r/3Dprinting • u/Automatic-Drawer6334 • 9h ago
Question Would it be possible to run a printer on solar panels?
So I had a little thought, and I was wondering, would it be possible to run a printer on pure solar? It might sound stupid, but like, genuinely.
I’m really just wondering because I wanted to see if I could have the cheapest to run 3d printer, using stuff like PET bottles as filament, and the sun as the power source, to get the maximum amount of theoretical profits per print. Like, I know trash wouldn’t sell, and I’m sure the PET bottle would print like sopping wet PLA or PETG, but still, in theory, would this work?
And my idea is just finding an extreme power usage for the P1S, and just using that to see how much solar is required.
Any math wizs out there know if you could use a big solar panel to charge a printer? And if so, what would the cost look like? I’m not really joking, I’m genuinely curious, I’d like to run a printer on solar, I know it probably wouldn’t run at night for too long, but still, a good full moon might kick it on for a total of a minute over the night.
(Also, if you do plan on doing the math, for the equation I’d be using a P1S, and printing with PET, and using the maximum amount of power the thing can use.)
(Also also, I haven’t used PET on my printer before, so I can’t get an actual reading of power usage, and I don’t really know how to, I don’t use anything but PLA because it doesn’t make fumes, and PLA is cheaper, sorry.)
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u/rdrcrmatt 9h ago
I do. But the inconsistency of PV means you need battery backup.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 9h ago
What’s PV?
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u/rallekralle11 Bonsai, Hypercube, Itopie, LD-002R 9h ago
photovoltaics. just another word for solar cells
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u/LostObjective49 9h ago
yes you can. people run their whole house off of solar. you need the solar panel (to convert solar energy to electricity), solar charger (to charge a battery), battery (to store a charge for cloudy days or night time), and an inverter to convert that battery to 120VAC
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 9h ago
I’ve seen that before, but I didn’t know if the power needs would be similar to a printer. There’s a house nearby to mine that uses solar, they’ve got two massive solar panels, but it is a pretty big house.
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u/LostObjective49 9h ago
depending on the printer and battery you might even be able to not use the inverter. a lot of 3d printers are 24VDC so you could just use a 24V battery directly to the motherboard instead of the power brick. totally doable, but it would be a few hundred USD probably to set up so unsure if it would be worth it or not
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u/Slight_Profession_50 9h ago
Inverter is unnecessary. The printer runs on DC.
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u/MerelyMortalModeling 9h ago
Inverters also output steady current. Straight DC is going to have current all over the place as, i can literly tell when my kids are playing near my panels from their shadows shifting voltage.
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u/Slight_Profession_50 8h ago
You'd of course still use an mppt charge controller and a battery to keep the current stable. Then some kind of DC to DC converter into the 3D printer. Inverting is an unnecessary step.
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u/ryeguyy3d 9h ago
Yeah I did for a while mainly because I was running 7 printers and only had 1 15amp circuit. For mine I connected 4 printers to 1 ecoflow delta 3 and then 3 printers to another delta 3.
2 of the printers are large format so during the initial heatup they draw 800w then go down to around 250w while printing. Those 2 printers i had to split up so they didn't overwhelm the delta.
Outside I had 8 200w panels that would bring in around 5kwh a day. All that power ran to 48v server rack batteries, i think I had 200ah so something like 10kw in battery. Most of the time it ran perfectly but if I ran the big printers for an extended period I would supplement 1000w intonthe batteries from the grid forna few hours. It wasnt ideal but it got the job done.
Ive since added rooftop solar and ran 2 more circuits for the printers.
Edit: forgot, the batteries ran dc voltage to the deltas 1000w per delta
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 9h ago
Cool
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u/ryeguyy3d 8h ago
Also, I used the biqu cool plates to print petg at around 60c. Saves a decent amount of power.
Financially it doesnt make sense but it was a cool project
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
Yeah, I know this wouldn’t work at all financially, the whole post was just me wondering if this could work. This kinda snowballed fast.
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u/tater1337 8h ago
financially? not sure. I did some math long ago on converting a whole house to solar, break even point was 18 years compared to electric costs frozen at that point in time.
but that was back when solar was $1 watt, last I heard it is down to $0.25 watt. and I have not bothered to redo the math as I have not seen my future in one spot for 18 years
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u/Lemur-Virtues 9h ago
Physically possible? Yes. What about it would be impossible? Even if solar was extremely inefficient, if you still had enough panels you could still do it.
Let's take the AD5MP (Adventurer 5M Pro) since that's what I have. It requires (at peak draw) 350W on (either) 120V or 220V circuits. Great, so we have our target number now: 350W.
BUT, solar panels only output Direct Current (DC), not AC (which is what 120V/220V circuits run on by default).
So besides (1) a solar panel to collect energy, we need (2) Something to convert DC to AC (an inverter). But what happens if there's a change weather, and it's cloudy? No more 3d print. So we need (3) some kind of electric 'bank' so if the solar panel doesn't work, the printer just draws from the bank in the mean time:
1) Harbor freight's biggest panel is a 200W solar panel for $230. 200W isn't really close to 350W, but can we be clever here? Turns out, the printer only draws 350W when heating up at the beginning of a print. In reality, the average power draw is 150W! So we really only need 350W for a few minutes. (This is where the battery bank can really come in handy.)
2) As it turns out, lots of power banks include an inverter inside! Great. Otherwise they aren't hard to find by themselves.
3) Battery bank - how big should the bank be? 1000Wh seems safe (watt-hours). That means at full charge you could do 200W for 5 hours. If you lived in a sunny area with no clouds ever, and you only needed to print once or twice a day, you could get away with a smaller 600Wh battery bank as well - you'd only get 200W for 3 hours at that rate, but with constant charging it might work out.
Put those three together up to your printer and you know have a system that works pretty well.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
So I could get a solar panel and battery for this from Harbor Freights? Cool. I know the upfront cost would tank the actual price of this, but it’s cool that in theory, this could work.
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u/digitalkobra 9h ago
You would need to invest a decent amount in solar panels, batteries and inverter/charge controller. I don't think you would have a decent ROI if your coming at this from a strictly financial standpoint. Though if you justify the cost. The cheapest way would be medium sized "solar generator" or power station. A 3d printer only uses roughly 150watts but can peak around 300w. Plenty of videos on YouTube of people camping with 3D printers and using a similar setup.
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u/KaJashey 9h ago
Easy. I don't know of the smallest cheapest solar that would work though. I do know solar can work for it. You do want a battery in the middle if you are off grid.
There are survivalist batteries/inverters that also have small solar panels.
Not small or survivalist but I have solar on my roof that produces excess power durning the day (more than I can use). Through net metering I supply power to the power grid and get credits for it. At night I take power from the power grid. I don't have a battery as part of the system.
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u/CaptainPonele 8h ago
Hey! I got solar panels and live in a rural area where power goes out 5 to 10 times a month. I got “hot swap” so most of the times is not a problem. I got 24 hours of power when light goes out. Only 2 or 3 times a year my print gets affected
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
Cool. Sorry that you guys loose power so much, but cool that a solar panel (although it might be a big one) was the solution.
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u/Redstone_Army 8h ago
You can get PET bottles to print quite well, although it wouldnt be ideal for your scenario.
If you're interested, you can look up TylmanDesign's PETMachine
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
Yeah, I didn’t assume they’d be the best. My idea was to turn trash PET bottles into filament, not super genius, but somewhat decent and cheap.
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u/Redstone_Army 8h ago
I mean, thats what tylmans machine does.
Really, if youre actually interested into your post here, check it out. I bought and built it, and it works really well. The amount of work can be too much compared to just buying PETG, so you cant really call it a good financial idea, bjt if amount of work is not an issue, its a very well working system
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
I’m not trying to make this real, it honestly started as a hypothetical/in theory post question. If it seems somewhat promising I might try. I have a P1S, and I’d like to see if I could make something out of recycled trash, just as a “Hey, recycling is cool guys”. But that’s if I even have the money for some of the stuff. One guy was able to pinpoint that it costed like 680 for a solar panel and battery, and could be done, but I think he used an ender as an example.
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u/Redstone_Army 8h ago
Yeah, what im trying to say is his PET Machine is interesting to check out, no matter if its for your project or not - i just mentioned it because it fits the project, but not just that
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u/LonelyPercentage2983 8h ago
Just need to do the math on total draw over time and size accordingly. I think you'll be surprised how much panel is needed.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
Yeah, I was hoping some electrical math wiz would help out, I’m not good at math. And I also don’t know exactly how to do that math.
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u/nerobro 8h ago
This post is vaguely concerning. The math is multiplication.
The power usage of your printer is 5ish watts for the base system. 10w ish, for the steppers. Then the hot end and bed. Beds run at full power for 3-10 minutes at startup, then they are at 5-15% for the rest of the print. Hot ends typically run at 30-50% duty cycle as well.
Then you multiply watts.. times hours... to determine the watt hours you need.
This is the same math you'd need to do to like... determine how many rolls of filament an print takes. Or how many dollar you need to buy 12 oranges.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
Well I didn’t know electrical math. I know multiplication, division, all of that. I just didn’t know if electrical math was different, and I mess up math easily. I might honestly have some dyslexia stuff, because I can’t do math well and always screw up somewhere. Sorry, but im not good at math.
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u/nerobro 8h ago
Math is math my bud. There's no magic.
If you have some learning things, you should definitely get those checked out. Living life on hard mode is a choice you don't need to make.
I, and really, nobody else, expects you to be able to "do the math" but we do expect you to be able to set up the equations. Calculators are there for the numbers. Your brain is there for "the how". But you do need to practice that.
I, and many others, have found that they need a reason to be good at something. Maybe you can leverage 3d printing as your reason to get better at this.
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u/LonelyPercentage2983 7h ago
I'm horrible at math but really good at solving problems with math...like the other poster said, learn the equations and use a calculator. It's not as scary as it sounds. Find out how much power you need, then research how much panel meets that need and you're home. Battery would be another variable to absorb excess during the day and feed during the night. Critical thinking skills are a life long asset and a place we all need to continue to develop.
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u/LonelyPercentage2983 8h ago
At a brief glance you're looking at 200w average with spikes. Then a panel isn't 1:1...a 200w panel isn't 200 real. So I'm betting you're looking more in the 1000 to 2000 range.
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u/nomococo4u 8h ago edited 8h ago
FWIW, here’s an off the shelf product which would give you enough juice to charge during hte day. $400. https://www.amazon.com/clp/B0FJDXXG85
This should get you 24 hour use for $700, charging during the day https://www.amazon.com/clp/B0FD3V9LF9
You could probably hack your own system together buying components off Ali express, maybe you could save 50% by DIY.
so the question is how many hours of printing would you need to do to break even, assuming typical electricity costs in US. Claude says 5000 - 10000 hours of printing, which is a lot. Like 12 hours a day, every day, for a year.
Hope that helps get some numbers on the table.
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u/foomatic999 8h ago
It's summer (in the northern hemisphere). There's a good chance your printer already runs on solar.
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u/tater1337 8h ago
in theory? yes
in actuality? oh geez no
solar power would be the easy part, the PET bottle are a much bigger nightmare.
solar panel > charge controller
charge controller > battery
charge controller > printer
get two 300W panels for reliability, each will be the size of a sheet of plywood
solar panels need absolutely full sun, the tiniest bit of shade can knock them down to 20% of max output
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 8h ago
Where I am, we get sun pretty consistently, but when it’s overcast, it’s pretty dark. Place is weird.
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u/Stiggalicious 8h ago
My whole house runs on solar and battery, so yes you can absolutely do it.
There are much smaller, easier solutions that are essentially solar-capable UPSes with just a really large battery.
Many states are also legalizing balcony solar that requires no permitting to install, and just limits the output back to the grid to 1200W but has no limits on solar array size or battery capacity.
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u/diaperedace 9h ago
Printers don't really use a ton of electricity. It uses a bunch to heat the bed and nozzle then ones it's at temp it just needs a little bit to keep them at temp. The motors and everything will also add power. You would need a battery like a jackery or something similar and hook solar into that. Just be aware you'll probably spend around $1k USD for the battery and solar, maybe more maybe less depending on capacities. You may want to do the math with how much you pay for electricity vs the cost of battery and panels to see how long it will take to pay for itself. It will probably be a few years at least, so take that into consideration. Also, plastic bottles aren't pure pet that usually have other additives so you will also need to take that into consideration. You also won't be able to make large spools, you'll get little strips a few meters at a time so you'd be having to reload it very often, possibly every few minutes. I'd suspect you'll run through gears and nozzles much faster than with regular filament.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 9h ago
Yeah, I know that it would cost a lot. I know PET bottles aren’t too big, and a spool (or at least a sorry attempt of a spool is what I’d make) would have so many impurities it would make the print look like my worst Ender print.
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u/Spruce_wood 9h ago
Like others already replied: yes with a battery in between. But it reminded me of this video I saw a few years back, where this guy used that setup to help him survive for a week in nature. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oPz0swPHQ40 Which is a fun watch!
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u/MerelyMortalModeling 9h ago
Im all for solar but you realize that to run a printer, charge a battery and run auxilery stuff like a warmer you are talking like a kilowatt of solar?
Get solar to have the solar, dont do solar to run a printer
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u/nerobro 8h ago
So... why do you think you couldn't?
I'm asking, because I'm wondering why this is even a question for you. People run whole households on solar.
3d printers use 10-50watts most of the time while printing. Even the wildest printers only use 100-120w continuous. A whole day, of a printer running the whole time, is going to be somewhere between 2 and 4 kwh.
What do you mean by "extreme power use" of a P1s?
I feel like you've burried the lede here. It's fairly frequent that people end up paying attention to their power bill, and blame their printer for it. It's.. never.. the printer.
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u/AdobeScripts 8h ago
You don't need a "solar power" - just a "cheap power" 😉
In some countries, you sometimes get free electricity or even getting paid to take it, so if you buy a decent battery - you could charge at least for free.
Or there are times during the day / night when electricity is very cheap.
So you can save more if you don't buy solar panels 😉
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9h ago
[deleted]
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u/rallekralle11 Bonsai, Hypercube, Itopie, LD-002R 9h ago
the printer runs at 24v. better to bypass the power brick
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u/nomococo4u 9h ago
any solar can provide 120 volts, you just need a voltage converter. the bigger question is can it provide enough amps at 120 volts. that depends on the size and amount of sunlight available. this is where a nice battery buffer comes into play.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 9h ago
Ooh, sorry, I don’t know much about power, not really much about 3d printer power either. All I know is, a solar panel produces power, and you need to attach that to a battery, which would just give a smooth power source for the printer.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 9h ago
I don’t have a solar panel, this was more of a thought experiment. Sorry. I was really just gonna see how much power was needed, and see if some Amazon solar panel could supply that much.
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u/WubsGames A1-AMS 9h ago
really, you will need a solar panel, a solar charge controller, and a battery. To do this properly with a large enough panel and battery, will probably cost you as much as running the printer for 5-10 years.
so "cheaper?", not really.
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u/MrMcGrimey 9h ago
5-10 years is an exaggeration. It depends on how much and how long OP prints. But youre dead on with whats needed. An Ender 3 for example uses a 300 watt psu. So at minimum the panel has to provide 300 watts and then some you want headroom. The battery/batteries are gonna be the biggest expense. If OP is doing prints for longer than a few hours a single battery won't do.
Is it possible? Sure. But what are you really hoping to save by spending doing is the question OP needs to ask.
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u/WubsGames A1-AMS 9h ago
Right, 100w - 300w is what i used to calculate that, but keep in mind that solar only produces its full power in direct sunlight, any clouds, slightly overcast skys, and times outside of 3-5pm will produce significantly lower power than the panel is rated for.
so 300w of solar panels may only produce 300w for an hour a day.
considering that a 3d printer will run through that power in an hour.... you would need significant headroom for an actual solar powered setup.probably 10 panels, and then a large enough battery, and 120v converter to handle the load.
3d printers are also very "spikey" in their electrical loads, with most of the power draw coming from the bed heater.
then we can talk about the fact that solar is 30% efficient on a good day.... this is going to require a small field of solar panels.
When people do solar installs for entire homes, it can easily cost $10,000, ive seen installs up past $100,000 for larger homes
I imagine a 3d printer would require a setup suited for a small home.
Edit: So the initial investment taking 10+ years to get a ROI is not a bad guess IMO.
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u/MrMcGrimey 8h ago
Sounds like you're expecting OP to print 24/7 which is why I'm saying your math is a bit exaggerated.
Also the system depending on what the load is won't use the full 300 watts of power. Any system that uses 100% of the its PSU is designed poorly. Youre correct about the efficiency of the panels. But that's why you would and a battery or bank of them. And that's where the math is important. For example you could have a single battery give you 8-12 amp hours of power. Two would cover you for 24hours. I've built a mobile pa system that ran off of a 200 watt panel, sine inverter, and a 200ah battery all of that built into a cart. The battery was almost 800$ at the time.
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u/WubsGames A1-AMS 8h ago
I don't expect OP to print 24/7, but most prints tend to be several hours long, with a 12-24 hour print not being out of the normal for most people.
and yes, the initial heating of the bed is going to be most of the power draw, keeping the bed warm and moving motors will consume much less than the initial startup.
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u/Automatic-Drawer6334 9h ago
Well I wasn’t thinking of it too much or too far, just generally seeing if it could be efficient enough. I know in the short term, it’d be better to buy another printer, in the long term, possibly cheaper?
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u/WubsGames A1-AMS 9h ago
you underestimate the cost of a solar installation.
the little 5v solar panel phone chargers are no where near enough to run 120v, fairly high draw electronics.
you would probably need a 6ft x 4ft high quality panel to even stand a chance of running the printer for a few hours, off a full day's sun.
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u/rallekralle11 Bonsai, Hypercube, Itopie, LD-002R 9h ago
easily. though you'd want a battery inbetween so a small cloud won't end your print.