You probably think that solar energy is a resource that makes sense only for
an isolated town in the Philippines or a government funded electrification
program ! NO! ...generating your own electricity is a dream of
many people...that desire that lurks within us to be permanently independent
from the local power utility company. For hams, like me, it means communicating
without being connected to the grid.

In the summer of 1995 , I took the bold move to declare my ham shack to be
power independent and the obvious option was to go solar power. Armed with
a dangerous little knowledge earned from reading books and magazines about
solar power, I bought the necessary equipments like the photovoltaic panels (PV)
or solar panel in layman's term, deep cycle battery, battery charge controller
and rolls of heavy gauge electrical wires. After 2 days of installation, I got my
ham shack transformed to solar power.

Powering your ham shack by solar energy may not be as easy as you think,
especially if you are in the country like the Philippines. First of all PV panels
are not widely available and only few people knows about renewable energy.
Secondly, power rates here are one of the cheapest in the world...However, this
country is blessed with a year round sun and seeing and meditating upon the great
waste of energy we have from the sun...the more it strengthened my desire to
go solar power.

There are lot of things to get familiar with in going solar. You will have to learn
how to size solar power, the characteristics of the different types of panels.
You also have to be familiar with batteries and most all you will have to learn to
conserve power usage in your ham shack.

The basic needs for solar powering your ham shack are: one or more PV panels,
a charge controller and one more batteries. Depending on your station's power
requirement, once you've made sizing calculation, you may be surprised by the
number of panels and batteries you'll need. But don't worry about this, you can
always start with basically powering one radio only with at least 10 W
panel and a 70-100 Ah battery. You can build your solar power system around
your "pocket" and expand it as you can afford!

My System

My system may not be the ideal set up for the ham shack, But I learned that there
are many ways to start off with solar in my case, I started by buying the panels
(which is very difficult to do in the Philippines) from a consultancy that
deals with PV water pumping projects funded by the German government. I had
to beg them to spare me at least one panel. Fortunately I was able to get from
them 2 panels of Siemens SM55 priced at $380 each . I also got from them a
battery charge controller which is assembled locally.

It took me a month to locate a supplier of a deep cycle battery (a car battery is
a starting battery not a deep cycle ) which is also not commonly available in
the Philippines. after I got these things, I worked backwards by sizing the
loads that I can generate with the 2-55 watts (7 amp/hr) and 100 Ah
deep cycle battery. I can have my simple packet station run for 24 hours a day
and can still have enough power to run a tranceiver on weekend ragchew.

Communicating with someone halfway around the globe with solar powered radio
is an unparalleled feeling of satisfaction and pride. Perhaps you too can give a
bold try and declare indepence from your power utility company.

Emilio F. Ong, Jr.
[email protected]

Jun Ong Design
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