A great way to put solar panels
to use is to install a solar powered water pump for your well. Even though
windmills have more commonly been used to power water pumps, solar panels are
starting to become the preferred method for pumping water in remote locations.
This is great news for so many reasons. First of all, there are huge amounts of
land that have been thought to be inhabitable because potable water was not
available. Well, just imagine a solar well that taps deep down water sources in
remote deserts all over our planet. Someday this could that overpopulation will
not be a problem as vast amounts of new real estate becomes available for more
and more people. Agricultural land may someday increase 100 fold when this
actually becomes a reality. Second, pumping water with solar panels is
particularly a good use for solar panels because the energy can be saved
indefinitely in the form of gravity.
Solar panel systems that charge
batteries can become expensive because batteries in these systems can often cost
more than the solar panels themselves thus rendering the entire idea not
economically sound. Now, that I've convinced you what a great idea it is to
install a solar powered water pump, let me move on to the how to. It is
important to choose a good solar powered well pump for use that makes the best
use of your power and doesn't require a transformer where energy is lost
unnecessarily. You don't want a regular well pump that runs on 110 volt AC
power. That would mean that you would have to invest in an inverter that would
eat up a lot of power and bring your well pump to a slow trickle. You want a
well pump designed specifically for solar panels and that means you want a low
voltage DC model water pump. Your solar panel doesn't need a high wattage rating
to run your solar pump. Some solar powered pumps operate on as little at 100
watts. Of course, the more watts, the more water you can pump so you need to
find out what your requirements are before you go out shopping.