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Question:

solar panel, dc light help?

Hi, I want to put some solar light in my yard, and wondering if a 00w solar panel could work for a few 3w dc lights....do i need a battery so they run at night, if so how many lights do u think i can run/ also i see elading solar light

Answer:

No longer just any bulb will work on DC power. Any light bulb that's for 0voltage won't work on DC energy due to the fact that the element has too much resistance for a DC vigor provide to create ample heat to generate mild from the aspect. Nonetheless the do make mild bulbs that are designed to function on a DC energy supply and i might extremely recomend making use of the proper bulb with the proper vigour provide. Purchase some 2volt bulbs to be dependable......
You can't really judge the watts for solar lighting the same way you could for dc lighting. This is because of several factors The lights that you showed ARE NOT high quality lights and furthermore; they are not a well-known brand. Also, I would be suspicious of any store that offers lights for less than half of what other stores do. They are dumping the merchandise, which means it could have been sitting around for a while. MAXSA Innovations makes good solar lamps, so does Solar Goes Green. As the other responder wrote, you are better off using dedicated solar spot lights or floodlights than trying to integrate a solar panel into regular solar lights. A 00 Watt solar panel is pretty strong, and you also would need a battery. Unless you know how to rig up the system with appropriate controllers to make sure too much energy doesn't get into the rechargeable battery (lithium ion or NiMH), you take a risk on having the whole system fry out.
3 w for 2 hours/night is 36 watt hours. You'll get about 500 watt hours/day from your panel on the average, which for a 2 volt battery is about 40 ampere hours. You can get an 80 amp-hour sealed gel cell battery to charge with this panel (with a suitable charge controller). You want to size your lights so the battery can provide three days of light without discharging it more than 50%, so that's abnout 600 watt-hours/3/36 = about 4 orf 5 lights. Cost for this system woulkd be over $500. The advantage of the self contained light is they use a lithium or nickel battery rather than a lead acid, so it can run totally dead without damage (unmlike a sealed lead-acid battery). That would be a far cheaper way to go. DK

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