solar panel draining battery

Posted on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 in Uncategorized

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solar power pumps, a question of what works best?

solar panels easily reach up toward 200 degrees, and i’m trying to build a drain back solar panel to keep a green house warm,

does anyone know of inexpensive solar panel and pump that made of metal that will not be damaged by pumping hot liquid back into the panel

the design as i see it will be a small tank inside the greenhouse that pushed water into the panel at whatever temp is there and is heated and returned,

at some point, the water will be hot enough to start to damage an impeller so i would like to use metal. my concern with battery and inverter is mostly battery drain,

it will be a sort of bread box design if you are wondering about that, so that the water is able to keep the temp in the green house at least about 49 or so, (i hope)

I’m a thermodynamics engineer, not a horticulturalist, and I’m wondering about the practicality and purpose of your plans.

A solar panel designed to provide hot water, or other hot fluid, will provide no more than 1 kW of heating capacity per square metre of panel, in clear sunlight.
The greenhouse itself will have pretty much the same heating effect in sunlight, so the only purpose of the Solar Panels would be to provide night time heating and that requires heat storage capacity. If you put in 10 sq m of solar panel (say 10ft by 12ft) you could heat a water flow rate of about 4 l/min (say 1 gallon/min) about 35 deg C (60 deg F). Over 6 hours of daytime sunlight this would give you 1.5 cu m (360 gallons) of warm water which may be sufficient to keep frost off a small greenhouse. If you live somewhere the temperature drops way below zero, or if you have a large greenhouse you’ll need a lot more solar panel and storage capacity.

You don’t need to worry about high temperatures in your system, unless you are going to leave the system non-operational for long periods of time, and even then you should be able to design it to avoid overheating.

You may find a better way to solve the heating problem is to insulate the greenhouse from cold night temperatures and put lots of large rocks and things inside the greenhouse which will store the daytime heat and release it at night.

Sunforce 50012 1.8-Watt Solar Battery Maintainer

$17.00

The Sunforce 50012 1.8 Watt Solar Battery Maintainer gives you another reason to love the sun — it’ll help keep your car’s battery charged. Just plug this helpful 1.8-watt solar charger into your vehicle’s 12-volt lighter socket and position the panel to pick up the most daylight possible. Or, if you prefer, use the included alligator clips to connect it directly to the battery, so you can keep y…