By operating a solar miniUCS Elastix

By operating a solar miniUCS Elastix

In a previous post, where miniUCS Elastix server connected to a common AA batteries , and had raised the idea of plugging into a small solar panel to power it (Augusto Camillo recognition by the idea). After all, if you could do with ordinary batteries, was something logical that would work with a solar panel and a larger capacity battery. The idea is to take advantage of low power consumption miniUCS.

So I ordered a solar kit of those who sell online. The kit consists of only two components: the actual panel and a charge controller. The miniUCS input is DC (Direct Current) and you do not need an investor to raise the voltage to 120VAC (voltage used in Ecuador) but that can be connected directly to the output of the charge controller.

What did I care is to order a kit that operates at 12 volts because they are usually in multiples of 12 volts, and 24 volts exceeds the range of input voltage that is 7VDC miniUCS to 18VDC.

It should be noted that I also had to get a battery to store energy, then obviously the panel will not work at night and need our server operates 24 × 7.

Because connections are relatively simple (the kit comes with a little diagram that explains everything) I did not want to limit this article to a set of photos of how I connected the cables and all that, but to explain how to calculate the capacity of the panel and the bank batteries to use these calculations to connect any computer, not just a miniUCS. In this way I think this post brings more.

To begin with we need to know how much power calculations consume miniUCS. While the box is marked with a power rating of 14Watts decided to measure the actual consumption and it turns out the call load miniUCS not consume 8.3 Watts, so for purposes of this article I will use 10 Watts to have some slack and to facilitate calculations in favour of being more didactic.

This means that in an entire day our miniUCS consumes 10 Watts x 24 hours, i.e. 240 WH (Watt-hour). This is the amount of energy that we supply every day, since WH is a measure of energy.

Up here, if someone missed a bit, I recommend Wikipedia refreshing before continuing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel

In short, we need to find a solar panel in a day we provide 240 WH or more, so that our miniUCS operate without interruption.

The downside is that solar panels are not labelled with the daily energy they produce, because that depends on where we install. If you installed it in a place where "paste" a lot of sun, produce more power, while if we installed it in a place that always goes cloudy, produce less energy.

The only thing we know with a solar panel is its rated output. This means that the panel was tested under certain controlled conditions and known, and under these conditions produced such nominal amount of power call.

Luckily there are maps (and charts) that tell us, depending on what city you are, the factor by which we multiply the power rating of the panel, to get the energy they produce every day. These maps usually provide us with minimum, maximum and average. The right thing is to use the average value for calculations.

Here I share a link where you will find a table with the factors corresponding to the most popular cities in USA.

Hours of sunshine per day in USA

In case you want to use maps (well maybe it is difficult to find data for the city where we live), the maps look like the following figure.

The maps as above is usually called insulation maps and colour depending on which it is shaded the area where you will install the solar panel  you can find the factor for which we have to multiply the wattage of our panel for the daily amount of energy it generates.

Anyway, to make a long story for my city always has worked well using a factor of 4. Therefore, to calculate the nominal power of the photovoltaic panel divided the amount of daily energy (previously calculated in 240Wh) for the factor of 4 and get 60 Watts. This means that you need a 60 watt solar panel for the miniUCS is on 24 hours a day. If less hours, it is a rule of 3 and ready ... Interesting right?