar powered.

Doesnt get much more helpful than that

gareth41

742 posts

Ultimate Geek

#582618 16-Feb-2012 23:13

Thanks, will pm

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#582953 17-Feb-2012 19:37

LookingUp: When sizing solar powered systems for work, depending on the site, we size the solar panel at 10x ~ 20x the load. In your case, if you're looking at 12VDC @ 1amp you've got 12 Watts of power consumption, so are looking at a 150~200W panel, which unfortunately is not small or cheap. You'll also need a solar panel regulator to control the battery charging voltage and current.

The reason for overrating the solar panel is that on average it will be dark 50% of the time, cloudy a good percentage of the time, and you've got to work on worst case where the weather is bad for many days in a row. This will also be a factor in battery sizing - for eg. if it's possible that the site will have 5 bad days in a row you need 1amp x 24hrs x 5 = 120Ahrs of storage, which again, is quite a lot.

Another issue is security - large solar panels are very attractive to vandals and thieves.

This all being the case, it would be well worth establishing the lowest powered device(s) you need at the repeater station.

As sbiddle says, there is potentially better gear out there - have a look on gowifi.co.nz

Err on the side of over-speccing, and over-spec the battery as well. Most lead-acid batteries, even if they are on paper capable of storing enough power to get through the night, will fail quickly if they are regularly discharged below 50%. Lead-acid batteries don't like being deeply discharged often, even the expensive deep cycle ones.