Good Afternoon Ladies and Gents,

I am a very keen gardener and recently have purchased some LED grow lights for my green house, and due to the lights only requiring 5W of energy @12V I was thinking of creating a solar circuit to charge a battery to run the solar panels.

So i need so help in designing and selecting the correct components to create a basic system.

My shopping list so far:

12v Battery (what should be the power out put)
Solar Panel (I assume a 5W panel should be enough)
Charge controller (do i need one for such a small system)
Resistors (what & why)

I know im a newb and this must be really frustrating but im keen to get my hands dirty and build something.

Thanks for you help

 

Back up a couple of steps. How much light is the first calculation.
A 5 watt LED will just about light up a "grow" shoe box.
Are you planning to grow one radish?

Second is the light spectrum. You have to find LEDs designed to provide the red and blue ends of the spectrum and discover how many lumens per watt they make. The noon day sun resembles 100,000 lumens per square foot. I don't think 5 watts of LED can do that for even one square foot.

You gotta do the homework or you'll wind up with useless junk.