My office outbuilding is about to get its foundations and I am planning for power. I am thinking of two 90w solar panels, I am creating a little brick box cupboard with a door facing outside and some drilled holes for the cables to store the battery and inventor. My question is this, I have seen some with fuses do i need this and what type Also can anyone recommend any adaptors and if so what kind?
What are you hoping to power from this? Lighting (ideally LED)? and a laptop etc? Fuses? For what? Betwixt the panels and batteries? I'd have thought that you'd require a charging regulator to keep things running just right, and surely they'd come with fuses? But, as a guide, the rule is keep 'em as low rated as possible. 180W at 12V is 15A, so that's a benchmark. You'd then be using an inverter to provide 240V AC? In which case they will come with their own fuses... It would probably make sense to make your lighting 12V as converting to 240V first would lose you some power - it ain't 100% efficient. As for inverter size, you'd need to know what max power drain you'd be requiring. Try and keep things low, as these will drain your 12V batteries pdq.
Tee-hee, good point. It'll be worth getting some real-life figures of what these panels can deliver in this country. But I guess the idea is that they'll trickle charge the batteries all day, and then they'll be set for a few hours hard office work...