Power from the sun to run my hydroponic setup....

So now I am going to start testing how long I can run a 30 watt led via inverter via my 12 Amp hour 12 V lithium battery I salvaged. I hope to use it via hydroponics. I have added a wifi switch that pulls 2 watts of power that allows me to control the lights from home automation. If battery gets too low the charge controller will switch off and automagically reset when power goes over a threshold.

Mart Hale wrote:So now I am going to start testing how long I can run a 30 watt led via inverter via my 12 Amp hour 12 V lithium battery I salvaged. I hope to use it via hydroponics. I have added a wifi switch that pulls 2 watts of power that allows me to control the lights from home automation. If battery gets too low the charge controller will switch off and automagically reset when power goes over a threshold.

Interesting. Is the wifi switch not powered by AC? How big is the inverter? Usually one sized to run at 50-75 percent load would be at its most efficient profile. Brand new you are looking at 144 watts in the pack so with age and losses... A good real world experiment. Probably 3 hours.

You better pick up those screws before your wife sees them and replace the empty case to her vaccum cleaner battery right where you found it!

David Baillie wrote:

Mart Hale wrote:So now I am going to start testing how long I can run a 30 watt led via inverter via my 12 Amp hour 12 V lithium battery I salvaged. I hope to use it via hydroponics. I have added a wifi switch that pulls 2 watts of power that allows me to control the lights from home automation. If battery gets too low the charge controller will switch off and automagically reset when power goes over a threshold.

Interesting. Is the wifi switch not powered by AC? How big is the inverter? Usually one sized to run at 50-75 percent load would be at its most efficient profile. Brand new you are looking at 144 watts in the pack so with age and losses... A good real world experiment. Probably 3 hours.

I am running the wifi switch off a secondary solar system, it pulls 2 - 3 watts of power per my Killa watt meter, and yes the wall wart runs off AC for the wifi switch.


I put a 25 watt load on the unit   and I am guessing it ran for 5 hours.     ( not sure when the sun stopped supplying power )  it stopped at 10 PM last night the invert stopped at 9.5 V   it returned to a resting voltage of 10.5 V    which is great the cut off voltages is 9.0 V


I know the pack has at least 10 amp hours as I measured that with  2 small fans running for over 18 hours to a voltage of 10.8 V as the final cut off.

It looks like if I put my second one of these in parallel with this I will be able go get  8-10 hours of run time  That should be a good number of hours to have light for plants.


I have this idea in my mind of growing the plants underground so that they stay cool thru the summer heat.      

frank li wrote:You better pick up those screws before your wife sees them and replace the empty case to her vaccum cleaner battery right where you found it!

Yes Dear,