I don’t usually post on Saturdays, but there’s been so much to talk about lately, and with it being a time sensitive issue, this is about the only place where I can fit this article. With the indoor seed starting deadline for extended season growing being so close, now is the time to get planting. With that in mind, could you provide the required lighting in a grid down scenario when it really counts?
That’s one of my goals for seed starting this year. Using the solar system that I have on hand to provide grow lighting on a consistent basis for seedlings. Let’s take a look at how I set this up…
First of all, I used a folding 200 watt solar panel that came with the ALL Powers solar generator. While the power unit went defective and needed warrantee replacement, the solar panel continues to work well. This was secured in a window using zip ties to attach it to the security bars and placing a table right in front of that. The solar panel was connected to an Ecoflow River 2 Pro unit. No mains power was provided, it’s all running on solar.
With power set up and running, a small 3 shelf indoor greenhouse was assembled on the table. The greenhouse was from Amazon and constructed of plastic frames and metal poles. One of the poles under the bottom shelf had to be placed above the top shelf to attach the lights. This weakened the bottom shelf somewhat, but it should still support a leaded seed tray, with a bit of a sag.
For lighting, I wend back to Amazon and got a set of 3 LED grow lights. This set has a timer and intensity adjustments. As a bonus, they are run off a USB power port. They came with a wall adaptor, but it seemed really inefficient to have the Ecoflow unit invert to 110AC just to bring it back down to 5 volts DC since the unit already has USB outputs.
When everything was turned on, I could see that the lights were pulling 8 watts at full intensity. Unfortunately, because it was a cloudy, snowy day here, there was no power going into the unit. Not to worry though, the Ecoflow started out fully charged and showed 99 hours of juice left. We’ll put his on a 12 hour timer for a few days and keep track of how it does.
Now that we’ve let this setup run for a few days, the problems have shown up! The battery unit simply isn’t getting a charge. I’m assuming that the window is coated to prevent proper light penetration. The solution is to drill a pass through in the exterior wall and place the solar panel outdoors with wiring leading inside to the battery unit. Since this is not going to make the to do list for this spring, we’ll plug it back into mains power and simply use the Ecoflow as a backup power source.
This is why we must do the things folks. You can plan all you want, gather all the supplies and equipment you want, but unless you actually set things up and test your systems, it’s pretty much wasted time and money. WHen the chips are down, and you need to rely on your planning, it had better work!
