Electricity for dogs

Near the town of Ignatievo, Varna is situated a small kennel for breeding German shepherds. The kennel itself, isn’t connected to the electricity grid, so the owner asked us to make an autonomous solar power plant. By now, he has used a gasoline generator.

It was necessary to provide energy for a water pump, refrigerator, freezer, TV, router and lighting. We discussed the budget and configuration of the system with the client, and started the work.

We installed on the roof of the aviary four Risen modules, 330 watts each. The total peak power of the solar panels is 1.32 kWp.

To work in the night, in the system we added two 12-volt Victron Energy AGM Deep Cycle batteries, 220 A·h each. We connected them in series to obtain a nominal voltage of 24 V The useful energy reserve at a permissible unloading depth of 50 % is 2.64 kW·h.

The batteries are charged using a solar controller Victron Energy MPPT 100 | 50, with a power of 1.4 kW. The input parameters of this controller allow the addition of two more 330-watts solar modules to increase the generation in dark weather.

To convert DC from the controller and batteries to AC, we installed Victron Energy Inverter Phoenix 24 | 1200, with a power of 1.2 kV·A or 1 kW. The inverter has a peak power of 2.2 kW, so it can successfully handle the starting currents of the water pump and compressors in the refrigeration equipment.

Block diagram of the power plant

As the budget was limited, we did not install the remote monitoring system module, but it may be added in the future.

According to the client, the system works perfectly, the dogs are satisfied, but a slight energy deficit occurs only on dark winter days. This disadvantage can be eliminated by adding two solar modules.

The price of this solar power plant in June 2020 was 5 500 BGN (2 800 €) with delivery, installation and VAT.