My solar agenda, revealed

Last week I wrote about getting my feet wet with a PV solar energy project. Here are more details.

The camping trip is Burning Man. The purpose of generating all this power is a magnificent 200 square-foot shade structure with mood lighting, music, and a drive-in (OK, walk-in) movie theater in the evening. We'll be camping in Kidsville so we expect to get a fair number of toddlers in the audience, and video content will be chosen accordingly.

The mood lighting is strings of icicle LED Christmas lights that together will consume about 25 watts. The music is a desktop PC speaker system with subwoofer (50 watts peak). The projector is a Mitsubishi PK-20 pocket projector (50 watts peak), which is LED-based and isn't too bright, but will work fine at dusk.

I have two 108-Ah 12-volt batteries that I hope will get topped off to capacity each day by the 120-watt solar panel. Doubling my estimates to be conservative, and adding some extra wattage for miscellaneous usage like laptops and AA battery recharging, we should easily get five hours of power each night with everything cranked up to the maximum.

If we choose to ignore the environmental impact of manufacturing the gadgetry and driving it 1,000 miles round-trip in a gas-guzzling RV, then it'll be the greenest movie theater ever!

I have purchased the solar panel and charge controller, and will do a test charge over a few days this week. Then this weekend I will put up the shade structure in my yard, hook up the theater, and confirm power consumption with my Kill-A-Watt. That leaves one full week before we leave for the Playa, which is probably a record in terms of advance Burning Man project completion.