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Message
Solar Power for well water pump
Posted on 9/27/23 at 7:46 am
Posted on 9/27/23 at 7:46 am
My home has well water and the pump is tied to the power of the house. Power goes out well pump goes out.
I have a 12v 10ah battery and 100w solar panel setup.
Was wondering if there is anyway to make a "bypass" to switch to battery power when the power goes out.
I have a 12v 10ah battery and 100w solar panel setup.
Was wondering if there is anyway to make a "bypass" to switch to battery power when the power goes out.
5
Posted on 9/27/23 at 8:27 am to LSURoss
quote:Inverter too? Is this setup specifically to run a well pump?
I have a 12v 10ah battery and 100w solar panel setup.
Anyway I think that's way undersized to run it. Pump will probably draw over 1,000 watts so your battery could run it for maybe 5 minutes (someone check me here). I don't know how that translates to gallons.
And over the course of a day the 100w panel might produce enough to charge the battery 3 or 4 times.
Posted on 9/27/23 at 8:32 am to LSURoss
You can get a solar generator and change it with your panel.
Is you we’ll pump wired to a breaker or do your have a plug? 120v or 240v?
Is you we’ll pump wired to a breaker or do your have a plug? 120v or 240v?
Posted on 9/27/23 at 8:33 am to LSURoss
Most water well pumps I've seen run off 240v. You would need 20 12v batteries in series to run the pump, if your pump is also a 240v.
Posted on 9/27/23 at 8:40 am to RaginRampage
Thanks for the replies! Sounds like I'm under powered and need to rethink this.
Posted on 9/27/23 at 8:46 am to RaginRampage
quote:That's one way to get to 240VDC (you could also use a dc-dc boost converter) but the pump is 240VAC. There are inverters that put out 240vac from 12vdc.
You would need 20 12v batteries in series to run the pump, if your pump is also a 240v.
This post was edited on 9/27/23 at 8:50 am
Posted on 9/27/23 at 9:09 am to LSURoss
quote:There are purpose built battery-solar well pumps available. Not sure how pricey they are or whether DIY would be cheaper, but I'll give you some rough figures to get started calculating.
Thanks for the replies! Sounds like I'm under powered and need to rethink this.
You need to figure out the power draw and duty cycle of your pump. If it's 1500 watts and it runs 2 hours per day, you'll need at a bare minimum 2 x 1500 = 3kwh of solar production per day to run without power indefinitely. I'd probably go with 4kwh for some headroom. Depending on your location, 4 hours of good sun per day might be a good estimate so you'd need 4kwh/4h = 1,000 watts of panels. Pretty sizable.
For the batteries, you'd need enough to get you through a couple days of low solar production, I think 3 days is what some off-grid folks go with. Looking back at your pump requirements, that means 3kwh x 3 = 9kwh of batteries. You have about 0.12kwh of battery.
You also might need to account for efficiency losses for both charging and discharging/inverting.
Take all this with a grain of salt because I am only a novice with all this, but these are my best guesses. And I could be way wrong on your pump requirements.
Posted on 9/27/23 at 9:53 am to LSURoss
quote:
My home has well water and the pump is tied to the power of the house.
Why go through the effort and expense just for the well pump when you can get a generator, a transfer switch or panel, and run several circuits, including the well pump, during a power outage?
Posted on 9/27/23 at 10:01 am to LSURoss
My house has a well and the pump is 120v wired to a plug. I would just run and extension cord to the pump from the generator in an outage.
I have since wired a 30A plug for my generator so the next outage I don’t have to run the extension cord.
I have since wired a 30A plug for my generator so the next outage I don’t have to run the extension cord.
Posted on 9/27/23 at 10:20 am to Clames
quote:
Why go through the effort and expense just for the well pump when you can get a generator, a transfer switch or panel, and run several circuits, including the well pump, during a power outage?
No gas at my house and at the moment cant get a large propane ta like my neighbor has.
Posted on 9/27/23 at 11:25 am to Korkstand
The pumps I've typically seen are 5 hp ~= 3700 watts.
OP pump may be smaller. But for a 2x4 well, a 5hp is what I have seen.
OP pump may be smaller. But for a 2x4 well, a 5hp is what I have seen.
Posted on 9/27/23 at 1:08 pm to RaginRampage
My well pump, I think, is around 2 HP and is very powerful, IMO.
I can pump out of a 3/4" hose about 10+ GPM
I can pump out of a 3/4" hose about 10+ GPM
Posted on 9/27/23 at 2:42 pm to LSURoss
quote:
No gas at my house and at the moment cant get a large propane ta like my neighbor has.
Gasoline or diesel? My backup generators are gasoline, with good quality fuel can and some stabilizer I can run my generators on 91 oct non-e fuel I know it at least 2 years old. Got one small metal can that's close to 5 years old, will give that a test soon to see if it can work too.
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