George Eccleston - Solar & 12 Volt Power For Beginners

ISBN-13:978-1974432981

ISBN-10:197443298X

Copyright2017 George Eccleston

Produced in the United Kingdom

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission of the author or publisher.

Disclaimer

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Whats all shriveled up and hangs from the ceiling?

A really bad electrician!

The electrician joke is awful but it does have a serious side to it. Electricity can be very dangerous, especially the electrics in your house. Household electricity is called AC or alternating current and because it operates at a very high current its dangerous for anyone but a qualified electrician to touch. Its also highly illegal for an unqualified person to meddle with, so keep those pesky little fingers of yours away from household AC electricity (you have been warned). You are however allowed to mess around with DC or direct current as its otherwise known. That can be in your house, caravan, boat etc, and no one will tell you off!

What can you use DC for?

W ithin reason anything that you are using AC electricity for now. You can use it for phones, games consoles, fridges, tools, televisions, stereos, the list goes on. And if its for an off grid situation DC power is an absolute must. Using DC power isnt difficult to learn. In fact after reading this book you should be able to construct your basic system in less than two hours. It will give you a real sense of achievement and done properly it could even reduce your energy bills, in an off grid setup you can eliminate your electric bills totally.

Contents

Chapter1-What you really need to know

Chapter2-Choosing your batteries

Chapter3-The fundamentals of an electrical circuit

Chapter4-Its time to buy some wires!

Chapter5-Choose your wires the easy way

Chapter6-Connecting wires & wire connectors

Chapter7-Bus bars

Chapter8-Fuses & fuse boxes

Chapter9-Integrated bus bars & fuse boxes

Chapter10-Basic on/off switches

Chapter11-Choosing 12 volt light bulbs

Chapter12-Wiring multiple devices on one circuit

Chapter13-Joining it all together

Chapter14-12 volt power & USB sockets

Chapter15-Voltmeters & ammeters

Chapter16-Basic battery power without solar

Chapter17-Charging your batteries

Chapter18-Choosing a solar panel

Chapter19-Solar charge controllers

Chapter20-Fitting a solar panel

Chapter21-Inverters and AC machines

Chapter22-Finished system up and running

Chapter23-Its your turn now

Chapter 1

T his book is designed to give you the exact information that you need to build your own 12 volt solar power system, without all the unnecessary waffle that most other authors pad their books out with. The books I started learning from went into depth about batteries types, wet cell, Gel cell, absorbed glass mat, how they were made, what they are suitable for, where to store them etc. But none of these books actually said outright that the best battery I should buy for my 12 volt system was a 12 volt deep cycle marine type battery, AKA a leisure battery. You require one or more of these batteries to build an off grid 12 volt solar electric systems.

Unless you have specific needs such as being on a boat out at sea or you need the battery mounted on its side the rest of the information is superfluous at the moment and would waste an hour or two of your time reading about it. The last thing you need to do is read 500 or a 1000 words detailing the internal workings of a battery, just to be told at the end of the chapter Oh by the way, you should be using a 12 volt deep cycle battery! The information about the other batteries you dont need to know yet if ever!

Right now you are reading this book in order to learn how to build a 12 volt system not how to build a 12 volt battery. Anything else that you need to know about battery construction can be easily found on the internet for free. In this book will only learn what you need to know in order to get your system built and functioning in as short a time frame as possible. Everything you need to know for this purpose is here in this book. Any information you dont need to know (the waffle) such as how batteries are constructed or how to make a 12 volt drill from a windscreen motor etc, has been left out! This will save you hours of reading information that you dont actually need to know making you learn things faster and it will stick in your memory better.

Chapter 2

S ome people will be tempted to use a car battery as it is cheaper to buy. Car batteries are really good at giving out huge wads of power to start your car, but you dont need massive amounts of power in short bursts in order to power your 12 volt devices. You need a battery that is good at giving lower levels of power over a long period of time to power lights and laptops etc. A car battery will do it for a short time but its not recommended. The life of a battery like this isnt going to be great & you will find yourself replacing them fairly quickly. This is why they are not recommended for your 12 volt system.

A 12 volt sealed Deep Cycle battery, AKA Marine Boat Battery, AKA leisure battery, should be your battery of choice. This is the ideal choice for an off grid system. Its a bit more expensive and its not good at giving out huge wads of power to start cars, but it is excellent for long slow usage to power lights, inverters, laptops etc. And it will last much, much longer than a car battery, if treated properly and looked after. So this is the type of battery I personally would recommend for your basic 12 volt solar power system.