"Off the Grid" setup

[Drewbaby]

So I just got another outrageous electric bill. $420. It's been steadily rising with the summer heat and ive been looking into DIY solar panels and wind turbines as a possible solution. I'm thinking DIY because of the cost difference between prebuilt when I got another idea.

Why couldn't we use inverters wired to a 12v battery bank that is being charged by a trickle charger in an almost continious loop? Would this power a full blown reef tank? Has anyone ever tried it? Is it even feasible?

It looks good on paper, do you think it can work?

[khaosinc]

Assuming I understand the question, the problem you are underestimating is the amount of batteries and amperage you will need depending on the tank. A watt is a watt which is volts x amps. if your reef needs 1000 watts an hour to run at 120 volts (8.3 amps) then it will still need 1000 watts at 12 volts (83 amps) plus the loss at the inverters. Could be done, but would take ALOT of batteries and trickle chargers.

[moparace]

u should just marry Oprah
Then u will be Oprah Rich and have no worry

[westmoorenerd]

I've looked into it before, and lets just say for a large reef system....It's not happening. Well unless you want to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000+. Assuming your tank uses around 1000w per hour during the day, you'd want something with atleast a 50% higher rating, maybe even %100 higher for those cloudy days.... So lets just say a 1.89kW system like this: http://www.altestore.com/store/Kits-...-189-kw/p6628/

If that price doesn't turn you away, then I say go for it!

[lotekfish]

I've been thinking about this too but at a much smaller scale. Why not think about just powering the lights with solar? I've been contemplating going with LED lighting which runs on DC anyway. If you can run the majority of your lights with LEDs and just let the light schedule and intensity follow the sun then you won't need batteries which would be a big savings. then maybe have a single bank of T5s for night viewing.

I've been thinking about this for years but haven't had the time to find an LED driver that would work for this setup.

[khaosinc]

My thought has always been to do it the other way around, but I've had trouble coming up with plans for how I want to do it. My idea is to run pumps and powerheads (at least at first)off of solar and have it run as sort of a reverse battery back up. Basically have it run on solar as long as the batteries allow and switch over to house power when it can't. Simply build the system scaleable so I can add more and more things as I add to the system and when it gets dark (as it is often want to do in NW Washington) have it swich over to house power. My main issue is I don't want to be tied in to the grid, so it can continue to function when house power is out.

[Drewbaby]

I think it's possible to at least cut down on the energy use with either; solar, wind, or battery power.

In order to achieve the wattage required you would have to build a battery bank or basically a set of batteries wired in a series parallel combination. The batteries can be wired in series so they are at either 12v or 24v then in parallel to increase the total available Ah or (amp hours). The increased Ah would allow you to have more energy on hand to use while the 12 or 24 volts matches the inverter.

With the trickle charger it would have to be strong enough to keep a steady amount of charge floewing to the battery bank, but you could always build a wind mill or solar panels to compensate if you needed to supply the whole tank.

The solar can do most of the work on it's own during the day and the wind power will help, then at night when most of the high energy equipment (lights) are off the wind turbine will be charging the batteries to full for the morning. So even if by the time you turn your lights off your batteries are drained to 30% when they are off it'll go right back up

I think I'm going start collecting what I need to try this out and make it as cost effective as possible by building as much as I can myself.

[RichConley]

Start looking at why your reef uses so much electricity.


And its usually pumps that are the problem, not light. Pumps run 24 hours a day, and all of their wattage is converted into heat in the tank (which a chiller, or fans or AC has to remove). Lights only run 8-10 hours a day, and a lot of the energy is released into the room(which you still may need to remove with AC).


Changing a Sequence Dart closed loop to a Tunze/Vortech may save you 115w @ 24 hours a day. If you're up in the higher brackets in a tiered system, that's $40 a month if you don't even account for the difference in chiller/AC usage.

[Drewbaby]

It's not really that my reef tank uses alot of power, but I would still like to reduce my power bill. If I can eliminate the 400 watts or so that my 55 uses I'm sure it would help. And if it's successful I can set something similar up for my 180 which is only a fish only with 2-6' VHO's for light and a pretty efficient return pump. I was planning on making the 180 a reef, but haven't started running the halides I have because of the electric.

My goal isn't really to conserve the power used by my tanks, but instead to convert the source of that power to something more efficient or renewable that will ultimately be free in the long run, such as wind or sun power.

[khaosinc]

Most of my problem is lights and skimmers unfortunetly. between the 4 tanks theres almost 4000 watts of light, and 720 watts of skimmer. 2 mag 18's and a ehime 1262 and a dozen or so powerheads isn't close