I have a home made LED lamp now as my main source of light in the living room. I designed it to fit a normal light bulb socket. It is running off my solar battery pack through an inverter.

The great thing about this LED bulb is that there are no resistors used at all. That means no waste energy. I used 60 LEDs, a bridge rectifier and a capacitor. All energy is used for light output. Most LED bulbs you can buy in stores use a resistor for every LED to reduce the amount of current. I just divided the amount of current with LEDs themselves.

You can see details on how to make one at:

http://www.metwebsites.com/wwr&d/LEDs.html

The total power consumption for this lamp is about 4 watts.

My solar panel is putting out more energy than my batteries can hold on a sunny day. I had to add more batteries to increase the capacity. That also means more possible energy use for me at night.

I now have five 10 Amp Hour batteries hooked up. That equals about 600 watts of total energy capacity. Theoretically, I could run my netbook for 15 hours on a full charge. Of course, it is winter now and the sun doesnt shine all the time so I will never reach that capacity. But in the summer, I will probably have more energy than I could use.

My living room light and my aquarium are now running full time on solar energy.

Today was very dark outside. Almost no natural light today. The solar panels did not really produce any energy at all. And I was home all day, using my netbook on solar. Had to use a light most of the time too.

The batteries are running at about 12.05 volts at 6:pm already. Not good. I may need to add more batteries in order to have more reserve energy for cloudy days.

Finally got my solar panel up and running. The toughest part was figuring out where to put it because my landlord will not allow me to put it anywhere visible. So, it is now in my sliding glass doors, facing the south side. It catches sun from about 8am to 5pm. It is not the most efficient setup, but it works well enough.

I have a $30 solar charge controller from ebay that can handle 15 amps of power. I am using a Belkin 50 watt inverter from eCost.com to convert the power to 120 volts. And there are 4 sealed lead acid batteries that I got for free, totaling about 40 amp hours together. I use a special radiant energy battery charger to restore old, discarded batteries to like new condition. See Radiant Charger for details.

The solar panels generate some energy to charge the batteries even on a dark, cloudy day. That was a surprise.

Right now my aquarium filter is running off the solar energy full time and I have enough reserve energy to run a 9 watt (60watt equivalent) energy efficient light bulb at night for hours. My netbook only needs 40 watts to power, so that runs nicely as well.

Testing my finished solar panels.

Above you can see my new solar panels putting out some nice power in the late afternoon winter sun. The volt meter reads 17.81 volts.

I also put an old 1.5 watt solar panel in my bedroom window to charge a small sealed lead acid battery during the day. At night it powers a 12 volt fluorescent lamp I got from Target for about $6. Free light for reading.

I finally got all the materials together for my solar panel. Plexiglas at Home Depot was the most expensive single part, at $12 for a plate. I needed two of them. Also got some wood trim at only 98 cents a piece to use for the framing of the panel.

Plywood at Home Depot, precut is only about $5 each. I need two of everything because my panel will be too large otherwise. I will make two identical panels, each putting out 9 Volts.

In the above pictures, I got all my tools ready and started soldering - finally. I had to use a weight to hold the solar cell in place and another weight to hold the tabbing wire down while I soldered it into place.

Hopefully I will have this project finished soon.

I finally got some time on my hands and started soldering my new solar panels myself. I laid them out on a table to find the best configuration for the cells. I will have to make two panels, each with 18 cells in order to make up the correct voltage and wattage. I will take pictures later and upload them.

Anyway, I cut the wood and started soldering the tabs on the cells. Then I started to solder the cells together in series to add up the voltage. They are each 0.5 volts. 36 cells will make up 18 volts, which is the correct voltage for a solar panel to charge 12 volt lead acid batteries. I am making two panels of 18 cells instead of one large one so that they wont be too large. Each panel will be about 18 inches by 22 inches.

More details and pictures later.

I have discovered that prices have more than doubled in the last years on solar panels. I may have to modify my prices here. Years ago I was able to purchase solar panels for about $2 per watt. Now you are lucky to find them at $3-4 per watt. Most of them are around $5 per watt.

Therefore, I bought 50 solar cells from Ebay for only $99. I had to buy the flat connecting wire separately, bringing my total to $120 for about 87 watts of power at 12 volts. I am now in the very slow process of assembling my solar panels. I will make two panels in order to keep the size down a bit. The panels will be about 22 inches square each. Below is the picture of my cells.

This is the picture taken from Evergreens site on Ebay. Each cell measures 3x6 inches. The are extremely fragile and thin though, so this is taking a bit more time than I had originally planned. One cell puts out 0.5 volt at 3.5 Amps. This equals 1.75 Watt per cell. You need 36 cells to get 18 volts at 63 Watts. If you were to purchase the panel ready made, it would run you about $300 for this size.

Actually, for this test, I wanted to run 18 watts, which cost about $100 for a ready made panel.

More later...

I have modified my bike to take a home-made battery pack, doubling the range per charge.

If you open the original battery pack, you can see how the batteries are wired together. By adding bananna jacks on the bottom of the pack, soldered to the original leads inside, I can simply plug in an extra pack. That easy.

I then used a simple plastic mailbox mounting base from the local hardware store to build an add-on battery pack. The mailbox base was the perfect size for the project and it had all the holes pre drilled into it. For extra support I used some steel bars on each side, again using the existing holes in both the bar and the plastic frame.

To mount the pack onto the bike rack I used simple metal \"J\" hooks and \"wing\" nuts. It fits perfectly. See pic below.

With this setup I was able to ride up into the mountains on a four hour ride while pedaling the whole time. I only used the motor to assist in climbing up hills. Down hill I simply pedaled in order to save battery power. The total round trip was about 24 miles. When I got home, the batteries were just giving out.

I must admit though, this is one very heavy bike to pedal uphill. The motor can not pull itself alone and you would not want to use up the battery that fast anyway. The power light goes immediately into the red on these high hills. It was quite a workout for both myself and the bike. Dont ever let anyone tell you that riding an electric bike is a lazy sport. If you want to increase range, you must use the pedals.

On normal, flat roads, I estimate I get about five miles using the motor alone and the original battery pack. With pedaling, I can double that, but not much more. I have found out that by only using half throttle, you can greatly increase mileage.

I just got the e-zip mountain bike to get to and from work for free. Public transportation would cost $100 per month so I calculated that for only $300 I have free transportation for years. The bike is available at Walmart online for $298 right now. It sells for up to $600 in some stores. And it is well worth it.

The bike allows you to pedal like normal, use motor power only, or pedal with the motor. It reaches about 20mph with the motor alone and about 25 when you pedal. The stated range is about 15 miles to a charge with some pedaling, but I found that it will only run about 3-5 miles without pedaling. It is very hilly where I live, so I do not get the stated range even with pedaling. But I already made a new battery pack for the bike, which I will post later in detail, so I have doubled the range.

With a 450 watt motor, the bike really takes off, even from a dead standstill. It helps to get into traffic where I live.

Some have said that you can hear the motor running and complain about that. Well, it is an electric motor and I do expect to hear something while it is running. It is not loud though. Just like a swarm of angry bees buzzing. At 80 pounds it is quite a workout in the mountains while pedal assisting the motor uphill. Double the battery pack like I did, and you really have a bit of weight. What do you expect though from lead acid batteries? You can replace them with li-ion packs if you can afford the expense. For me, it doesnt matter as long as I can get around well. This bike really opened up new possibilities for me. Where I live you must have a vehicle of some kind to get around. On foot, you are quite limited to what you can do, or where you can go.

If you remove the battery pack, the bike rides just like a normal mountain bike.

My only complaint is that the manufacturer tells you not to use it in wet weather. I will find a way to waterproof it later and describe how I do it. Another problem is that they claim that the battery will only last one year before requiring replacement. At $129 a pack, that is a large sum of money to give out each year. Although in comparison to the $1200 for riding a bus each year, it is much cheaper. I have found a way to improve battery life too. That I will also post later.

Here is a youtube video review of the bike:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrjJ9cysPW0&feature=related&pos=4

I will write more later.

My new inverter arrived. I am looking for lower priced options for this project to try and keep the grand total within the price range of under $150.

I ordered a Belkin 50 watt inverter for only 9.95 plus shipping. Most places sell this item for much higher. Here is the link:

50 Watt Inverter

Cant wait to get testing.