Will It Solar? - 20" Box Fan
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- In this episode, we'll test a common box fan to see if it can be powered by our modest solar test setup. While you can't really power air conditioners with solar power unless you have a ton of them, you can power fans to keep you cool. But how much power do these fans use and can we get it to run properly with our solar equipment? Let's find out.
I built a 16 inch box fan and runt it directly off a large solar panel. The fan is 12 volt automotive fan.
THANK YOU FOR THIS! Exactly what I want to do for my horse's out door shed/run in to help keep them comfortable in the heat and keep flies off them!
You are welcome! Good luck on your project and thanks for watching.
I’m doing the exact same thing!
Awesome video. Exactly what I'm looking for.
Thanks, Henry! Glad you liked it.
That is a pretty good option to use solar panels but solar panels batteries and inverters are expensive sometimes I think the cheapest option would be to go for a large solid metal battery powered fan like a geek air cf2 it comes in three sizes 10 in 12 in and 16 in and the largest one the 16 in is only $150 on Amazon and it can run for up to 24 hours on low so that would actually be a cheaper option then spending $500 on a solar panel battery and inverter
There is another video here on yt that uses a 12v radiator fan, negating the necessity for battery and inverter, though you can still use a battery.
Thank you!!! I'm looking for a way to power a fan while camping. This helped a lot!
You are welcome. Thanks for watching!
Thank you for how to set things up to run a fan . Very helpful thanks again
You are welcome. Thanks for watching!
Done this. I hook up ciglighter inverter, run extension cord to room use my fan all night.
Nice, good job!
Excellent video and informative!
Thanks for the video! I found it informational. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, will do!
Awesome video! Very simple test
Thanks! That was what I was going for.
Very good video
Thanks for sharing.
Suggestion ...in a power outage, making food last
ThePrayerHotline Good idea. I kind of have a solution for that already with my homemade, DIY refrigerator but I can put some thought into some other ways to do it with solar or other methods. Thanks!
LDSreliance i know exactly what to do.
Are you familiar with the amonia gas refrigerator? Before they were using freon, they were using amonia.
The refrigerator has a small flame lit and that heats up a heat exchange
amonia boils and goes around the system pretty much the same way as the new system.
So here you collect the heat of the sun and focus it on an pillar where on top of the pillar is the heat exchange.
On a power outage, the food will spoil fast if not refrigerated.
I hope this will help a lot of people.
At night time, you heat up the heat exchange with a heating element powered by the battery that you had charged during the daytime with your solar panel
God bless everyone
ThePrayerHotline
I have read about ammonia refrigeration and the only reason I haven't done it yet is that it is slightly dangerous. Ammonia gas is very toxic and the system has to be pressurized and it can potentially blow up if you don't seal it right. I would rather leave that kind of stuff in the hands of someone that has better skills than I do!
Ammonia absorption gas/propane fired fridges are safe, have no moving parts, work very well. They are expensive as a 20 cu ft unit costs about $1800 these days. Some older motor homes used propane fired refrigerators. We had one in a 27 foot Dodge Travco.
Just what I was looking for.
Good! Glad it helped you.
Great video I was thinking of doing this we just had hurricane hermine hit South Florida it were out of power for a week and I use the fan at night with the generator daytime was brutal
Thanks! I am sorry you had to go through that. It pays to spend some time thinking about what you would do in a disaster scenario so that you can stay alive, healthy, and as comfortable as possible. A simple 100W solar panel system could at least run a small fan that could mean the difference between life and death in a situation like that.
If you buy a solar kit it's expensive but I run a window ac, 16 cf fridge an TV on solar kit "I bought separately" for 1200$ which isn't to bad since energy cost for what I run would be like 170$ a month
I'm sorry but no one is running a window air conditioner for any meaningful length of time on $1200 worth of solar.
Why not just do like I did and build a 20inch 12Vdc floor fan... I used a linear actuator motor out of a recliner that used 24Vdc but I'm using 12Vdc to run it at half speed... It draws about 0.98A-1A and will blow things off the table at 12ft... Lot more efficient than using an inverter...
Thx
You are welcome. Thanks for watching!
I have a similar setup but my batteries drain really quick. 15-20 minute quick. Trying to determine why. I have 2 100watt panels connected to 2 27DC Marine/RV battery using 2 box fans like yours. Using a Bestek 400 watt power inverter. One of the batteries is brand new and the other a year old but charged. When I turn them on, they immediately start to drain. I have a different solar charge controller and wondering if that might be the issue or maybe the power inverter is overkill. Are the panels supposed to charge even though there is a small load on them?
Great video I have two questions can you run the fan with a solar panel only without the battery and also can you run the fan with the inverter and a battery but without a solar panel thanks for your answer
Good questions. Unfortunately, you will have a hard time running a motor driven load like this directly from a solar panel because of the large startup current required to spin up a motor. It can pull 5-10x more current to start for 1-2 seconds than it uses while it is running. So in this instance, it used 50ish Watts on low setting but it might have taken 250-500 Watts to start the motor for a brief second. That is why you really need a battery or large capacitor to make it work.
As for the second question, you can run the fan off an inverter connected to a battery without the solar panel. It will deplete the battery, though, obviously over time.
LDSreliance oh thanks so much for your reply. So in a pinch you could run off your car battery with inverter. Thanks
Yes you could but a car battery will not be able to run a big load for very long. Remember, a starter (car) battery is like a sprinter and a deep cycle battery is like a marathoner.
@@borg386 You can easily power USB fans from portable folding solar panels. I suggest getting a larger panel because they work even if it`s cloudy and most have multiple output ports that can power 12v or USB fans while charging a power bank or 12v battery.
this was great, aside from wanting to do this for my family for out hurricane preps i need to do this for a chicken coop for ventilation for the summer. I wish you had some step by step instructions.
I have step by step instructions on how to set up a small solar panel system: ua-cam.com/video/IKW9jhSB44c/v-deo.html
I would look at this DIY solar panel kit, which will be about the right size to power your fan for 6-8 hours per day in the summer: kit.com/LDSreliance/beginner-solar-diy-kit-100-watt
Then all you need to do is connect your choice of fan to the inverter.
Wado !
ENJOY....THE SIMPLE LIFE
Never work in Pittsburgh lol maybe I dunno. It's Markey as shit here though
Is your smaller inverter modified sine wave??
Yes it is. Just a cheapo $20 car inverter.
How much for the inverter and solar panel...is the battery necessary?
Yes, a battery is required to be able to use power from solar (unless you have a grid tied inverter). A 100W solar panel and a small inverter will run you about $150-200 or so to operate a fan like this (not counting the battery you will need).
with this small set up how long do you think it will power the fan for ?
This video was a long time ago. I don't remember without re-watching the video. Typically these kinds of box fans don't use much power, though, so even a small battery can run one for hours.
@@LDSreliance niiice really appreciate the response, definitely want too look into this for like a small shed experiment 🤔🙏🏼
If you have DeWalt, Milwaukee, or Makita power tools you should look at this inverter that I sell on my web store. It would be very convenient for running fans in a shed. I'll link you to the medium size one but there is a bigger and a smaller version.
store.ldsreliance.com/products/millertech-18-20v-600w-edison-pure-sine-wave-power-inverter-for-power-tool-batteries-186-i
thanks for the vid, what if i want to sleep at night for this can you explain battery storage solar recharge stuff. how much it cost for a setup like this thanks david
Yes, I have numerous videos on solar and how it works. I would recommend checking out some of them. But to give you the short answer, to run this particular fan on low all night (8 hours) you would need 200W of solar panels and 75Ah of battery storage. That is a rough estimate since I don't know where you live and how much sun you get. That also assumes that your solar panels got full sun all day (it wasn't cloudy).
thank you for the quick reply/ i'll check out you site now.. sorry guess i was being lazy
No worries. I just can't possibly explain in a comment everything you need to know to spec a system like that. Poke around and watch some of the other videos and if you have specific questions I have no problem answering when I have time.
How do I figure what my 70 watt ceiling fan would use in energy to build a solar powered cabin
Well, it would be difficult to measure its real world energy consumption unless you have an AC clamp meter and are willing to take the cover off your breaker box of your house. Short of that, you can just estimate using 70W as the AC load, then add in 20%-25% loss from an inverter and battery and then multiply that by how many hours per day you would run the fan. So 70W *1.25=87.5 and if you ran the fan 8 hours each day you would consume 700 Watt hours each day from that fan.
Will a capacitor help with the power of the fan?
It can, for sure.
Please provide me and your viewers with the brand name and type of charger controller you used in this video; is your charge controller a PWM or a MPPT type? What brand? Where did you buy it? Please provide me and your viewers with the brand name and model of the inverter you used in this video. Where did you buy it? Please provide me and your viewers with the brand and type of 100 watt solar panel you used in this video. Where did you buy it? Is it a monocrytalline panel or a polycrystalline panel? This video is potentially very important for people who are very heat sensitive and may experience temporary loss of public utility electricity. Thank you.
The charge controller used in this test rig is a MorningStar SunSaver 10A LVD Charge Controller (amzn.to/2TnaM93). I love these little guys as they are impervious to dust and moisture and are super high quality. They do cost a bit more than cheap Chinese controllers but I would trust this one over anything in the $30-50 range any day.
Don't know a damn thing about this but I'd like to build it for my chicken coop. Can you make a video on how to make this step by step.
The closest I have to that for solar is the solar for beginners series: ua-cam.com/play/PLbKwoGlXEWaosNNfK2l4BwS2kzE2tgVcC.html
The first couple videos shows you all the components you will need and how they work together.
@@LDSreliance oh thanks man 🤙
You are welcome!
great video... how about no battery?
+Uptown Mike I showed this in another video but basically the charge controller will not work without a battery connected. You also can't connect a solar panel directly to an inverter or load without causing problems. However, you can tell by the voltages what is happening and how much the load is taxing the solar panel even though there is a battery connected. Thanks for watching!
Thank you bro. I want to do this at my school. So i was really wondering what I can or can't do. How is it in the winter?
Uptown Mike Winter you will get about half the power or so from the solar panel.
I just wanted to test it out at my school. So i was looking at the beginner things for solar power. thanks man
SO WHAT IF I LIVED IN AN APARTMENT? WHATS THE BEST THING TO GET DURING A HURRICANE?
If it is only for emergencies you can get a portable solar panel and a solar generator. I have reviewed several solar generators on my channel in the past. Just keep in mind you can't run a fan all day long with a small system like this. And an air conditioner is out of the question.
LDSreliance OK THANK YOU
LDSreliance CAN I PUT THE SOLAR PANEL IN MY WINDOW INSTEAD OF GOING OUTSIDE?
No. Windows are designed to filter out some of the solar radiation.
You could possibly add a window mount that would hold the panel out side the window i would make sure it wasnt gonna come off though and hit some one below
Let me ask it the other way. What is the least wattage solar panel that could power the box fan on "high?"
If I were running the fan directly from the charge controller and solar panel with no battery hooked up at all I would probably want to use a 120 watt solar panel minimum.
Will a 40 watt fan run off a 100 watt solar panel without a battery.I don't care if it runs at night.Thank you
Bruce Kefauver
Yes, that would work fine during the direct sunlight portion of the day (7-8 hours in the summer and 3-4 in the winter).
LDSreliance Thank you.Now i can finally use this panel for something.
Bruce Kefauver
You are welcome! Thanks for watching and please consider giving me a thumbs up on this video and/or subscribing to my channel.
gr8 vid
ahaya1 Thanks! I appreciate that.
my pleasure my friend,have you had the pleasure of subscribing to our great channel yet,.//////??
ahaya1 I just did. Pretty interesting. We don't homeschool our kids but I can definitely appreciate being free of society and teaching kids the right things and living life on your terms. Very cool.
thankyou my friend,we love u, adam and lynsey
It's 🥵 IN TEJAS
Hot? Not yet.
use it to power a solar wind turbine lol.
Haha, I don't think that will actually yield a net positive energy gain.
@@LDSreliance darn.... lol.
bro, loose the battery.
Why? That is a required part of an off-grid solar setup.
You said will "it" solar? I thought you meant box fan. Not battery powered box fan.
But a solar panel by itself is not a solar system. By that line of thinking I was cheating using an inverter, too. When I started the series I did connect a few 12V DC loads directly to a solar panel but then I talked about how that can ruin devices and cause problems. You really have to have a panel, charge controller, inverter, and battery to properly use solar (unless it is grid tied).