I am going to be trying to power my currently in progress computer build with solar power. I'm not for sure what I should be looking for power wise. I have a 1000 watt power supply that apparently is 6.5 amps I think. I'm not for sure if I should find a 6 or 7 amp solar panel or if I should go for a combination of solar panels to get 1000 watts out of it and get some kind of transformer to take the amps down or volts so it won't blow up my hole system or overload it with power. If I am wrong on any of this please correct me.
Solar Power for Computer Build
solar-panels
Related Solutions
1.) Golf Cart batteries are the easiest supply for a home electric backup battery bank.
2.) Bigger is better with the solar panel array. If you're only going to be running the router (why not the modem too? Or is it combined?) you can probably get away with a cheap small solar kit from these guys : Silicon Solar They offer some great battery charger kits that pretty much take all the work out of it for you. You'd still need to wire these to your battery and convert the current to your AC plug for the router.
3.) For connecting the Router to the power grid you've created in Steps 1&2 you'll need an inverter. Depending on your interest in making something pretty to look at and safe to handle you might want to do some more research on an inverter you can wire to your power grid.
Here's a graphic that should help explain the setup and get you thinking visually on the setup explained above:
In your case the panel box would be replaced with the inverter output device combined as one item since you're only looking to power 1 device.
Based on my experience being qualified as a battery charging electrician on submarines and installing/upgrading/maintaining the 12v electrical system in my motorhome.
Battery electrolyte specific gravity is not model or battery specific so your chart is fine.
Amp-hours is a measurement of current consumed (or the sheer number of electrons you've pulled out of the battery) rather than tracking watts which is a measure of power. You can easily track the amount of power used, but it would be impossible to determine the actual state of charge in your battery. It would be like if you tried to gauge how much fuel you had left in your car by reading a "cumulative horsepower meter".
A manual hydrometer is fine - just avoid the super cheap ones available at the auto parts store.
Get a real battery charge monitor that measures amp-hours in/out. I use one made by Xantrex.
You have to test the battery to know its bad.
An equalizing charge involves holding charge current at a low value, which boosts charge voltage - so if your charge controller won't allow you to set EQ current at a value, get a new one. 10 amps is probably close enough to the charge rate appropriate for equalizing - however if your array is only capable of delivering 10 amps with full sun, you might want to reconsider that strategy.
Who cares. Battery capacity is a function of the rate of discharge so that value is effectively worthless to you as a monitoring metric.
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Best Answer
Skip it, seriously. I don't know what your motivation for this is, but you need to learn just a wee tad more before you bite it off.
If it's (sounds like not) a remote-off-grid solar powered computer, you start with making it efficient, and then then address the power supply (probably not a wall-plug-in-type), days of running without sun, batteries, charge controllers, etc...
If you are on-grid but have vague greenish feelings that somehow have not impacted your choice of power supply/motherboard, just set up a small (or large) grid-tie system and plug the computer into the grid. That will be adequately complicated for you to start learning about.