I have been thinking about solar energy and wanted to see exactly how difficult it was to set up a DIY solar powered shed that was off the grid.  I started small,  I bought a 100 Watt solar panel system,  a deep cycle 12 v 35Ah (amp-hour) battery, and a BESTEK 1000w 110v Inverter all from amazon.com.

The 1000 watt power inverter was overkill, but it wasn’t that much more expensive then the 500 watt and I wanted to leave myself open to be able to add another solar panel and/or batter to the system therefore generating and storing more power.

Installation was fairly simple,  I just mounted the solar panel to the shed roof and ran the wires into the shed.

The charging controller that comes with the solar panel kit is ok, if I was going to get more serious with solar, I would invest in a better one that displayed more information.  Anyway, the directions clearly state to connect the battery to the charging controller first.  I went to Home Depot and bought 2 pieces of  8 gauge wire (one red and one black) each 4 feet long.  I also bought some ends to crimp onto the wire so I would have a nice connection to the battery.  The controller states you can connect up to 8 gauge wire, but I had a tough time connecting the 8 gauge wire to the controller, and had to remove a few of the strands at the end of the wire to make it fit inside the controller’s terminals.

I then hooked up the solar panel to the controller and it immediately started charging the batter.  The sun was behind a cloud, but it still charged the battery.

I have an outside light hooked up to the shed with a 60W equivalent LED bulb that rated 9.5watts.  So far the light comes on at night and shuts off in the morning.  approximately 12 – 13 hours.  In the morning, the battery voltage is down to 11.4 under the load of the light, and the battery light on the charging controller is orange indicating low battery.  So I will have to look into how much I am depleting the battery each night.  It looks like the power inverter consumes 10 watts of power when idle, so I assume it consumes a little more when running the light, but since the light is only 9.5 watts, I don’t think it’s much more.

I also have a 60 Watt light florescent light inside the shed that I was able to turn on in the morning even with the low battery indicator on.

UPDATE: 9-24-2014

Since the inverter consumes 10 Watts of power while turned on, I decided to keep the inverter turned off unless I need 120v power for some reason,  Like the main lights, or something else.  For the outside light, I decided to try a Screw Base 12 Volt DC 5.6 Watt RV Camper Low Voltage LED Light Bulb that fits a standard fixture, and just wire the outside light into the 12v light connection of the charging controller.  The charging controller can be set to turn this light on for 1 – 15 hours after the panel no longer are generating electricity which means its dark outside.   I will add pictures of that once the bulb arrives and the fixture is wired to the 12volts.

UPDATE: 10-3-2014

Rewired the outside light so that it was wired into the Charging Controller.  Set the controller to turn the light off 6 hours after the sun goes down..  The light is nice and bright and works great.  Only consumes 5-6 Watts for 6 hours so only using 30-36 watts of stored power.

Here is some battery voltage – % charged information from Balmain Battery Discount Store

 

UPDATE: 12-30-2014

So far so good..  Everything seems to be working well.  I am now considering putting the shed on the grid by trenching power to the shed, and then using a Grid Tie Inverter, This way I would not have to maintain batteries, and I can use more of the electricity I generate instead of most of it going to waste when the battery is already fully charged.