Close

27th September - Solar Panel Regulators

A project log for Smart Dew-Point Water Harvester

Harvesting clean drinking water from sunshine.

robert-hartRobert Hart 09/27/2015 at 07:360 Comments

An off-the-shelf Solar Regulator is primarily designed to put the bulk of power collected from the Solar panel into charging a battery where the load will draw its power. However, in this project I want the bulk energy from the Solar Panel to be used to cool down the coolant. Consequently I have built regulators that take power directly from the solar panel.

As it's important to keep the heat sink on which the Peltier Cells are mounted close to ambient temperature, to get the best efficiency from the Peltier Cells. I'm using a Boost Buck Up/Down Regulator for the cooling fans this means there will keep running a low sunlight levels. This uses a LM2577 3.5V to 40V to Boost Buck Up/Down Regulated 12V 900ma for cooling fans.

The Peltier Cells at 12V consum 5.7 - 6amps and so I am using using 2 x LM2678 in parallel which will provide 15-40V to Buck Down Converter Regulator giving a maximum of 12V at 10A for each Peltier Cells.

Discussions