How To Make My Microwave Work Only Using Solar Panels?
Dec 11, 2009 in
diy
Hi,
I got really interested in the whole concept of solar panels. I read a couple of articles and saw a few videos on how to convert solar energy to electricity, but what I want to know is how can I make the microwave work, only using solar panels?
What I mean, is how many Volts, Watts, Amperes or any of these do I need to make the microwaves fully functional and how many huge the solar panels need to be to absord enought energy?
Thanks!
Related posts:
- How Many Solar Panels Would I Need To Power My Home?
- How Do Solar Panels Work?
- How Solar Panels Work To Save You Money On Energy Bills
- How Do Solar Panels Work-Learn How Do Solar Panels Work
- Homemade Solar Panels Will Slash Your Monthly Electricity Bills for Good!
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
2 comments
Call me Batman on December 11, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Welcome to the renewable resources world!
This is a fantastic question because this is what you have to reckon about when trying to power your house with solar energy.
The small answer is you can’t really do it with just a solar panel. You need a couple more things to help handle the load. especially for something as power hungry as a microwave.
In order to do this you are going to need 3 pieces:
the solar panel
a battery
a converter
The panel is the simple part because you’ll use this to charge the battery but the battery is going to honestly substantial.
to establish the right drain on your batteries you have to divide your nominal battery voltage (12v) into the voltage of the load (120v), which is 10, and then multiply this times your amp hours (8A x .5 hr = 4ah). So in this case the calculation would be 40 amp hours drained from your batteries.
An average deep cycle RV battery can handle that but your not going to get a lot of use out of it before you will have to let the solar panel charge the cells again.
Finally you need the converter to change the 12VDC into 120VAC
SO it is doable but i wouldn’t focus it on just the microwave. you could also power a CFL bulb, a radio etc at the same time depending on the loads and how long you want the system to last before recharge is required. Reckon “How much juice do I need before the sun comes back up?”
Here is a link to the source for this information.
George M on December 11, 2009 at 9:45 pm
There’s a lot of vital details, but the small answer is that you would need a system competent of supplying around 1000W, at 120VAC and competent of handling the contemporary (which would be around 8A).
The specific supplies would depend on how you intend to use the microwave oven (i.e. how long its on for and how often you turn it on). Based on the usage you’d be able to come up with an thought of how many batteries you need (for storing the energy) versus how many solar panels you need (for charging the batteries).
In any case, it would be a honestly expensive way to heat food. Even if you made it cheap (i.e. so that the system could only be used occasionally), I’d estimate it would cost at least $1000 for the inverter, batteries and other electronics plus another $1000 for a (relatively low power) solar panel.
If you wanted to make it more of an ‘on demand’ system, you’d be looking at a pretty high price tag.
You’d probably be surpass off with a solar cooker.
That being said, such a system would be able to power many other household things as well, it wouldn’t be limited to just powering microwave ovens. But economically, solar power isn’t (currently) reasonable (assuming you have access to the grid).