Lighting for a building with no power

[Ashes_Firewood]

Hi all

 

We've got a steel frame agricultural type building that's approximately 15m long x 8m wide x 5m high at it's highest point and 4m high at the lowest. One side is open and the other 3 are clad or have doors. It's got no power at all.

 

Think it'd cost too much to have it connected to the grid with it being a long way from anything else.

 

Are there any good solar powered lighting systems out there capable of providing a good level of lighting inside a building of this size? I can't imagine the lights would need to be on for much longer than 3 hours at a time in an evening. Don't need any electric power points in there as the only machinery we use in there run off the tractors.

 

I've done a quick google but the stuff I've found seems to be for lighting smaller areas than this.

[woody paul]

If you are running a tractor when you need light just set up some 12v LEDs around building and run off tractor.

Or just buy a good head touch.

[Ashes_Firewood]

Got a head torch and one of the tractors has work lights but it's not as good as having proper lights.

 

Plus part of this building is used at lambing time as well so it's not all machinery work that goes on in there. Be nice to flick a switch and the whole place is lit up

[headgroundsman]

Generator http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/720w-long-run-portable-generator-49-23074

Edited January 14, 2015 by headgroundsman

[peatff]

Generator 720W Long Run Portable Generator - £49.99 @ Aldi - Hot UK Deals

 

My niece uses one of these to run her sewing machine at bike rallies. It's a little 2 stroke engine and plods along nicely for a few hours at a time on a tank of fuel.

[Ashes_Firewood]

We have a generator that's more powerful than that. But it's noisy and it gets used for other things as well so don't want to tie it up.

 

We like the idea of solar power, it's quiet and free lighting after the initial set up cost. This building is in the sun pretty much all day as well so would be ideally suited.

 

Hopefully someone has done it already

[sandspider]

Can't help you specifically - but at a much smaller scale I messed around with solar powered Christmas lights. I concluded that you don't get much power from a single solar panel, especially in winter. (E.g. a day's weak winter sun would get 15 minutes or so of light from a 3m string of LED bulbs - from a 10cm square ish solar panel). The same panel in full sun in summer would give an hour or two of light. So I imagine you'll need a good area of (more modern) solar panels and a hefty battery. And maybe to top the battery up from the mains every so often?

 

This chap set up a more serious solar panel install for his house - might help you with panel area, wattage, amp hours etc.:

Peplers In Rye: Eco-refurbishment - installing off-grid solar PV (part 2)

[Ashes_Firewood]

Cheers, that doesn't sound too promising!

 

This is the kind of thing I've found when searching online Solar Lighting Kit in a box with 8 LED Bulbs but I don't think the lights they provide with that kit would be able to light up such a large space adequately and there's definitely not enough cable length either. So I guess it needs to be something along those lines but bigger

[woody paul]

Wind and solar

[Macpherson]

Hi, I think that LED lamps off a good car battery being trickle charged by either a small 12v wind mill or a solar panel or both could be the way to go.

I recently fitted some LED bulkhead type lamps in a similar shed, they were only 7 watts and really quite bright although the light is kind of `sterile`.

There`s loads of different LED stuff available now and it draws so little power that it shouldn`t take much to keep the battery charged.

Hope this helps, cheers