Cloudy and no Mesh

Yeap, it a cloudy day in Toronto and my solar panel did not have enough energy to turn on the wireless Mesh. Funny the box said it works in cloudy days. I guess it meant sorta work. You know like it works but it is not efficient.

I hope tomorrow the sun comes out and turn the unit back on. I am very disappointed at the observation. I would have thought that some energy would have trickled in.

I have 3 solar panels charging one battery. It sure looks like I need another source of energy like wind power to be added.

In Florida I saw solar panels every where. In Toronto I see solar panels charging up the parking meters. I figure with all these solar panels there should be a source of continuous power. I may need 12 units and 3 batteries. Gosh I hope not.

I guess my MeshAP even though it low power still is not low enough.

Solar Mesh

Well the Solar MeshAP ran from 10 am to 6 PM today. The panels did not full charge the battery. My assumption was that the batteries should have been fully charged and there should have been enough energy to run the MeshAP while charging the battery. This is not the case.

The sun was visible all day to from about 10 am to 5 pm. The extra hour or two the MeshAP was running off the single battery.

The 3 solar panels are 2 amps each. The run combined my assumption is that they should be at 6 amps. The MeshAP take between 2-5 amps. I think I need another solar panels to charge the batteries.

I will keep running the experiment but I believe a commercial product would be better.

Answer to questions

I received a few questions below:

Q:
Would setting up a mirror(s) next to the panel array increase the amount of sunlight falling on the panels? Alternatively, positioning a thin plastic sheet of Fresnel Lenses (available at places like Active Surplus on Queen) above the array might magnify and concentrate the sunlight. I wonder if the elements in the panels are vulnerable to extreme heat...

A:
Sure having mirrors would help the efficiency. These panels do not track the sun but if you made a solar collector this would help the efficiency of the panels. It would also increase the size. I'm not sure if the panels are vulnerable to extreme heat but would be considered extreme?

Q:
Any news on the solar powered box? Am curious to know what equipment guesstimate for charging batteries that allow 48 hours of battery run-time on a meshbox. At Toronto latitude, how much battery and panel would you guess is needed?

A:
I have calculated that you would need about 3 - 6 batteries to have a run time on the MeshAP of over 48 Hours. You may also need to increase the amount of solar panels you had. Running the MeshAP on fully charge batteries is ok but running the MeshAP off the batteries while trying to charge is a little more difficult. Again I'm not an engineer but there are commercial solution that are available that can run continuously. I'm looking at the minimum cost to produce such an item.

Yet again

Starting the solar panel up again and powering a 12 volt deep cycle battery has only given me 9 hours of extended power. The battery charging system is awaiting the morning sun and it should start to come back up about 11:00 AM. A single battery is good but I really need to purchase 3 batteries and controller that would keep the solar MeshAP running. I can make this experiment more efficient by mounting the solar panels away from shade trees etc but I strongly believe the efficiency would not be enough. What I need is something that would keep the MeshAP running for days with out sun.

I will keep running the Solar System to see any anomalies.

Keep you posted.

Back up and running

Well the solar panels are back up and I once again meshing. I still using 3 solar panel each with 2 amps powering up a deep cycle battery. After further investigation I need 3 deep cycle batteries to have a continuous supply of power. I have many people write me about the power consumption of my unit. I can see when 3 batteries would be running that topping them up may need more solar panels. Nevertheless the more batteries the longer you can keep running the MeshAP.

Ideally I think I would need six batteries. My thinking is even when the production of electricity is reduced because of lack of sunlight the units can still be running. I just went through 13 days of indirect sunlight and the solar were able to keep the battery charged.

Here we go again!