Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinK
I in fact was gust brain storming a bit about this.
se if hydro is going up to 0.13 to 0.15 a kwh, pannels run from $ 100 to $ 200 (for DIY on ebay) it might be intresting.
what will bring it in the $$ is the batery's and converters, however if you would run a frag tank on the pannels, than it would not matter when the light is on ore off, and there must be a way to direct feed the led's from the panel.
this way the led will dim as sun is going down and go back on when there is sun/light, but this would not matter (cant get it more natural than this)
might still need a driver, but keep it as plain as you can, oterwise the $$ ad up to fast.
in fact same thing you can do with 24v DC pumps like I think the tunze.
so when evening comes, pump output would be low to non, and then when sun gets up in the morning, pumps start slowly to turn, and flow is variating during the day as light intensety is going up nd down.
again also with the pumps, you cant get it more naturalthan this (you do still need some pumps to run all day !!, ore go on only 16 houres a day)
all interesting to se how to do this, with as less technology (battery's and inverteres ) as you can
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In reality it's best to run any solar array, micro-hydro, wind powered or combination thereof system with a bank of batteries and control dimming/speed of your lights/pumps by other means. Daylight varies considerably at our latitude and cloud cover will also affect solar array output. Same with wind power, constantly fluctuating. Micro-hydro is probably the only way to supply a consistent amount of power 24/7. Check the link below for a pdf instruction manual for a micro hydro generator made by an Aussie company. Page 14 is a great diagram showing a hybrid system using all 3 technologies. There are also some good explanations of why batteries are pretty much a must have for any such system. Your ideas on having lights & pumps vary output/speed according to varying light conditions during the day are novel & interesting, but I don't think I'd want to leave it completely up to mother nature to do this for me on my marine tank. Great thoughts though.
More & more LED options are becoming available with high power Crees that are simple screw in replacements for the incandescents & CFLs in common use today. It's becoming less of a requirement to build your own LED array as these things come down in price. Much easier to replace a 3 watt screw in bulb when it burns out, than pulling the nice array you spent countless hours building, getting out the soldering iron again and replacing the dead LED.
http://www.rpc.com.au/pdf/HYD-200-Manual.pdf