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| Please Help! I have an electric outdoor fountain. Rather than connecting it to the oulet with those long wires. I am looking powering it with a small solar panel. Anyone know where I'd go to get one? |
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| I would do two things. First, I would replace the pump with one that is 12V. You can go to Wal-Mart to the boating supplies and get a 12V bilge pump. It is red and white and should cost under $15. Then, I'd get the solar panel from www.eaarthsolar.com. E-mail me if you need more info. Lee |
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| I think you will find that the panel you need is larger than ou expect. I am a big fan of solar, use it on my boat and for hot water, but the electrical production is still lower than we wold hope. Colin |
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| It looks like you can get a panel of suitable size for around $300 from the www.earthsolar.com site above. Going with a DC pump would be a good idea given that's what these panels produce, but you'd need some voltage regulation so they didn't burn up your motor when they were putting out power levels other than what your pump motor needs. Probably the easiest way to achieve it would be to use the panel to charge a battery pack and then power the pump off the battery pack. That would also keep the pump going at normal speed on cloudy days or into the evening. You might want to use a timer to shut it off at night so as not to overly drain the batteries. A setup like this would be rather expensive. Given the low power drain of a small AC powered pump, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. It'd surely be a lot easier to just get some UF (underground feeder) cable and just bury your wire and connect it to your home's power. |
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