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Solar Powered Audio

With all the discussion about bad AC quality, the necessity for power conditioning, and the emergence of several products that utilize battery power supplies to overcome noisy AC, it occurs to me that an audio system powered exclusively on a solar powered/battery system would be ideal. Solar panels on the roof. A bank of storage batteries in the attic or crawlspace. Bingo! Pure, quiet, dedicated power!

Is anyone in the southwest or west doing this...or even considering this?
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gordus
118 posts
 
You nailed it Edesilva! That's exactly what most of us are doing with the SLA's etc., bypassing the transformer/diode stage and feeding 12/24/48v dc directly to the supply caps... beautious!
edesilva
768 posts
 
I guess the one good thing about transformers is that they tend to hold a lot of power that is available for meeting peak loads really fast... My limited electrical engineering experience tells me that batteries don't tend to be able to supply lots of amps for transient demands... For that reason, I think those guys with the mega car stereos use beeeeeg capacitors wired into the power supplies... Are you guys who are running off batteries doing similar things?
biomimetic
252 posts
 
Transformers also often use specialized metals to make the transient energy faster, more audiohphile, etc. But it would be worth experimenting. That much clean power is kind of hard to say "no" to.
gordus
118 posts
 
Hi Edesilva,
Transformers don't do the energy storage, their job is simply to transform the 120v feed to whatever is required by the unit in question... say 40v. The diodes rectify / convert the 40v ac power to about 56v dc (in this case) which is fed to the supply caps, which do the storage as well as further filtering / smoothing of the dc feed. Hopefully someone who actually knows what they're talking about can correct my inaccuracies!!!
tvad OP
9,467 posts
 
Pretty good article in today's (7/30/06) Los Angeles Times Real Estate section about solar power. The article offers quite a few information resources.
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