My solar powered indoor led lighting

Hi I thought I would take a minuet to post some pictures of my indoor LED lighting system. I live in a rather small condo so I don't have a lot of square footage to light up. I have been using these lights for about a year and a half now. My wife and I have been loving them. They are not extremely bright to the point you would want to read a book by them. But they do provide enough light for hanging around the house and seeing what is going on without feeling like you need to turn on a regular light. They also seem to be somewhat soothing and create a nice mood in the home.







Each room has it's own control box which allows for 3 different brightness settings using 2 switches to do a binary counting so that you can achieve 4 different switch positions with 2 switches. The lowest setting is a night light which allows us to go to the bathroom or get a drink in the middle of the night without having to turn on any additional lights or ruin your night vision. In the image you can see that there is actually 3 switches. The 3rd goes to a 12V 13W compact fluorescent screwed in the fixture above the dining table. The controller box is fed with 10aug wire coming from two golf cart batteries in an outdoor shed. The two 6V batteries are in series and provide 220Ah of storage. For safety reasons there is a 10A fuse located at the battery. On the pictured controller box you can also see 2 white fuse holders coming out of the bottom which are loaded 2A fuses. One for the lights and one for the battery chargers. Coming out of the side of the controller box are 2 power pole connectors for accessing 12V DC. The item that is plugged in to it is a car stereo which I have mounted in the entertainment center. The solar panels I have generating the power are a hodge-podge of small to medium sized odds and ends I have put together mostly from Ebay auctions and are only equivalent to about an 90 watt panel. The highest charge current I normally see is about 5 Amps. It seems to be more than adequate for the job. They power all the LED lights, the compact fluorescent, the battery chargers, the stereo in the front room, a small clock radio and a small LCD TV in the office, sometimes my laptop and sometimes an inverter running a Dremel or drill press in the back yard. The batteries are almost always toped off and I think I am producing more than enough for my needs.







I am using 2 different types of led. One room has 3 low dome Luxeons in series. With the highest current being about 500mA, mid setting about 250mA and the night light being about 20mA. This is the first set I built long before we moved here. They ran of a 12V wall wort at our previous residence.







The LED's lighting up the room in the first picture are these ones. They are kinda unique in that they run basically off of 12V each. They are called the UFO Starfish LED can be gotten from Quicker. They rated as a 1.5 watt LED and are basically 18 smaller led dies possibly similar to what is in 5mm LED's arranged in a six legged star pattern with each leg being made of 3 series connected LED's. This brings the Vf to about 10V so and by adding in my case a 11 Ohm resistor they run great of my battery storage system. On hight each led gets about 150mA. They are usually always on the night light setting even during the day and then medium or high for 3-4 hours a day. The switch box pictured drives 4 Starfish in the front room and 1 in the bathroom. I also have two in another room controlled by there own separate switch box. My experience with the Starfish is mixed but over all good. It is really nice to be able to connect any number of LED's in parallel to 12V DC without having to match up multiples of 3 series LED' like you have to do with Luxeons. The color is quite a but more blue than my Luxeons and although I have not had any fail on me in the 18 or sow months that I have had them up but my brother had one I gave him fail within a few weeks. I do notice that sometimes on low drive currents sometimes not all of the legs of the star will illuminate and then other days they will. I would not recommend driving them any more than 150mA. I like the convenience and larger object area of the Starfish. But think the Luxeons availability, reliability, and color makes it a good choice as well.

:candle: Sounds like you got a real good idea. Buddy !! I did something like your idea about 2 years ago in my house I turn it on every once in a while. A 12v battery backup system with 12 led #3156 for vehicles each light fixture in certain rooms have 2 -12 leds bulbs. I bought them on Ebay. They are bright about 6 bucks each. I only use them for blackouts. I should try upgrading like you with solar panels. Bet you save lots money on energy bills!! Good luck

Fred

good idea of using extruded alumium as heat sinks....would it be better of you stuck a cpu fan to the cloest specs inside the aluminum for overdrive applications?


Geez, if I can do that I'd mod my house anyday...only till I have enough money in the bank to go buy a Roadtrek, then mod out all the 12V RV lights into LEDs..

a plan I wish to initiate 20 years from now

let's see some pics of the solar setup.

I have received PM inquires about my system and how to go about beginning to set one up. I figured I would respond here in case anyone else had questions.




In my opinion this is not a situation where I would pay a premium price for a high flux premium binned LED. I also find that I personally prefer the light from a slightly larger object area. Like a low dome emitter or the Starfish. A high dome 1 or 3 watt Luxeon has such a small point source of light that it creates very sharp shadows. This small point source of light is good if you are trying to focus the light like in a flashlight. It is kind of the difference between a clear glass versed a frosted glass light bulb in your house. Think of it as having one or two bare light bulbs hanging from the celling which would you prefer to have?




One option that can be used to diffuse the light is to put a white film canister over the LED. My brother does this and likes it a lot. Even if you do lose some light as it goes through the canister.




This is the best price I have ever seen on low dome Luxeons emitters. They are $1.25 each while they last. The Star Fishes LED's are here.




To solve the problem of operation on 12V you will need the Star Fish with a resistor, 3 Luxeons in series along with a resistor, or a step down DC/DC converter like a Down Boy to be able to drive a single Luxeon of a higher voltage.




You can use Luxeon Star which have a small heat sink on the back of the LED or emitters which are just the LED and will need to be heat sunk to a heat sink. You will probably want to still heat sink a Star to something larger. I prefer Extruded Aluminum square tubing for this application and it can be easily found at hardware stores. I glue my emitters on with a mix of 5 min epoxy and that white heat sink compound. But Acrylic Silver/Aluminum is good stuff also.




If you want to do anything with flashlights just do some reading, ask some questions, and get some parts to play with. I didn't just throw it all up one day and say I am done for ever. I tried several different things and I am sure I will probably change things sometime before I die. So have fun finding what works for you, that is what this hobby is all about.

Cool system. Thanks for sharing the info and pictures.

Brlux said:

To solve the problem of operation on 12V you will need the Star Fish with a resistor, 3 Luxeons in series along with a resistor, or a step down DC/DC converter like a Down Boy to be able to drive a single Luxeon of a higher voltage.

Click to expand...

your referring to a current limiting resistor?

Yes. You will need ot play around to get the corect resistor value for your LED's. I have 3 different resistor valuse in the switch box for setting the 3 different brightnes settings.

Here you go this is my mismatch of panels. In the back you can see my Ringo Ranger, 2 meter antenna which reminds me my Ham radio is also running off the solar power system as well.

Brlux said:

Yes. You will need ot play around to get the corect resistor value for your LED's. I have 3 different resistor valuse in the switch box for setting the 3 different brightnes settings.

Click to expand...

the correct current limiting resistor can be found given the driving voltage and the required voltages with the required amps. for different settings you would have to play around. I would imagine that these LED's do not have a linear response curve. or do they?

but anyway, thats kinda neat.
I was thinking something on the lines of a beacon powered by maybey a D cell or 2 or possibly a bigger 6v lantern cell.
I could then turn them on and set them anywhere in the house as opposed to nailing them down to ceilings and running wires around. its more like a power outage light for long hauls.

possbily even at campfires to replace the lantern itself.

Yes the Vf does seem to have a linear response to drive current. But because each led has a little different Vf. And then there is the resistance of the wire connecting the LED's which for my 24 Awg wire is about 1 ohm per 33 feet. Your battery voltage can vary quite widely between about 14-11V. So yes you could calculate it but you will still need to play with it a bit. Doing the calculations will give you a good point to start trying.

Very cool setup. I'm envious. Doing a solar project is one of my to-do's but lags behind all the honey do's

Those looks like ancient ARCO 32W modules...

Whats the ouput average ?


How big is your battery pack on your installation?

The two horizontal ones on the right are Solar Power Corporation panels. Solar Power Corporation was the first company to make commercially available solar panels. They are probably putting out about 30-35 watts each now. These two panels are probably older than I am.




The two middle ones are made by Pennwalt Automatic power. They are backed with an extruded aluminum heat sink. They were manufactured incorrectly with 9 of the cells installed with the polarity reversed. I had to break the glass to get to the incorrect connections and you can see the wires I used to correct the problem. In the process I lost some of the cells so the voltage on those panels is a bit lower. Originally they were probably a 20-25W panels but now they probably closer to 10-15W each.





The lower one on the left is a 10W Siemens panel and the upper one is a 3.2W Volts Wagon panel.

Wow! nice setup.

Interesting, chances are the modules are older than the cells we use today, so my guess would be that there wasn't a bypass diode under each cell and their connected by a simple pin to pin series circuit...

I do not know of any modern solar panels that use bypass diodes under each individual cell. When modern panels say they have bypass diodes it is usually just two in the junction box. Usually panels are broken down to two series circuits. So that you can get two voltages out of the panels. Usually so you can set the panels up for 6/12 volt systems or larger panels for 12/24 volt systems. Usually you use your panels for the higher voltage and there is a bypass diode across each of the 2 series strings. This allows for the the panels to still be able to produce some power if one side or corner of the panel is shaded. For a single panel system this will not really help much because your voltage will be drooping basically in half. It is more effective on higher voltage systems. It would be great if they put diodes under each cell to help protect you from localized shading but I haven't seen a panel that does.

Super setup Brlux! :thumbsup: I wish I had the know-how to put something like that together as we have tons of sunshine here too (when it's not raining anyway).

For efficiency's sake, you might take a look at these parts, which are in the +70lm/W range:
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1488384

Also check out their line part, if you don't need to direct the light, you end up with what looks to be 3x the lumens in a ceiling bounce, vs. a K2 U bin, and still using 30% less power.

lol...I said cell?

Ones I've seem specially from BP or solarex have bypass diodes per every two rows vertical to the module and two per rows [horizontal] on the side...

I read it from a few different sources...one of few I can get off the top of my head would be from Home power magazine um..lemme find it, oh yes the June/July Issue from last year.. P86

Issue 107[size=-1]


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