Sun Coffee - Brewing Coffee By The Power Of The Sun
I found a submersible water heater the other day for just over $2 so I got it to use in my off grid work shop. I can now make my afternoon coffee for free using the power of the sun.
My off grid work shop is powered by solar panels. This submersible water heater is rated at 120 volts and 200 Watts. My solar panels are rated at 200 watts each. This means that I can essentially heat up my water or a soup using a single solar panel using a power inverter.
Submersible Heating Element
I immediately tried it out using a cup of water. I filled the cup with water and then put the heating element into the cup. Then I plugged the water heater into the power inverter. I have a 600 Watt pure sine wave inverter I am using for now in the office.
I was surprised to see that the solar charge controller only jumped up 100 Watts while the heating element was plugged in.
Boiling water for my coffee using solar power
It took about 10 to 15 minutes to boil a cup of water though becuase it was about 36 degrees inside my work shop at this time. I figure that inside a warm house it would heat up way faster. The wind blowing into the open door did not help at all.
But the time did not bother me considering that I brewed a cup of coffee using free energy from the sun.
The battery bank actually went from absorption mode into float mode while I was brewing the coffee. This tells me that the submersible heater was not even putting a dent in the amount of available solar energy I had in the battery bank.
Enjoying a cup of "sun coffee"
My solar battery bank is a set of eight 225 Ah golf cart batteries wired up for 12 volts total at about 12 KW of power.
I am only using about 600 Watts of my solar panels for now out of a total of 1,200 Watts available. I still have to wire up the other half of the panels but need more wire and connectors.
It felt really good to have a cup of coffee brewed by the power of the sun.
You can watch today's video here: Sun Coffee ~ Brewing Coffee By The Power Of The Sun
While you are over there please subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow our daily videos as we strive to become self sufficient and off the grid on a budget.
About the Author
 |
Troy Reid |
