Can i power somthing up with a solar panel alone?

Question

Or do i need other stuff with it? CAn i power a motor with it?

Answer 1

A solar panel provides DC power. To provide electricity to most items made for use in a home you need AC power. A transformer is needed to convert the DC power to AC power. Also, solar panels all have an efficiency that governs how much power they can produce. You need to see how many watts your panel can provide and compare that to how many watts your item needs to work. I believe that some motors do run on DC power, so that would eliminate the need for a transformer, but you still need to compare the wattages.

Answer 2

As long as the device is electrically powered (as opposed to a gas engine, for instance) you can use solar powe alone.

But there are some practical limitations. If you need a lot of power--say to powera car--using solar power directly isn't practical--the solar panels would be far too large. You can acccomplish the same thing by using a fixed-site solar array to charge batteries in an electric car, though.

The other limitation is that solar panels only produce power during the daytime (and not very well if its cloudy). So you either have to also have a link to the power company or some means of storing power for later use (i.e., batteries). Currently, battery storage is pretty expensive, though.

All this doesn't mean solar energy isn't practical now--it is (and the equipment--solar arrays--are getting much less expensive). In fact, although you have a fairly large start-up investment, operating costs are extremely low--in the long run it's one of the cheapest energy sources around--and will save money over time. But current limitations on the technology do mean shifting to the exclusive use o f solar power is usually not feasible. Given the current rate of technological innovation, however, that, too, may change in the next few years.

Answer 3

The output from solar panels is DC. You could power a motor but you may need a voltage regulator - it depends on size of the panel. Solar panels are ok top trickle charge batteries.

And while I'm on remember this - all this talk of solar panels and wind turbines saving the world is total s**t. Panels are at best 20
% effective in UK summer and 10% in winter if you are lucky. Wind turbines amazingly need wind and lots of it and when theres too much they fail. We are being pushed along a politically correct but engineering wrong path with all this green power rubbish.

You are much better off building a nuclear reactor in your back garden. At least you can then threaten your neighbours with annilation if their barbeque gets out of hand.

Answer 4

You can power a DC motor directly from a solar panel, if the motor is designed to use the same voltage that the panel is designed to produce. 12 volts is pretty common.

Answer 5

You could run a small dc motor with it. If you wanted to run anything ac, you need an inverter. Assuming you live at the equator, you can get about 150 watts out of and $800 panel and a 5kW inverter will run your a bit over $2000.

Answer 6

For a motor you will need to convert to DC cos solar panels give out AC

Answer 7

Well your going to need something to collect the power, but solar energy isnt very good because we can only catch about 10% of the power when we need to be able to gain atleast 80% so until that happens solar power is useless

Answer 8

yes you can, but if there is no light there will be no back up for you to run anything you are tring to run.

Answer 9

yup