Voltaic Systems Blog

Calculating Safe Distance from Walls and Trees for Successful Solar Performance

Voltaic Systems — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:58:22 +0000

Can you install solar panels facing a wall or tree? It depends on distance from the object, latitude and panel sizing!

For northern latitudes and taller buildings, the panels need to be further and further away from a given obstacle to see the sun. Choosing the right distance is critical for installation—a properly sized system won’t survive the winter if it’s installed too close to an obstacle.

In this blog I’ll show you how to calculate this crucial distance for your installation, then I’ll go into more detail about how those calculations are derived for my fellow nerds and engineers.

Calculating Distance

There are two distances that we’re concerned about in the graphic below:
H – How much higher the obstacle is than the panel? Precisely, the difference in height between the top of the obstacle and the bottom of the solar panel.
D – How far the panel is from the obstacle? Precisely, the horizontal distance from the most Northern tip of the obstacle to the most Southern part of the solar panels.

The Distance D is determined by a Multiplication Factor F. This changes depending on your location (see chart below). The further North you are installing, the further the panel will need to be away from the obstacle. Calculating D is simple:

D = F x H

Location	Latitude	Factor (F)	Example Height (H)	Example Distance (D)
Zone 1 – Seattle, Bismarck	45-50	6.85	10 ft	69 ft
Zone 2 – New York, Boise	40-45	3.51	10 ft	35 ft
Zone 3 – San Francisco, D.C.	35-40	3.11	10 ft	31 ft
Zone 4 – Atlanta, Austin	30-35	2.12	10 ft	21 ft
Zone 5 – Miami, Houston	25-30	1.89	10 ft	19 ft

Background

Voltaic sizes solar power systems based on their expected performance in December to ensure that the systems run year-round. December is when the sun is lowest in the sky and shadows are at their longest, so if you’re installing in June or July you can’t judge shadows with your eye.

At northern latitudes, a panel might only see the equivalent of 2 hours of direct sunlight over the course of the average December day. If the panel is shaded for the first half of the day by a building due South of it, then that installation will require double the amount of solar power. If that’s not accounted for during install, then the system will go down during the winter.

For the purposes of this exercise I assumed that the hours of 9AM – 3PM cover most of the significant sunlight hours in the wintertime. In other words, if you’re not shaded during these hours, then our estimates will hold up. This picture provided by Shademap.app shows the shading in Pittsburg at 9AM in early January to illustrate this point. If you use the factors in the table above, then your system will not see shading between 9AM – 3PM in your corresponding zone.

Math

To calculate the above multiplication factors, we took the height of the sun in degrees in December at 9AM as θ and plugged it into the following equation:

F = 1 / tan (θ)

Thank you for reading along and feel free to reach out if you are unsure about your installation location. We highly recommend using Shademap.app to check shading in your area.

Hack The Planet Limits Poaching With ScannerEdge

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:09:50 +0000

Hack The Planet is a Dutch non-profit that develops technological solutions to protect nature. Their latest product is ScannerEdge, an intruder detection system with LoRaWAN and satellite connectivity.

ScannerEdge deployed in the forest.

SmartDetect is able to identify humans within a 1km distance if they are using nearly any type of communications equipment.

There are some interesting challenges in the design of a system deployed in remote locations like national parks in Zambia. Power consumption for communication is one that every IoT developer experiences. Hack The Planet uses the very efficient Semtech LR11X chip for the LoRaWAN version and for scanning. They strategically schedule the scanning to balance power used vs probability of identifying an intruder. On the satellite version, they use the Ground Control RockBLOCK 9603 satellite modem and carefully limit data transmitted.

Humans and wildlife will target electronics devices placed in the field. The team generally places the sensors high up in trees, well away from known trails, to be out of the range of elephants and out of sight of poachers. They will sometimes coat the devices with chili oil to deter elephants. This however, doesn’t seem to always work with monkeys and rodents.

Larger enclosure is needed for the satellite version.

The systems draw power from one of our small solar panel, the P126.

Learn more about Hack The Planet and their partner, Smart Parks.

Obscape Uses Voltaic In Rugged Environmental Devices

Voltaic Systems — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:56:29 +0000

Obscape is a designer and manufacturer of easy-to-use environmental monitoring products. Their devices are placed in extremely challenging locations around the world including coastlines, ports, offshore drilling platforms. Once deployed, they take photographs and measure wave height, water quality, water levels and water flow.

Solar powered Time-Lapse Camera deployed on a beach.

For Obscape’s customers, product reliability is a critical feature. Obscape outlines the reasons they choose to use Voltaic solar panels in this video.

Voltaic has spent extensive time and resources validating the material stack used in all of our ETFE panels. They have been tested against a wide variety of environmental forces:

combined UV, temperature and humidity
thermal cycling
thermal shock
vibration
mechanical shock
saltwater
chemical exposure

The solar panels have also been field tested with well over a million panels deployed across a wide variety of use cases and environmental conditions.

Solar panels on OBS-BUOY

Voltaic collaborates with our customers to ensure mechanical and electrical designs follow best practices. Obscape embeds each of the panels precisely and securely in the enclosure which shields them from impact. This design step extends the length of the panel by several years.

Solar panels in Time-Lapse camera during production.

We are excited to work with companies like Obscape who help their customers better understand the world around them.

Monitoring Battery Health Data with Digi’s IX30 Cellular Router

Samson Zhang — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:23:45 +0000

The Digi IX30 cellular router is used in a broad range of industrial applications including private LTE networks. In cases where power is difficult to access, our CORE Solar Systems can run the router and any accompanying sensors.

There are two ways to monitor the performance of the solar panel and battery in this situation. You can use the Voltaic battery health monitor or send the data from our battery directly to the router and the Digi Remote Manager® dashboard. This eliminates having two cellular connections.

In this post we show how to:

physically connect the RS485 output of the Voltaic battery to the router
program the Digi IX30 using Python to receive data from the battery
present the data on the Digi dashboard

Hardware Requirements

Voltaic CORE Solar System and a waterproof enclosure, preferably with DIN Rail
Digi IX30
M8 RS485 cable
RS485 to USB adapter
Female to male USB extension cable
For configuration only: ethernet cable, computer with ethernet port or ethernet to USB adapter

Hardware Setup

Ensure your router has an activated SIM card installed. Connect the power terminals of the Digi IX30 to the output of the Voltaic battery. The router should automatically power on and begin looking for a cellular connection. Once it has found a connection, the lights will be a steady blue color.

Note that we could swap the default antennas for smaller version to allow for a smaller enclosure.

Connect the M8 cable from the RS485 port on your battery and the other end of the cable to your enclosure. Then connect the GND, A+, and B- wires to the corresponding terminals of your RS485 to USB adapter.

Connect the USB adapter to the USB port on your router directly or with a female-to-male USB extension cable.

Now the Digi IX30 is ready to be programmed to read data from your charge controller and transmit the data via cellular connection to Digi Remote Manager.

Digi IX30 Configuration

First, add your Digi IX30 to Digi Remote Manager. You will need to connect your router to a computer using an ethernet cable to do this. In Digi Remote Manager, create a new Template. Select your Digi IX30 as the model device. Leave other settings as default until you get to the “Actions” screen. Here, check “Enable scanning” and “Remediate” under “Action Plan.” Under Add-ons, check “Python.”

Save your template, then click into it to further edit its settings. Note that you can also make these setting changes through the Web UI if your router is connected to your laptop via ethernet
— follow Digi’s instructions here.

On the “Serial” tab, press the “+” button to add a serial port. Name it “usb1,” select “USB Serial Port” for type, and set the Serial Mode to “Application.” This will allow your Python script to use the USB port to read data from the Voltaic CORE Solar System.

On the “Services” tab, enable SSH and Service Discovery (mDNS). This will enable SSH access from Digi Remote Manager, which we will use to install Python packages and test our script.

On the “Authentication” tab, expand Groups > admin > acl > shell and enable “Interactive shell access.”

Now save your template and press “Scan now” in the sidebar. After a few minutes, the template will be installed on your Digi IX30.

Python setup

In Digi Remote Manager, go to your device page, then select “Open console” under “Device actions.”

Once the console loads, press “S” and hit enter to enable the shell. Run “python —version” to verify that Python is installed, and then run “pip install pymodbus==3.8.6” to install the Python package we will use to communicate with the Voltaic CORE Solar System.

On your computer, create a file called main.py with the following code:

from pymodbus.client import ModbusSerialClient
import datetime
from digidevice import datapoint
from digidevice.datapoint import DataPoint
from digidevice.datapoint import DataType
import traceback
# modbus parameters
PORT = "/dev/serial/usb1"
BAUDRATE = 9600
# list of tuples (name, register, is_signed, unit) for charge controller data
# from Voltaic Systems documentation https://voltaicsystems.com/rs-485-guide/
REGISTERS = [
("battery_voltage", 0x30A0, False, "V"),
("battery_current", 0x3047, True, "A"),
("system_voltage", 0x304E, False, "V"),
("system_current", 0x304F, False, "A"),
("load_voltage", 0x304A, False, "V"),
("load_current", 0x304B, False, "A"),
("environmental_temp", 0x30A2, False, "C"),
("controller_temp", 0x3037, False, "C"),
]
global client
# helper function to convert twos complement to int
def twos_complement_16bit_to_int(val):
if (val & (1 << (16 - 1))) != 0:
val = val - (1 << 16)
return val
# main loop
def main_loop():
global client
print(f'{datetime.datetime.now()}: Running main loop')
data_points = []
try:
# run in loop
for name, register, is_signed, unit in REGISTERS:
print(f'{datetime.datetime.now()}: Reading {name}...')
# separate try catch for each iteration of for loop, so other registers are still attempted
try:
# read register using modbus
response = client.read_input_registers(register)
register_value = response.registers[0]
# if signed, convert from twos complement to int
if is_signed:
register_value = twos_complement_16bit_to_int(register_value)
# divide 16 bit int by 100 to get float value
value = register_value / 100.
# create Digi data point and append to array
data_point = DataPoint(name, value, units=unit, data_type=DataType.FLOAT)
data_points.append(data_point)
print(f'{datetime.datetime.now()}: Successfully read {name}')
except Exception:
traceback.print_exc()
# upload all data points to Digi Remote Manager
print(f'{datetime.datetime.now()}: Uploading data points to DRM...')
datapoint.upload_multiple(data_points)
print(f'{datetime.datetime.now()}: Successfully uploaded data points to DRM')
except Exception:
traceback.print_exc()
if __name__ == '__main__':
client = ModbusSerialClient(PORT, baudrate=BAUDRATE)
client.connect()
main_loop()

Connect to your Digi IX30 via ethernet (ETH2 port) and access the Web UI by going to in a browser, then logging in with the username “admin” and the password provided with your router. In the web UI, go to System > File System. Navigate to and upload your Python script.

You can test this script by re-opening the console through Digi Remote Manager, entering the
shell by pressing “S” and Enter, and running “python etc/config/scripts/main.py”. You should see
the following logs:

In Digi Remote Manager, navigate to the “Data Streams” tab. You should see battery-related data appear on the dashboard.

Lastly, we will configure the script to run automatically on an interval. Re-open the settings page of the template you created and go to the System tab. Expand the “Scheduled tasks” dropdown, then press “+” under “Custom scripts” to create a new custom script. Enter the following settings:

Label: any label
Run mode: Interval
Interval: your specified interval for data logging, for example 15m for 15
minutes
Commands: “python etc/config/scripts/main.py”
Maximum memory: 500MB
Sandbox: unchecked

Save these changes, then click “Scan now” to sync your device’s settings with the template. Once the device reboots with the updated settings, you should see data periodically stream into the Data Streams tab of Digi Remote Manager. To view data for one variable over time, click into the variable in Digi Remote Manager to see a graph. You can also export the data as a CSV or use Digi’s API to access the data and use it in your own application. Select the three dots and click “Edit chart” to adjust your chart’s title and axis bounds.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we connected our Voltaic CORE Solar System to a Digi IX30 cellular router in order to send battery health data to the Digi Remote Manager. We can now track power input (solar panel voltage and current) and power output (battery voltage and battery current) and see how our device is performing in the Digi portal.

Jeng IoT Introduces Solar-ConTracker

Voltaic Systems — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 18:33:14 +0000

Dutch-based Jeng IoT recently released a new version of their ConTracker asset tracking solution. The new tracker includes an integrated solar panel (P134) which makes the device fully autonomous.

ConTracker Use Case

The ConTracker was developed with the recycling industry to help them manage large fleets of containers. Prior to using the ConTracker, the companies didn’t know the location of their containers.

Through a dashboard or API, Jeng provides accurate current and historical geographic location of large assets and delivers event notifications. Users can get alerted when devices move as expected or if there is suspicious activity. Often containers are rented out to a 3rd party, and separate views and permissions can be assigned to those customers.

System Design and Power Management

The solar panel is embedded just below the surface of an ABS enclosure using 3M’s VHB pressure activated tape. When light is available, it the panel charges an internal LiIon battery cell.

The tracker sends data over the cellular network using an NB-IoT modem. In order to preserve power, it sends less data when the system is static versus when it is moving and can stay indoors in a warehouse for up to two months without losing power.

One design element that we like is that the enclosure can be produced in any color to match the vehicle fleet. This makes the tracker blend in more easily.

Durable Solar Panel for Embedded Applications

Voltaic solar panels are designed for long term outdoor deployments. The material stack in the panel has been thoroughly qualified and passed a wide range of environmental, mechanical and immersion tests. In addition, the stack has been deployed in well over one million asset trackers since 2019. The objective is for the panel to last over ten years in most outdoor environments.

The tests include:

accelerated UV well beyond IEC 61215
TC50 thermal cycling
1,000 hours damp heat
vibration and mechanical shock based on SAE J1455 and MIL-STD 810H
IK08/IK09 referencing IEC 62262
salt water immersion
exposure to chemicals and oils

Talk to a Sales Engineer

Solar Semaphore For Stockholm Ferries

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:44:18 +0000

Passenger ferries in the Stockholm archipelago rely on a century-old system of mechanical semaphores to signal when someone is waiting to board. The problem is they are hard to see in fog, rain, snow, at night, or even overly sunny days.

Göran Nordahl from Lohmega has equipped the semaphore with an accelerometer that detects whether it is raised or not and communicates this via BLE to a nearby base station. The base station then transmits the information over LoRaWAN via The Things Network, and the semaphore status is displayed on a digital timetable visible to the ferry captain. This allows the ferry to move at an efficient pace along the main route instead of detouring to every island to check for passengers. This reduces fuel and reduces the chance of the ferry captain skipping a stop when there is a waiting passenger.

The base station features an e-ink display, RGB LEDs around the perimeter, and a Voltaic 2 Watt (P126) solar panel for charging. The LEDs act as a visual aid for the captain when approaching the pier in complete darkness.

As always, the main technical challenges in a system like this are antenna design and power supply. The long, dark, and cold Swedish winter poses a major problem. CST Microwave Studio and Optenni helped in antenna development, while low-power design from Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52840 , robust rechargeable MP Series batteries from Saft, and durable solar panels help address the power challenges.

Here’s a video of the semaphores in action.

Lohmega can add additional sensors, such as for wind direction and speed, water level, or wave height, into the base station.

ShadeMap Improves Solar Device Placement

Voltaic Systems — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 22:15:58 +0000

When customers have solar system performance issues with city deployments of IoT devices, the first question we ask is “what are the coordinates?” Then we immediately open ShadeMap.

ShadeMap visually shows shading on nearly every location by time of day and time of year. It allows us and our customers to quickly assess the relative performance of multiple locations and adjust our solar sizing model to account for the reduction in performance.

Lets look at the location in front of our office in New Lab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in June (summer solstice) and December (winter solstice). A quick look on Google Maps and you’d think it looks ok. Nearby buildings aren’t particularly tall and the street is fairly wide.

If we look at ShadeMap in June, we see that it starts to receive direct sun around 8AM.

It then starts to get shaded around 5PM. Overall, not too bad.

In December, it is shaded for most of the day except for when the sun sneaks through in the early afternoon. It will maybe only get an hour of direct sun a day.

If we were trying to deploy a device in the Navy Yard, we can scan nearby locations and pick one that has better sun exposure. This is two blocks away on 5th Street.

To take it to the next level, you can even show the solar intensity at the location. It doesn’t account for panel angle or rotation, but will provide a numeric value to back up the more visual shading feedback from the tool. This location next to our office receives 1776 hours of direct sunlight a year.

100 feet to the south at the Navy Yard entrance receives nearly 3,000 hours of direct sun, nearly twice as much.

Next time you are looking to deploy a solar powered IoT device in an area with buildings, trees or other physical structures, we highly recommend looking at ShadeMap.

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Using a SenseCAP Datalogger to Monitor a Voltaic CORE Battery

Samson Zhang — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:16:07 +0000

This tutorial will help you use a Seeed Studio SenseCAP S2100 Datalogger to wirelessly monitor a Voltaic CORE Solar System (voltaicsystems.com/iot) and deployed load using RS485 Modbus. We will be using a Seeed Studio SenseCAP LoRaWAN Gateway as the deployed device, but you can use this setup to monitor any panel/battery/load deployment.

When complete, you will be able to view all the metrics of your CORE Solar System via the SenseCAP CC portal, as shown below.

Each Voltaic CORE battery has an RS485 Modbus connection which allows users to monitor battery voltage and current output, solar panel voltage and current input, and temperature. It is relatively straightforward to bring that data into Seeed Studio’s Sensecraft App.

Hardware Requirements

Seeed Studio SenseCAP S2100 datalogger
An iOS or Android phone to configure the datalogger
A SenseCAP CC account to view your data (you can sign up for free)
Any CORE Solar System
Waterproof enclosure
M8 connector cable
Your deployed device (in this tutorial, a SenseCAP gateway)

Connect Datalogger to the CORE Battery (Data and Power)

Connect to the battery M8 port

The RS485 M8 port on a Voltaic CORE battery has four terminals: V+, GND, RS-485 A- and RS-485 B+. You can find full RS-485 documentation on the Charge Controller RS-485 Guide webpage.

Connect one end of the M8 cable to the battery, and strip the wires on the other end. Note what color corresponds with what pin. On a standard cable:

Pin	Wire color
V+	Red
GND	Black
A+	Orange/Brown
B-	Blue

Connect to the Data Logger

First, disassemble the data logger. Unscrew the three screws to pull out the cover, and then pull the board out of the cover.

You should see screw wire terminals exposed. Feed a stripped M8 cable through the cover, and connect wires to the “12V IN”, GND, A-, and B+ terminals, using the same colors as in the battery M8 cable. (Note that in the photo below an M12 cable is used, so it has two extra wires, which are unused. You can use any cable that will fit and has four accessible wires.)

Once all wires are connected, reassemble the data logger by pushing the board back into the cover and screwing the cover back into place.

Connect Wires in Waterproof Enclosure

Take the other end of the data logger and battery wires and feed them into your junction box.

Connect each of the corresponding wires to each other (A+ to A+, B- to B-, GND to GND, V12IN to V+), matching the colors from the earlier steps. You can solder them or use any wire connector; in this tutorial we’re using Waygo quick connectors with levers.

Set up your Data Logger

Now that the data logger and battery are wired together, we are ready to configure the data logger to read status measurements from the battery.

First, set up the data logger in the SenseCraft iOS/Android app, then enter the Modbus configuration for the battery through the app to complete setup.

Power on Your Battery

Before configuring your data logger, power on your battery by connecting any cable — with a load or not — to the M16 port of the battery.

You should see the battery’s green and yellow lights turn on.

Install the SenseCraft App on Your Phone

Download link for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.seeed.sensecapmate&hl=en-US

Download link for iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sensecraft/id1619944834

Once you download the app, log in using your SenseCAP CC Portal account. If you do not yet have an account, register for one at this link: https://sensecap.seeed.cc/portal/#/register

Add the data logger on the SenseCraft app

Once logged into the SenseCraft app, press the green “+” button in the upper right corner and scan the QR code on the side of the data logger to add the logger to your account.

If scanning doesn’t work, manually enter the ID written on the data logger.

Configure the data logger on the SenseCraft app

After the device is added, select “Device Bluetooth Configuration.” When you see the “Setup” screen, press and hold the button on the data logger for three seconds. You should see the LED start to blink green.

Once the LED is blinking, press “Device is ready for configuration” in the app. Then press the appropriate serial number in the app, and press “Advanced configuration”.

Go to the “Settings” tab. Under Basic Settings, select the platform and frequency plan that is appropriate. In the U.S., select US915 for the frequency.

Under “Sensor Settings”, select RS485 Modbus RTU for “Protocol” and a baud rate of 9600. Set the Sensor Warm-up Time, Response Timeout, and Startup Time to 500 ms.

Set the measurement number to 9, then press “Measurement Settings” to continue.

In the Measurement Settings screen, we are going to set up measurements based on the Charge Controller RS-485 Guide on the Voltaic Systems website. Specifically, we are going to reference this table:

For example, in order to read the Battery Voltage Level: expand the dropdown for “Measurement1.” Set the address to 12448, as indicated by the “Decimal code” column of the table above. Set the function code to Read Input Registers(04), and the data type to “Unsigned 16bit integer, 0xAB.” Set Precision to 2 and Factor A to 0.01 (corresponding to the 100 V multiplier in the table). See the screenshot below for reference.

Since all of the measurements except Battery Status have a multiplier of 100 units and use the same function code, we can click “Apply All” to apply these settings to the following eight measurements.

Continue configuring the measurements one at a time. For example, for Battery Current, expand the dropdown for “Measurement2” and set the address to 12359. For this measurement, you will need to change the data type to “Signed 16bit integer, 0xAB,” as indicated by the asterisk in the table. For Measurement9/Battery Status, you should leave Factor A at 1. For all other measurements, stick with the previously applied settings (same as Measurement1).

Once you are done inputting the Measurement settings, go back to the main settings screen and press the Send button at the bottom of the screen. You should then see a dialog that says “Setup Successfully!”

If you press “Continue” after this dialog and return to the Information tab, you can press the “Measure” button to see a live readout of your measurements. Check that these measurements are within your expected bounds.

Now you are done configuring your data logger. If you exit out of the configuration screen, your data logger button should pulse red and connect to the network you specified in the settings, and should show up as “Online” on your phone.

If your data logger does not connect, you can short-press the button to trigger the red pulse and network search again. If your device continues to fail to connect, check that the network you selected has coverage in your area, and that surrounding buildings or structures are not blocking the signal.

Set up SenseCAP Portal to display your data

On your computer, navigate to https://sensecap.seeed.cc/ and log in with your SenseCAP account you created earlier.

Under the “Sensor Node” sidebar page, you should see your data logger.

If you click into the data logger and scroll down, you should see the latest uplink of data from your battery.

To display this data in a more readable way, go to the Panel page in the sidebar, and click Add New Panel. Give your panel a name, then you are ready to add components to display your data. There are many options available for displaying your data. For example, let’s set up a gauge to display voltage data.

Press the blue + button in the top right, then select Gauge. Select your data logger, and the appropriate measurement number for what you want to display.

Give your component the appropriate label and range, and you should see it show up in your dashboard.

You can also add time-series plots using the Line Chart component.

When creating the new component, click Add Devices, and then select the measurement you want to plot in the dropdown menu. This will bring up the data logger and allow you to select its corresponding data output to plot.

Here is an example of time-series data for solar panel input voltage over a week:

Deploy your setup

With that, you are ready to deploy your setup! For this tutorial, we deployed our charge system and data logger with a solar panel and LoRaWAN gateway outdoors:

You can swap out the gateway for any device you want to power, or even add a sensor and second data logger to collect data.

With this setup, you can receive real-time telemetry from your solar panel and charge system deployment, and speed up problem diagnoses and reduce downtime. Learn more about using solar to power gateways and routers.

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Seeed SenseCAP Weather Station on Rooftop Farm

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:42:00 +0000

With the help of Harmony Analytica, we installed a solar powered weather station from seeed studio on the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm. In this post, we show you how to:

wire the CORE system to power and share data between the S700 Weather Sensor and the S2100 LoRaWAN Data Logger
appropriately size a solar panel solution

The goal of the weather station is to provide data that can help inform and improve water usage on the farm.

Weather Station Schematic

We need to deliver power from the Voltaic battery to both the data logger and weather sensor and connect the data lines between the two devices.

The weather sensor sends data to the data logger, then it is sent over The Things Network to the Harmony Analytica dashboard. We added our optional battery health monitor to keep track of the power performance.

Solar Powered Weather Station Hardware

We used the following components:

S700 Weather Sensor
S2100 LoRaWAN Data Logger
V102 CORE LFP Battery
Optional CORE Battery Health Monitor
9 Watt 18 Volt Solar Panel (P108)
Large Solar Panel Bracket (BK103)
2 x PG 9 glands
1 x M16 Bulkhead Connector (W280)
Hose clamps)

Solar System Sizing

We measured the power consumption and found that it was between 0.25 and 0.5 Watts with an expected daily total of 9 Watt hours. Our charge controller adds another 2 Watt hours.

We opted for our 9 Watt panel which can produce 21 watt hours per day on average or nearly 1.9X our consumption (our target is at least 1.5X). Our current smallest 12V battery is the 18Ah V102 which could power the system for 18+ days with no sun. This is oversized, but certainly workable.

Wiring and Setup

We brought the power into a small, waterproof enclosure using our M16 Bulkhead connector. We used PG9 glands to bring in the 5mm cable from the two devices and Wago clips to connect the positive and ground from the battery to the devices as well as the data lines.

Then, it was simply a matter of attaching all the components neatly to a pole.

System Performance

Once, installed, we can watch the weather data come in on Harmony Analytica’s dashboard and the solar and battery status on voltaicsystems.io.

The green line shows the state of charge (full), orange shows the solar panel input and magenta the power consumption. Note that the power goes up during the day when the irradiance and lux sensors are activated.

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Lifetime Costs of Voltaic CORE LFP vs AGM Solar Systems

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 17:58:36 +0000

Our integrated, Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) battery solar systems reduce both upfront and long-term maintenance costs of remote deployments. In this post, we lay out the advantages of running a fleet of remote devices from our CORE Solar System vs a typical lead acid AGM-based system.

The bulk of the savings comes down to two key aspects:

CORE is dramatically lighter and smaller which leads to lower shipping and labor costs during installation
LFP cells have roughly 2X the lifespan of deepy cycle AGM in the field – this reduces truck rolls and battery replacement costs

Shipping Costs – Battery and System Weights of Solar Powered Systems

Lead acid batteries are 1.8 times heavier than LFP cells on an Amp-hour basis.

LFP vs AGM Weight Comparison

	Voltaic CORE LFP	AGM-based System
Capacity	96Ah	100Ah
Weight (pounds)	35	65
Weight per Ah (pounds/Ah)	0.36	0.65

The higher weight and bulk of an AGM battery system is substantial. A competitor 100W AGM solar system ships one system per pallet, versus 8 systems per pallet for Voltaic’s 100W CORE system. This can increase upfront costs by $300 per system.

System Weight and Shipping Costs

Component	Voltaic CORE LFP	AGM-based System
Solar Panel	100 Watt	85 Watt
Battery	96Ah	100Ah
Cost	$1145	$1199
Shipping Weight (pounds)	64	142
Systems per pallet	8	1
Shipping cost (per system)	$100	$400+

Assembly and Installation Costs – Solar Powered Systems

A typical AGM installation uses a large NEMA enclosure to house a DIN-rail mounted charge controller and a battery strapped to the bottom of the cabinet.

The weight of a 100W AGM system will exceed OSHA’s limits for moving without mechanical assistance. In most cases, it will require two people to install.

In contrast, the 100W CORE system can often be installed by a single person and all components are below OSHA’s weight thresholds.

Replacement Costs – Lifecycles of AGM vs LFP Batteries

The lifetime of an AGM and LFP battery varies heavily based on depth of discharge. We recommend most customers have 5 days of runtime with no sun which translates to 20-30% depth of discharge on most days. 80-90% discharge is possible with stretches of bad weather.

Most sources indicate that LFP batteries will have twice as many cycles, cutting battery replacement costs and labor in half. Depending on location, that labor could easily be anywhere from $200 to $1,000 and up for a truck roll.

Approximate Cycle Life by Depth of Discharge (>80% Capacity)

Depth of Discharge	Voltaic CORE	Deep Cycle AGM
50%	4000+	~1500

Conclusion – CORE LFP Can Reduce Fleet Costs

In addition to the hardware, the cost of a remote solar system deployment includes: shipping, labor and maintenance.

By reducing the weight and increasing the lifetime of the battery, Voltaic CORE systems cut the lifetime cost of a remote solar system.

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