Christmas Lights Solar Power Installation Morphs Into Much More

Powering your home via the light that literally falls from the sky is an interesting proposition for anyone looking to save money. On the other hand, how does one start in on something like this? If you’re like sunny Florida-based hacker Andres Leon, the system starts out innocently enough as a system to run Christmas lights and decorations, but morphs into something much more involved.

His setup, in its current state, contains four solar panels at 100 watts each, and could potentially handle for two more. In order to convert power from the panels into usable electricity, he implements a system involving an MPPT (maximum power point tracking) controller to charge two 100 amp-hour deep-cycle batteries. An inverter then converts DC power from these batteries into usable AC power, switched on an off via an SSR (solid-state relay).

Control and monitoring of the system is via a Raspberry Pi running Apache and MySQL. This allows him to see stats on the system, including temperature of the Raspberry Pi and batteries through a web interface. Depending on settings, the Pi can turn fans on and off to help control temperature, as well as the power SSR, controlled indirectly via a USB connection to an Arduino Duemilanove. Current monitoring from the battery packs is accomplished via a split core-style sensor and another Duemilanove, however this functionality still needs some work.

You can check out his system overview in the video seen below, and find its code on GitHub.

[h/t: Hackaday]