so a great friend of mine needs a solar powered light for out by his shed that he built (mains power is not currently an option), so I’m recommending he do the following:
is this it really? if so, do y’all have recommendations on parts?
I’m surprised no one ever commented on this. Did you ever get anything figured out? I’d recommend the Litom solar light from amazon that was reviewed on this forum https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017D8GW7Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 $16.86 .
I bought one of those and 3 of a cheaper brand and the Litom does pretty well. I’d imagine 3-4 of these would be great for exterior lighting. I’m also going to be checking out some lights on amazon with remote solar panel for interior lighting. Car batteries are too expensive.
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A deep-cycle will do much better than a car battery and SLA or AGM will do equally well and are much safer (no hydrogen gas worries). Place the battery bank where you can pull your vehicle up to it and recharge it if you have too many cloudy days to keep the battery charged by solar, or keep it portable so you can do the reverse. As cheap as solar has become, it’s not too bad to set up a small system for emergency use but if you want more it gets a bit costly. You’re better off building your own system with large panels which have optimum placement than the cheap all-in-one units; like cheap flashlights those are usually a disappointment.
Phil
I think it would be great to build a good performing solar lighting system. I’ve thought about doing something like that myself but would it really be cost effective? $17 for the Litom unit with replaceable 14500 vs deep cycle battery @ well over $100. I figure 14 Litoms would be provide great exterior lighting around my 1500 sq ft home which comes out to $238. I think I’d be hard pressed to install hard wired security lighting all around my home for that much let alone making something expensive like solar. Do you have any write up links to DIY solar light systems that were cost effective?
How do the Litom units work? The product description shows them remaining on dim, not off, until motion activated. I prefer darkness until the light activates. And what is their run-time at maximum brightness? 14500’s don’t have a lot of capacity if you want good light output. Given that limited capacity it seems silly to have a security light on dim drawing the cells down when you don’t need light. Having the light functional at all times would be needed for security and dead cells just won’t cut it. I have a cheap light like these which I grabbed on sale and I haven’t installed it because it works the same way and during the one day I left it outside aimed well it was dead by 4AM the next morning.
I have a friend who powers his Ham radios and an LED light on his desk with 2 of these kits: Harbor Freight Solar Panels and he uses 2 of these: Deep Cycle batteries for batteries. The panels are good but the batteries only last about 2 years. The panels are often put on sale for about $150 per kit and come complete with mounts and a charge controller. He’s had these in use for about 6+ years. A rough estimate of his use would be about 50Ah per day. He’s had to boost the charge from wall current twice when the batteries began to fail but otherwise has never ran out of juice. He’s switching to (hopefully) better batteries. I can recommend the panels but not the batteries.
Solar needs really good sunlight to produce power and in my limited experience here that means the integrated units will be marginal except on 2 sides of your house at best. This is the main advantage of having rooftop panels where they can be aimed for best effect- you’ll not have any ‘dead spots’ in shady areas. And the large batteries give long run-times at higher draw where built-in cell units cannot. They are easily charged from other sources should you have too many cloudy days. There’s a lot more work and wiring involved with rooftop units but they’re going to work better for a all-house system. Look to the many sites about solar power to learn more; it is something of a specialized field of endeavor that I am not fully conversant with.
Phil
Phil
I haven’t tested total run time from a full battery yet. It has different modes you select with a switch on the back.
Here’s a blf review linkhttps://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/36655