Solar Panel Indoor Lights
My solar powered calculator was packed away in a box in the basement for 3 1/2 years?
When I unpacked the box, I held the calculator up to the light in the basement. The calculator worked immediately. Would it be feasible to design and manufacture inside lights, battery chargers, small appliances, etc. that would work on a miniature (or small) solar panel? I think if we wait until solar panels for powering the entire house are available to everyone, we are missing an opportunity to begin to utilize solar power sooner. I design indoor solar lights in my head! Would this work?
Mark V, I wouldn’t try to use a tiny calculator power panel to power a lamp, I would use a small, maybe 5″X7″ solar panel or larger strips that would catch sunlight. Do you think that could work for indoor lighting? If we can send a man to the moon… Thanks for the feedback.
You need to go and look at small installations that collect solar energy during the day – these include garden pathway lights, decorative hangings, and security motion lights. Outside the house where I am visiting and typing, there is a decoration with hanging glass balls with LED lights inside and a disk at the top with solar cells and batteries. Shown at the bottom of this page http://www.mikegigi.com/firthm/chimes.htm
It receives sun for much of the day and turns on at dusk – it glows for about 3 hours, gradually fading.
Outside my kitchen window is a lantern shape with solar cells on top and a AA size battery inside with a single LED – it glows like a candle for a 2-3 hours dimly in the night.
Pathway lights, which I used to sell, have a post with a dozen or so solar cells and a battery pack underneath with a wire leading to 3-4 LED post lights so the cells can be put in the sunlight as long as possible and the lights can be put under trees, etc. We regularly used to kill off sales or get them back because people wanted them to last all night and they were good for about 4 hours. Okay in the summer, but having the lights die at 8:30 pm in the middle of the party didn’t function.
Security solar only turn on the lights when someone is under them, thus lasting longer.
And all of these are using LED lighting. So to do stuff in your house and have it be safe lighting, you need to change out the incandescent for focused LED’s, put in low voltage wiring to get from the batteries to the lights, have substantial batteries matched to the watt-hour needs of the lights and then have enough solar cells to charge the batteries even on days when the sky is cloudy and output is way down.
Bedini SSG capacitor motor running on indoor ambient light
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