.

I built a screenhouse ~ 9 years ago; on a lot where I ended up building a house. Wanted a place to get away from the bugs, and have a cold beer and some tunes. So, I bought a 40w panel, a controller, and two golf cart batteries. Then, a car stereo for tunes, a 12 vdc tv . . . it continues to grow with LED lights etc . .

10w sounds small; even though you can store a lot of energy in batteries; you can only "refill" them at a 10 w rate; and that's in full sun.

HIGHLY suggest a purchased controller; WITH temperature compensation. I seem to remember paying about $40 for one that can handle more than my 40 watts. You can easily damage batteries by over or under charging . . . . they will freeze in winter if not fully charged . . . you don't want to overcharge them in summer . . . you lose a lot of water. Know that they can hold TREMENDOUS amounts of energy and contain dangerous acid. Fuse everything; and have a main fuse / disconnect AT the battery(ies) for saftey's sake. Then, have some fun with it.

Golf cart batteries will deal with bigger charge / discharge cycles than "deep cycle" or regular auto batteries will. I'm still on my original set of batteries; I'm in central New York state and they're protected ONLY against direct precipitation and sun. Out there in the cold all winter and the heat all summer.

I continue to work on various LED lighting schemes as a pretty serious tinkerer . . . . in fact wrote an article for HomePower magazine years ago about LED lighting. I bought my panel from Sunelco; it was an oddball cast-off so I got it for a decent price. There are lots of places out there to get the stuff. Check out HomePower's web site; lots of good info / reading / links there too . . .

I liked the solar thing so much, that I ended up going PV powered in my house . . . 2800 watt system / grid tied with battery back-up too. The stuff works; even here in pretty cloudy central New York . . . .

Go for it; I'll answer any questions you may have if I can . . . meanwhile; go do some reading @ HomePower magazine . . . .

Bob

Here is a link that might be useful: Home Power magazine . . .

Bob-

Thanks a ton! I like the idea of getting one or two workhorse golfcart batteries. I'll think about going bigger than 10W. All I wanted to provide was enough light to keep my kids and their friends from charging into the house at 2AM becasue they were scared of the dark :) The Idea of hooking up a car stereo or even our old 12VDC car TV [w/tuner] sounds like a winner. I'm not running the TV cable up there for them...

Thanks again! Great advice.

Scott