Post #1543780
2026-04-20 10:16 UTC
@ross so for an actually useful solar, you need a higher wattage panel than you'd think, hooked up to a leisure battery that has a decent capacity so that the actually sunny days we get fill the battery quickly, and then the battery capacity sustains the devices for the weeks between good strong charge up days.
Replies (1)
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@ric@mastodon.qweb.co.uk 2026-04-20 10:21
@ross my project currently sits in the wine cellar but after numerous upgrades to both the panel and battery, I ended up with a 100W panel and an 85Ah battery for a single Pi. It worked perfectly during the summer, but as autumn set in, even this didn't get enough sun time to top the battery up before the Pi fully drained it. I plan to eventually add a wind turbine and somehow dynamically switch between wind and solar for the battery charge.