About the green initiatives (solar) for Weboggle

Weboggle

Weboggle is hosted on a privately owned, dedicated server. Funding for the running costs of the site is currently provided by the owner, and supplemented by donations and a small amount of advertising revenue.

The single biggest running cost is electricity. Currently, it costs about $400 per year for the supply of electricity for the server. The server consumes on average of 300 watts of electricity. At this rate, it has the potential to generate several tonnes of greenhouse gases per year.

In early 2011, a new green energy initiative is being implemented for the Weboggle server.

Presently, the system is composed of the following:

• 2 x 80 watt solar panels (modules). This consitutes a 160 watt array.
• Solar PV charge controller
• 100 amp hour battery bank (12 volt sealed lead acid)
• 400 watt DC to AC inverter

On an average sunny day, there are about 4.5 hours of useful, energy generating sunlight. The current system is capable of providing power to the server for up to two hours per day (every four to five hours of charging allows for two hours of runtime). This equates to 60 hours (or two and a half days) per month less usage of mains power. The rest of the time, normal mains electricity is used to power the server.

Eventually, the system will be expanded to the following:

• total array wattage of 1 kW
• 1000 amp hour battery bank

This will then allow the server to run almost entirely from solar energy, day and night. Should there be an overcast day, some mains (grid) electricity will be used to supply power during the night.

This information will be updated as more progress is made upgrading and expanding the solar PV system.