I have a 10'x12' shed and would like to install a solar power system sufficient to power LED lights and a small fan. To make my wife happy. Any recommendations on what I need, courses of act to acquires a system, any particular set-up you recommend, vendor, etc. I would like to be able to expand the system is necessary. My concern is that what I need may be to small to be economical.

1) set your budget
2) list out your maximum loads
3) decide If you will DIY or hire out
4) what are your code regulations/restrictions? Permits required?


The expansion of the system is always a bit tricky, what would you want to expand it to?

It's hard to imagine this being cheaper than hard wired electrical

ltm said:

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I have a 10'x12' shed and would like to install a solar power system sufficient to power LED lights and a small fan. To make my wife happy. Any recommendations on what I need, courses of act to acquires a system, any particular set-up you recommend, vendor, etc. I would like to be able to expand the system is necessary. My concern is that what I need may be to small to be economical.

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As the other poster said, how far away is a hardwire? Renting a trencher or a few jose's from HD for a few hours and burying some conduit and then running a 12ga-14ga wire to the shed to power whatever you want would be best. This could even power a window unit or a portable ac unit for her if needed. Solar is not cheap. Conduit + cable + a solo breaker would run $100 or so probably.

If you can get by keeping it 12V then all you need is a deep cycle battery (or 2), solar panel and a charge controller to keep from frying the battery. Understand your loads first.

You need to know two things. First, you need to know your loads (like Ikanizer said). Basically, you look at the labels and see how many Watts the lights and fan use. Then you figure up how many hours you would use them for and that gives you the Watt hours per day. Second, you need to determine how many days of energy you want stored in a battery to use on days where there is no sun out to charge the batteries. Once you know that, go to wholesalesolar.com and look at the off grid kits and figure out which will work best for your situation. Their kits come with panels, batteries and inverters that all work together so you don't have to figure any of that stuff up yourself.

ltm said:

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I have a 10'x12' shed and would like to install a solar power system sufficient to power LED lights and a small fan. To make my wife happy. Any recommendations on what I need, courses of act to acquires a system, any particular set-up you recommend, vendor, etc. I would like to be able to expand the system is necessary. My concern is that what I need may be to small to be economical.

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Once you're in the shed, what do you plan to do? Because I can't imagine many wives being happy working on projects in a shed without power, AC, and with only some small lights.

I mean, you're looking at a camper level system, but the second you want to run a 120v tool you're toast.

So OP makes the same post 3 times then ghosts?

Thanks Fatzilla and Ikanizer. Your posts were helpful.