Designing a battery surveillance system with Solar

[Rick Krupka]

Hope some one can lead me in the right direction. I have a remote 12V camera system that draws 6 amp/hour. I look to connect to a battery bank and solar panels to allow 24X7 coverage. The deployment is in the Dallas Texas area so sunshine is good. How many batteries, and what type should I buy and how big of a solar array do I need to keep the system going?
Thanks

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Rick,

Would you have a number for how much the camera(s) draw in current at 12 Volt? Your mention of 6 A/h is a bit unclear: I doubt cameras draw 6 Amp, that seems high, and "A/h" is not a unit. There is "Ah" as a measure of energy, but that would only be useful if you also give a time period and Voltage (as in "the cameras draw 6 Ah at 12 Volt every 24 hours"). By the way, Amp-hour or Ah is literally the multiplication of the Amp draw of the batteries times a time period (so say as an example the cameras draw 3 Amp overall, times 24 hours, makes 3 x 24 = 72 Ah over 24h, and multiplying that by the battery Voltage makes energy, or 72 x 12 =864 Watt-hours or Wh per day).

Once we know the current draw of the camera(s) it's easy to calculate how much energy you need each day to run them, and from there how much it takes in solar PV and batteries to run 24x7. So, the current is the starting point.

-RoB-