Solar Powered Fencers

[deerhunter]

Has anyone used a solar powered fencer and if so do they work for cattle or just small animals?

 

[cross_7]

Has anyone used a solar powered fencer and if so do they work for cattle or just small animals?

depends on if the cattle are hot wire broke or not, but the parmak mag12sp and the speedrite s250 are both 12 volt chargers and seem to work well in sw oklahoma on wheat pasture cattle.
if you have hot wire broke cows the 6 volt charges should work.

 

[mack]

You can easily find solar fencers that will have the same amount of horsepower as a 110v. However you will have to pay about 5-6X more for the solar as you would for a similar powered plug in type.

***do not expect a $200 solar to handle the same fence load as a $200 110volt.

for example:

$70 110volt = about 25 acres
$350 solar = 25-30 acres (you pay more for the battery and solar technology)


$200 solar = 15 acres
$200 110v = 80 acres

 

[shloh1981]

I use a 6 volt parmak solar charger with just two strands of 17 gauge galvanized wire on several pastures that I lease from a neighbor. In two years I have never had an animal break lose and that includes my bull and several older cows who had never encountered electric fencing before. Here is a link to charger:

http://www.amazon.com/Parmak-DF-SP-LI-I ... B000BWZB74

Good luck!

S

 

[shloh1981]

The parmak charger is supposedly good for 25 miles of fencing..

 

[hayray]

The parmak charger is supposedly good for 25 miles of fencing..

It probably is not going to provide much shock at 25 miles and probably does not take much load on the fence. I have a small Gallahger solar and it ran 1 strand of polywire on a 10 acre piece and that pretty much maxed it out, I could get about 6000 volts when the weather was warm, and 5000 volts in cold weather with a slow pulse. To equal the power of my M 1000 Gallagher it was going to run about $1000.00 for the solar panels, that is were the big expense comes in.

 

[hayray]

I use a 6 volt parmak solar charger with just two strands of 17 gauge galvanized wire on several pastures that I lease from a neighbor. In two years I have never had an animal break lose and that includes my bull and several older cows who had never encountered electric fencing before. Here is a link to charger:

http://www.amazon.com/Parmak-DF-SP-LI-I ... B000BWZB74

Good luck!

S

How many acres are you running with this charger and do you know how much voltage is reads? Also, what was the price?

 

[Jim62]

I use a couple of the 6v Parmak solar chargers. About the maximum I get out of them is around 3000 volts. They are around $140. The cheap 110v charger I use puts out a consistant 6000v or a little better. Can't remember the name of it, but I think it comes from New Zealand.

 

[ERNIBIGB]

I have about 6 self contained solar units that are all bad for one reason or the other. I have switched to using battery powered energizers with batteries ranging in size from lawnmower all the way up to a 1000cca tractor battery along with a separate solar panel to help keep them charged. I have tried several different energizers and the Parmak seems to do a good job without getting into the higher end and priced models. The self contained units seem to go through batteries fast and when a circuit board goes out it can be costly to repair. None of my fences are very long so the smaller units work well and the cattle are well broke to electric fence.

 

[JRGidaho`]

As a self contained unit we have used the Stafix SX (.25 j output $275) in a lot of diferent situations. We find we can run up to about a mile of hi-tensile 1 or 2 wire on it and 3-5 800 to 1000 ft polybraid reels and maintain about 3500v. Any longer hi-tensile fence and we lose capacity. As a unit for doing a couple of polybraids around the lots it will kick out about 7000v.

We also use a 2j Pro-Jolt w/ 10w panel ( about $300-350 for unit & panel). It can run 2-3 miles of hard wire plus several polybraids. It would do better with a little bigger panel.

We generally figure 7 to 10 watts/output joule.