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It all depends on the speed and reliability of the VSat. If the VSat is quick, but at some point further down the route out of country goes through a slow trunk route then he will not get a fast reliable link, then Skype will be stuffed, he will need to get advice on the country backbone system, unless his is a direct to sat link.,

The short answer is that it is quite viable to run a solar system to power his office set-up as described, however the best way to do this is to choose equipment that is low power when procuring and to choose equipment that can by design or accident be run from the low voltage output from the solar system (see below).

I did make a solar system to run field offices a few years ago in Sierra Leone, and ran various office equipment. How to do this depends on the budget, I used available solar panels and batteries to produce a 12 volt power system in the offices. I also used lap top computers, printers and other office equipment which used external power supplies which had out put voltages of 12 volts to run the laptops etc and by dispensing with the power supplies and running the equipment direct from the low voltage (12 volt) circuit I had installed in the offices.

Actually I did not get the choice with most of the office equipment and made do with what was provided, however this worked quite well, even though the Toshiba laptops nominally should have had a 16 volt input they ran without difficulty at 12 volts however would not charge the internal batteries while running in this mode.

What Mohammed requires is a larger as a system, and he will need to look at the power requirements of each unit. The VSAT output power is not reflective of the power consumed by the unit, he would need to see the power requirement spec for the particular model. Likewise desktop computers, a traditional server (and probably old style monitors) generally waste a lot of power which becomes a factor when building PV system. If Mohammed has a free hand I would urge a hold on office equipment procurement so that all can be bought to be compatible with a low voltage low power drain system, otherwise he would need to build a large solar array, plus inverter to take it up to 220v AC which itself wastes power, to then run a series of chunky desktop machines which will in turn waste a lot more power and put the price of the solar system up a lot.

Buying equipment that is compatible with a low power (12 volt) system does not have to be expensive, it just means being clever about the device power requirements, ensuring that they will run from a direct 12 volt source. This stuff is not in the manuals, you would source this information by checking the model in question, however many home/office devices do run on low voltage input power, and 12 volt is very common as the input voltage of such equipment. Likewise the VSAT (and server). If required a small inverter could also be run just for particular pieces of equipment, this would work likely out cheaper than running a large scale inverter for the whole operation.

It all depends on budget of course, Mohammed does not say if this is something locally funded or being paid for a by an international donor, however the start point would normally be to identify suitable equipment (12 volt powered if possible); calculate the load and then design the system. If needed more solar panels can be added if load goes beyond planned usage (like lights being added or less sun than estimated being available).

By the way, solar panels get stolen a lot in W Africa, you need to protect these by welded steel frames that can be clamped to each unit, otherwise they have a tendency to disappear.

Regards,

Paul