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Old 17-10-2017, 09:15 PM
ericwbenson (Eric)
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ericwbenson is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Posts: 209
In Ark we have nominal SOL 2000Ah of battery and 2.1kW of solar panel. The solar panels will degrade, probably faster than what the salesman will tell you!!! The batteries do have a fairly well known degradation curve that depends on DOD and ambient temperature swings (try to minimize both!). IMO you probably have double the battery you really need (not a bad thing at all), and just about right for solar input. It would be a lot easier today than back 7 years ago to have increased the solar power since panels are sooo much cheaper now (so do it if you can), but batteries prices have been pretty stubborn.

The long term average draw is about 2500WHr per day (~100W always on). This is from the computers, network switches, Digital Logger web power boards, weather station, ip cameras, router, microwave radio (or satellite transceiver before that), leak from the AC/DC power adapters, inverter power efficiency and the MPPT charger itself.

When running a dome all night the extra load from the mount, dome motors, TECs etc puts the average daily rate to about 3400Whr (when two domes run it goes to about 4300Whr). Note that everything not required on gets automatically shuts down after dawn flats by ACP (and started up again in the evening 1h before dusk flats).

You will want a BIG inverter, the motors for the domes (or roll-off roof?) need big time current on startup. We tested a 300W and it failed to start the motors., 600W was sorta ok, but if too much other stuff is on at the same time then no good. We settled on a Latronics LS1848 (1800W draw, 5400W peak), Aussie made, it has served us very well.

I made a huge spreadsheet to look at weather variability throughout the year over multiple years (with random numbers to simulate reality) after tabulating the power from all the equipment. The criteria was to stay on with no or minimal solar input for 5-6 days, which was the worst the climate records had shown for that area. The other criteria was to not cycle the batteries more than about 20% DOD during winter (short charging period/long imaging nights). What is your criteria for the worst case scenario?

As you might know it is easier to just over install capacity than to underestimate and have to hack in more stuff later, it also leaves you room for equipment expansion (i.e. other scopes, A/C) later.

HTH,
EB
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