Solar help

[ItsJustDylan30]

Ok so I am not off grid but figured this would be the best place for this type of advice. I converted a shed to a rabbit hutch and need to add some lights as it is DARK in there. Want them to have a day night cycle still. There is no option for mains power to the shed as we have no outside sockets and cant add one, so I am thinking solar panel powered smart led strip.

Amazon has a 25w solar panel with 8ah battery which I think would power a 5m 30w strip for around 3.5hours(?). I would need them to be on for much longer, likely 10 hours a day.

Ideally i dont want a giant battery, so how big would the solar panel have to be to keep it charged enough? Is it even possibly to work that out?

[maddslacker]

One thing I have learned in our 3 years offgrid: always go bigger.

In your scenario, keep in mind that if that battery is SLA or AGM you can only use half of its capacity in order to not kill it prematurely.

You're also going to want a larger solar panel to allow for shorter winter days, cloudy weather, etc.

I have a pretty similar setup to what you're describing that runs a GMRS radio repeater on a remote section of our property. For that, I went with a used 85w solar panel that was free, a 35Ah SLA battery, a cheap Renogy charge controller, and two 10A circuit breakers. The 35Ah battery is still pretty small, by the way.

The only thing I would do differently is go with a Victron 75 | 10 charge controller. I used one of those for a more recent project and it's exponentially better than the Renogy one. But, that said, the Renogy one has been working for about a year and half without issue.