Revision as of 13:09, 30 May 2008

Power!

Lighting

Traditional rope light:

• 5.5 watts per foot (825 watts for the 150' roll)
• 7 amps per 150' roll

LED rope light:

• .73 watts per foot (37 watts per 49.2' roll)
• ? amps per 49.2' roll

Batteries

Battery ratings are amp-hour which gives you the constant amps output for 20 hours. A battery rated at 30amp-hours will give you 1.5 amps for 20 hours. AGM (a nice, safe, lead-acid type) runs about $100-$200 for a battery in the 30-55 amp-hour range.

Resources: BatteryStuff.com

Solar

The solar setup has a lot of options. We can have multiple batteries charged by one solar setup and one battery may very well last a couple of nights depending on the lighting load.

If we build our own from pieces we'll need solar panel, charge controller and a battery.

Self-contained, prebuilt system:
Apprx $900 for an 80 watt solar system 80 watt setup
Approx $550 for a 40 watt solar system 40 watt setup

Solar panels:
A quick look around ebay shows a 65 watt panel for $305 (includes charge controller) so add a battery from above and that's $400-ish.

Wind

This will be experimental. I have the plans for a diy wind mill and plan on getting the parts together this weekend or next. Home Depot anyone?

Dirty Gasoline