Re: Solar Powered Systems

[<thesatguy1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For quite a while I have been running some FBI XL31Bs on solar panels using
some license plate sized solar panels I bought from JC Whitney real cheap.
Alll the buildings have phone lines and I keep saying I am going to go out
and run ac power to these buildings but its a long run of several thousand
feet to get 16vac to each one.  There is a line of telephone poles behind
the buildings but the closest ac power is on poles at the front of the
property and thats 40 acres away.
Each system has two sets of photoelectric beams across the doorways (cause
there are no doors) and contacts on two regular doors and each unit has
either a 70 ah or 90ah battery which powers everything and stays fully
charged without a hitch.

I have some similar systems on oil platforms that are shutdown with long
range radio that also use solar panels.  However I used much larger solar
panels and battery boxes with several batteries in them; the battery boxes
are changed out on a regular basis when the platforms are checked.  Its
cheaper to use solar panels and swap out battery boxes than it is to
continuously run the power plants.  The battery boxes are brought in and the
batteries fully charged and/or replaced as necessary and ready to go back
out on the next pass.  Depedning upon the weather, you can go up to nine
months easily without making a tour to swap batteries but of course the
theory is that at some point the platforms will be active again.

The new solar panels can easily provide plenty of current to run alarm
panels because they draw very little current except when the panel is in
alarm and mostly it goes to the keypad - but panels now have keypad blanking
so that draw is reduced.

However you are talking about AES and that is a (high current) low power
radio transmitter which needs the high current to key the transmitter for a
fraction of a second which is easy to solve by using a large car battery as
the standby.  My guess is that the range of the radio and the height needed
for your antenna will be a much bigger problem than powering the thing.  The
actual range on those radios is very limited and a tall antenna site is a
must.  On the other hand, over open unobstructed ground, the range is pretty
good since its strictly line-of-site.

If there are mountains where you can put a transmitter site then everything
'lower' should have an unobstructed line-of-site and reception will be good.
If your location is surrounded by taller structures you are screwed.

"Joe Lucia" <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1130080433.643678.15020@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Has anyone installed any completely stand-alone solar-powered system?
> I'm thinking mostly of an AES Radio in the middle of the Desert as a
> repeater running off of Solar Panels and Batteries.
>
>