Solar panel questions please

Kaitlin24

Hi guys im new into solar and i wanted to know me and my boyfriend live on land,and we were wondering what a 400watt solar panel could run we just want to be able to run our 40" tv and some lights.

??

Estragon

Hi and welcome.

We normally start with loads, so we'll want to quantify "40 inch tv and some lights". Do you know how much power the tv and the few lights draw in watts, and how long you want to run them?

Just as an example, say the tv and lights take 200w, and you want to run them for 4 hrs/night, that's 800 watt hours. You could use a couple of golf cart batteries, which would be about 200 amp-hours @12v = 2400 watt hours of storage. Drawing 800 watt-hours from them would need about 1000 watt-hours to be returned in charging with losses. 400 watts of solar panels will likely produce ~300w of power in full sun, so you would need about 4 hours of full sun to recharge, which is a reasonable amount of sun in most places, for most of the year.

To do this, in addition to the solar panels, you would need a charge controller, batteries, and an inverter.