Sun Pod One

When I first got my 30 watt solar panel, because I live in a condo in a tall building, I put together a hanger for the panel using shower parts. The whole setup cost me only a few dollars. Now the sun has changed position as we enter the beginning of spring. I’ve gone back to the drawing board and designed something that will work all year round.

Using brackets, hinges and tubes, I’ve put together some hardware for mounting my solar panel on an angle. As you can see, it fits nicely on top of my washing machine. For the long leg, which is the leg in the back, I used two T-brackets screwed down to a hinge. Then I took some L-brackets and straightened them out, because I couldn’t find suitable long straight brackets that were strong enough for what I wanted to do. At the bottom of the leg I put a cross tube to tie the two legs together.

In the front, there is a tube attached to the solar panel directly. I call this the short leg, although it isn’t really a leg at all, at this point. Later, if I want to add more height to the solar panel, I can make a short leg using only brackets and the cross tube, but I probably won’t put a hinge here; otherwise, the whole solar panel would swing one way or the other and fall down.

In this picture you can see I put a black adjustable strap between the two tubes, to keep the long leg from swinging out. Also, I inverted the hinge at the top of the long leg, so it will only swing so far, which means it can’t close all the way. When I put my solar panel away, on days when I’m not using it, the long leg swings all the way upward, not all the way down. The whole arrangement again only cost me a few dollars.

We bought a hefty hanger for putting plants in, which hangs on the inside of the balcony. That way they get plenty of sunlight and we don’t risk them falling 20 floors down. I took the plants out and put my solar panel in there, getting more directly sunlight on it. It’s still near the washing machine, so I can power that from solar at any time. I can also add more brackets to the front or back legs, raising the solar panel higher and allowing me to adjust the angle more throughout the year as the sun changes elevation.

I got the idea a long time ago, when we lived in our old condo on the other side of Taiwan. I had been putting small CIGS panels in single plant holders and positioning them outside the window. Not the safest idea, but I put a leash on the hardware each time and never had any problems. Using plant hangers for putting solar panels in the sun puts the green in the green!

Since I’ve been developing my DIY home solar power network, I’ve come across and wired together a variety of electrical plugs. The first and most common kind you will find with small solar energy hardware is the standard cigarette lighter adapter found in cars. It’s easy to plug in and easy to wire up. Flexible CIGS panels often come with these kinds of adapters, like the ones made by Brunton. You can see a picture below:

When you move up to more power in your solar array, these kinds of adapters turn out to be the worst choice to go with. I had several problems with them. First, I put one between my battery pack and my power inverter. But they are not designed for high amperage. And, because of the exposed surface area inside the adapter, they tend to overheat quickly, which caused the alarm in my power inverter to go off often. Not only that, because they heat up, energy is lost. Think about how they work in a car. The whole purpose there is to heat the coil that will be used to light a cigarette. While they are great for smaller applications, because they are easy to use and contain a fuse inside, they are bad to work with in larger solar applications.

I was also using these kinds of adapters between my solar array and my charge controller. Once again, I liked the ease of plugging them in and I liked having an extra fuse in line. Sure, I could replace the fuse inside my charge controller, but then I’d have to open the thing up. The fuse is much easier to replace in the cigarette male adapter. Originally, I thought that this was the best way to go, because I was not dealing with a lot of power, compared to what comes out of my battery pack. The difference might be 2 amps exiting the solar panels, compared to 20 amps exiting the batteries, and most cigarette adapters are only made to handle around 5 or 10 amps of power.

When I upgraded my solar panels from CIGS to mono panels - which sit in a frame and are not flexible - I was faced with MC4 connectors for the first time. I didn’t have an extra MC4 cable, so I found some plugs at the electronics shop that I could modify and use instead. It worked fine, yet they look really ugly:

Then I happened to come across a solar salesman here in Taiwan who could sell me an MC4 cable. I took it home, stripped one end and screwed that down to my charge controller. Then I plugged the other end into my solar panel MC4 cables. Within minutes I was shocked to see a huge jump in performance. The voltage on my batteries started climbing quickly, faster than I had ever seen it go up before. So I highly recommend that you get the right cables and keep them as clean and simple as possible, without inserting any kind of fuse or mismatched adapter in the line. Let the fuses in your charge controller and power inverter do the work instead. You will probably never need to replace them anyway, if you do your math right.

MC4 cables are the best choice, along with a thick wire between your battery bank and power inverter. I had sized the wire between my batteries and inverter just a notch above what it should have been rated for, yet when I switched that wire to the super thick 4 AWG cable that came with my power inverter, again, I saw a huge improvement and suffered from fewer alarms. I vote MC4 cables as a good choice, a leap above the bad and the ugly:

I’ve launched a new web site for promoting and researching my product, the Wash-A-Ton. Look here:

Wash-A-Ton Solar

On this site, I’ve set up a forum for PV industry discussion and I’m looking for people to contribute data about their washing machines. Please take the time to fill out this survey and help me get my product on the market. I need to know:

- length of cycle
- amount of power used
- brand name of your washing machine

Take the Survey

At the same time, anyone interested in buying individual components for utilizing solar power, feel free to contact me and I can point you in the right direction. Thanks.

I’ve come a long way from just recharging AA batteries and my ipod off of solar power. Today did my fourth load of laundry in two weeks. I’ve finally found an application for solar that is easy to use and doesn’t cost a fortune.

Here is a picture of my balcony from the outside. I live on the 20th floor of my building, so I had to lean out a window and stretch my arm really far to get this picture. It may look crowded from the outside, but when you’re standing on the balcony, there’s enough room to move around and get your laundry done. We don’t use dryer machines here in Taiwan, because we are so close to the equater. Even now, in early February, there’s enough direct sun to make solar applications a reality.

Today was the third day in a row that I did laundry using solar power. My batteries topped out pretty quickly today, although it’s sunny but hazy. I’d say it really is a sunny day, not even a bit cloudy, but I can’t see the usual blue sky for some reason. There’s this whiteness to everything in the sky, almost like transparent fog. Ok, I’m not making sense now. Who knows, maybe it’s just pollution.

I wanted to push the limits of my solar application and see just how far it could go. Actually, when I ran the washing machine at 800 rpms and a 50 minute wash cycle, I didn’t think it would every finish. At the last moment, just before finishing, the batteries were really close to the bottom, so I don’t think I could go much farther with them. Still, it’s pretty cool, because as long as it’s somewhat sunny, even in the winter time, I can run a load of laundry everyday of the week here.

That will make a serious dent in my electric bill next month.

Today I washed a load of socks using only solar power. I went with a light load of socks, and the “quick” wash cycle, which usually runs for about 30 minutes. My main concern was focusing on the end of the wash. The batteries by that time would have drained the most. And it’s during the spin cycle that my washing machine takes the most power. So I hooked up my solar panels and waited until noon, when the sun was in the best position. Right now it is mid-winter here in Taiwan, so using solar to wash clothes in the summer would be even easier.

Today was only a partially sunny day, and I watched with insane anticipation as my battery level dropped whenever the sun went behind a cloud and then rebounded again when the sun came back out. Near the end of the cycle, when things were getting critical, the batteries had already gone from 13.5 volts all the way down to 12.1 volts. This still gave me some room to work with, though. Then, during the last and most aggresive part of the spin cycle, the batteries dipped to 11.7 volts for a split second. Suddenly the sun came out and hit the solar panels with force and beep-beep-beep, the washing machine sang a little song telling me everything was finished! I had done it. Any interruptions in power and I’d be washing those socks by hand.

As my friend Ed pointed out, “You can use the sun to dry them, too!” So I hung them up to dry on the balcony of my condo on the 20th floor of my building.

Solar not only works, but could also be used by people living in tall building with no access to the roof. I estimate that a working setup like mine costs around US$400, retail. That might sound expensive, but just think about how many times you wash clothes during the year. Even if you only wash them twice a week, the batteries in the pack will have plenty of time to recharge during a cloudy week. During a sunny week, a setup like this could be used to power other things around your house, like your computer or TV, on days when you aren’t washing any clothes.

I used this equipment:

2 Brunton flexible solar panels (the black ones): 15 watts of power
1 MIC (Made In China) solar panel (no brand name): 30 watts of power
8 6v4ah rechargeable sealed lead-acid batteries: 12 volts x 16 amps
1 SunForce PWM charge controller: 500 watts 30 amps max.
1 Son Dar modified sign wave power inverter (MIT): 1000 watts max.

Take a look at the picture. It’s not pretty, but it works!

You could go with a much smaller charge controller, but I recommend sticking with a PWM controller. You could also go with a much smaller power inverter, but then I would recommend getting a pure sign wave inverter, although this will cost a little more. I would also lose the 2 flexible solar panels and replace them with another 30 watt panel. This way, with two panels, they could be angled to account for changes in the position of the sun during the day, in a V-shape, because reflections off of one panel would bounce into the other. And 60 watts of power would produce better results than 45. Also, I like the idea of keeping the whole setup portable so it can be easily moved indoors during a storm. Here in Taiwan we have giant typhoons and the balconies are open to the elements.