how about solar power trains?

[Anonymous]

no track power just solar power what ya think?

[underworld]

You would just need a storage battery system with your solar cells.
Why not???

underworld
[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]

[Anonymous]

Voltage would not be a problem. Current to run the engine direct would be. Solar panels with battery and a charge controller would be the way to go.
I've thought about doing that myself. Mount solar panels on the roof of say a large warehouse or engine house. At the end of the stub track for the building, put a brass spring contact on each side of the bumper, sticking out so that it lines up with the ends of the pilot beam on the loco. Put contacts on the ends of the pilot beam so it will line up with the bumper contacts. Just run the pilot beam between the contacts and it charges while setting there. No wires to hook up and nothing to fiddle with. Put an indicator light on the beam to show when there is charge current going to the loco.
You could easily have several setups like that around the layout.
You definitely should use a charge controller to keep the batteries from cooking.
Another possiblity is to feed the panels into the tracks. Then you would be charging anytime you were on clean track and the sun was shining. Hook the battery to the wheel pickups thru a bridge rectifier so that the polarity to the battery would always be correct. Your battery could charge from DC or DCC on the track as long as you use the bridge rectifier. You would need a charge controller built into the loco if you used regular DC or DCC though.
For charge controllers, check the marine and yachting industry. Alot of sail boats use solar panels to charge batteries. I lived on one for 15 years and that was all the electrical power I had. Ran radios, TV, lights, and a computer off 100 watts of panels. I rarely ever ran low of juice.
You could also put the contacts underneath the loco somewhere. Then use spring contacts mounted between the tracks.

[SandyR]

Capt. Turk, I know absolutely NOTHING about solar panels and their power. Would it be possible to put a small panel say, on the cab roof of a loco and run it directly from the panel?
SandyR

[John Busby]

QUOTE: Originally posted by SandyR

Capt. Turk, I know absolutely NOTHING about solar panels and their power. Would it be possible to put a small panel say, on the cab roof of a loco and run it directly from the panel?
SandyR

Hi Sandy R
Probably not I doubt a *** Smith / Tandys solar pannal would deliver the voltage or the amperage to do the job.
Start with about $4200 woth of solar pannels not sure of the battery cost but you would need a few a solar charge regulator a battery voltage moneter of some sort.
Then you need a cct that will turn on the mains and recharge the batteries when not enough sun then the normal cost of train controlers in short not woth it.
However you could light some buildings with solar power but you would still need a batery in the building to store the charge.
regards john

[cacole]

Solar panels small enough to put onto G scale locomotives would not produce enough power.

As an example of size to power output, the following solar panels are available from All Electronics:

6" x 6" square: 9 VDC @ 60Ma
13.5" x 4.72": 12 VDC @ 125Ma
14" x 15": 12 VDC @ 1 Amp.

This largest one would barely be adequate to power a train motor, but you could use it to charge up batteries, and run the train from battery power instead of solar cells.

[Anonymous]

I agree that the panel area possible actually on board would not be enough t o run the train. The panels would have to be used to charge a battery while the loco was setting hooked up to it. I don't know what the going rate on panels is right now, but the last 50 watter I bought was about $325.00 USA. The controller was about $50.00. The panel was aprox. 14" X 3', so it would have to be mounted on the roof of a building or some such. With a long enought train and all the roof area of all the cars covered with cells, you might get the train to move. It wouldn't be worth it.

[grandpopswalt]

Maybe some of you Gurus can check my math, but this is what I come up with:

If your RR uses 10amps of power, on average, at 24 volts delivered to the track, then you would be drawing about 2 amps from the 120 volt AC socket. That's equivelent to burning a 240 watt lightbulb. At $0.12 per Kilowatt-hour (KWH = 1000 watts) it would cost you about $0.028 per hour to run your empire or about $0.17 (that's 17 cents) to run it for 6 hours. If you ran the trains 180 days a year it would cost you about $30.00 for power annually.

A solar panel with built-in voltage regulator rated 17 volts @ 2 amps costs about $225. Add to that the cost of batteries rated at 12 amp-hours (about $50) and you'd have to spend about $275 to do what you can do for $0.17 a day using AC power. That's about a 10 to 12 year pay-back period, probably longer because the batteries will not last 10 years..

So if my numbers are right, it would seem that attempting to run a RR of this size on anything but AC power wouldn't make much economic sense.

Walt

[mgilger]

I already had the solar power to run some other "Stuff" so running the Garden Railroad was no big deal for me. I have 2 golf cart batteries in the basement hooked to solar collectors. 200 feet away, I have my 2 CREST receivers mounted in a weather proof box, which are hooked to those batteries. So far, it's been working great and the only thing I want to add is an inverter at the remote location, This will convert the DC back to AC so I can run a leaf blower to remove unwanted grass clippings, etc. from the track. I have no AC within 200 feet of that locations.

Regards,
Mark