Category: DIY
-
Solid State Solar Electric Heating Elements
Background Update: further research has been conducted into this topic, and it has been very fruitful. Videos showing some of the latest results are posted on this page. I’ve spent a lot of time working with resistance style heating elements to extract heat from solar panel arrays. Uses include space heating, cooking food and heating…
-
Bateria Power 20A MPPT Solar Charge Controller review / bench test
Recently a company called Bateria Power offered to send me their 20A MPPT charge controller (SunRock 20pro) for review. I was not even aware it existed, so I decided to give it a try. This unit is really small! It has no fans or moving parts, and appears to be totally sealed with an IP45…
-
Simple Solar Electric space heater conversion project (With Video)
Introduction and Recap of Past Work Over the past several years, I have experimentally heated my home and workshop with custom space heaters converted from AC to Direct DC operation. What I wanted to achieve was to plug my space heaters straight into the solar panels, bypassing inverters, charge controllers and batteries. Plus save wear…
-
Solar PV DC Home Heating PART 3 – engineering and safety devices
PART 1 AND PART 2 | Solar PV DC Heating for Beginners This blog post is a continuation of my Solar Electric Space Heating series. Since 2022 I have been converting commodity AC space heaters to direct Solar PV DC operation. This follow-up blog post has links to all of my video presentations on this…
-
Boiling an Egg with a 100 Watt Solar Panel – Simple Solar Electric Cooking
What can a 100 Watt solar panel actually do? Well, it can boil an egg pretty easily. There are a lot of complicated and expensive ways to cook off of solar. But this is not one of them. One of my favorite ways to use a small solar panel to cook is to simply plug…
-
The Cloud CAN Fail! My low power 12V DC Network Storage Appliance
Background – my private cloud and home datacenter project I believe it’s important to store my computer files on my own network, and not the public cloud – because that can fail at any time. For several years I have operated a small datacenter and home network. It is used to provide “self hosted cloud”…
-
My Portable 18V job site oven project – working prototype
In this article I am presenting a very special and unique DIY prototype project. There is also a video presentation if you prefer, posted below. For years, I believed the need for flexible, multi-voltage mobile small-scale DC cooking appliances would dramatically increase over the next few years; and that there should be more choices on…
-
My Portable Solar Electric Toaster Oven prototype – cooking without batteries!
Hi folks, hope you’re doing well. In what is possibly a first, I am unveiling a new prototype invention – a mini PV solar electric toaster oven. It is lightweight, portable and I think would be fairly cheap to produce. It easily bakes or roasts bread, meat, vegetables and whatever else – all day using…
-
18V tool battery bakes bread! My Mini Oven prototype part 2
Is it possible to bake bread using an 18V Power Tool Battery? Recently, I set out to answer this question. In the back yard I set up a table and connected my mini solar electric PV2L oven to a Ryobi 18V power tool battery with alligator clips. After a few adjustments and a short wait,…
-
My Mini 100 Watt solar electric oven prototype – Simple Solar Cooking!
Can a single 100 Watt 12V solar panel supply enough power to cook or bake food by itself? I’ve been thinking about this question for years. A simple portable electric oven that operates off of such a small amount of power could change everything. Finally, after a long wait, the opportunity came to test the…
-
Cooling Your Shed With Solar Power! Ventilation and Concepts
(Note: there are detailed shed ventilation videos on YouTube and posted down below) Is your shed (or chicken coop, outbuildings, etc.) getting a bit too hot in the summer time? Ventilating and cooling your shed with solar power is a fun project within reach of just about any DIY enthusiast. Believe it or not, a…
-
Risky Experiments in my Solar Workshop – Part 2: lithium cell phone batteries
Some time ago, a friend sent me a box of discarded lithium-ion cell phone batteries he had no use for. They would have ended up in the landfill otherwise. So I started a “side project” in which I intended to experimentally use these batteries for solar power. Normally I use LiFePo4 cells for solar power,…
-
Using Solar Panels and Ohms Law to drive DC loads directly
Hi folks, I’m going to briefly cover some concepts that are helpful to understand when driving loads directly with PV DC solar panels: whether it is a fan, a heating element, an electric pump, hot water heater, and so on. We will use a heating element for this example because it’s simple and has no…
-
Learn About Solar / DC Circuit Breakers in 5 Minutes!
I work with DC circuit breakers quite a lot, and had the urge to make a quick video primer about choosing DC circuit breakers and the various ins and outs of the process. This presentation tries to be beginner friendly while encouraging further investigation and independent research – which is the core part of DIY.…
-
Buying Used or New Solar Panels? A few thoughts…
It’s very common for people to shop used solar panels. I personally have had the experience of buying both used and new, and learned a lot. If you’re interested, I produced a video a while back that includes commentary on this subject (posted to the right). On with the article! Used Solar Panels The most…
-
Best oscilloscope for beginners? FNIRSI-1C5 first look, unpaid review
(The author purchased this item with his own money) If you wish to support the blog, here is an affiliate link to buy the 1C15 on Amazon Having worked on various electronics for 15 years, I never actually owned an oscilloscope. They took up too much room on the workbench and I thought they were…
-
Low Voltage Solar Panels can cook food directly – And why it matters
Did you know it’s possible to cook food directly off low voltage solar panels? No inverter, no high voltages, no battery, no charge controller. It’s technically feasible, and I have done it several times now with prototypes developed in my solar workshop. The simplicity and efficiency of such a setup is nothing short of astounding.…
-
PV to EV – why isn’t this everywhere?
Photovoltaic to Electric Vehicle – why can’t a person plug solar panels straight into his electric car (EV) in the driveway and charge it off the electrical grid? This concept means the car supports direct solar panel input natively, without much effort on the end user’s part. How much more green does it get, if…
Solar Thoughts blog 