Hi,
I got really interested in the whole concept of solar panels. I read a couple of articles and saw a few videos on how to convert solar energy to electricity, but what I want to know is how can I make the microwave work, only using solar panels?
What I mean, is how many Volts, Watts, Amperes or any of these do I need to make the microwaves fully functional and how many big the solar panels need to be to absord enought energy?
Thanks!
2 thoughts on “How To Make My Microwave Work Only Using Solar Panels?”
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There’s a lot of important details, but the short answer is that you would need a system capable of supplying around 1000W, at 120VAC and capable of handling the current (which would be around 8A).
The specific requirements would depend on how you intend to use the microwave oven (i.e. how long its on for and how often you turn it on). Based on the usage you’d be able to come up with an idea of how many batteries you need (for storing the energy) versus how many solar panels you need (for charging the batteries).
In any case, it would be a fairly expensive way to heat food. Even if you made it cheap (i.e. so that the system could only be used occasionally), I’d guess it would cost at least $1000 for the inverter, batteries and other electronics plus another $1000 for a (relatively low power) solar panel.
If you wanted to make it more of an ‘on demand’ system, you’d be looking at a pretty high price tag.
You’d probably be better off with a solar cooker.
That being said, such a system would be able to power many other household things as well, it wouldn’t be limited to just powering microwave ovens. However economically, solar power isn’t (currently) reasonable (assuming you have access to the grid).
Welcome to the renewable resources world!
This is a great question because this is what you have to think about when trying to power your house with solar energy.
The short answer is you can’t really do it with just a solar panel. You need a couple more things to help handle the load. especially for something as power hungry as a microwave.
In order to do this you are going to need 3 pieces:
the solar panel
a battery
a converter
The panel is the easy part because you’ll use this to charge the battery but the battery is going to fairly substantial.
to determine the true drain on your batteries you have to divide your nominal battery voltage (12v) into the voltage of the load (120v), which is 10, and then multiply this times your amp hours (8A x .5 hr = 4ah). So in this case the calculation would be 40 amp hours drained from your batteries.
An average deep cycle RV battery can handle that but your not going to get a lot of use out of it before you will have to let the solar panel charge the cells again.
Finally you need the converter to change the 12VDC into 120VAC
SO it is doable but i wouldn’t focus it on just the microwave. you could also power a CFL bulb, a radio etc at the same time depending on the loads and how long you want the system to last before recharge is required. Think “How much juice do I need before the sun comes back up?”
Here is a link to the source for this information.