Solar Fountain

Years ago we got a fountain for our anniversary. It has an electric pump. We used it every once in a while when we felt like plugging it in. When we moved to the Church my wife decided to hang it where it could be seen all the time, but there is no electric plug. 

What to do? Go with her plan, its just a decoration now? Figure out how to run electricity to it? Then it hit me, Solar! I first started my Amazon search for a Solar electrical plug. This took me down a bit of a wrong path, because it led to fairly expensive systems. hundreds of dollars,  that are able to generate a lot of electricity and inverters to convert to AC. I was fairly certain the pump had to be DC to start with, which got me thinking. 

I modified my search and sure enough quickly found myself looking at a solar powered water pump. And for $15 what did I have to loose?

Installation was breeze. Simply replaced the current pump with the Solar one, and place the solar panel on top of the fence. In the video you can see the pump running with the solar panel in the top right.  It will also add a bit of fun to see just how much sun it needs to run the pump. 

Update: Had just a bit of a cloud move in front of the sun. Something wispy enough that you probably wouldn't have noticed. The water immediately stopped flowing. Started right back up as soon as the cloud moved. A little bit surprised at how sensitive the panel is.

06/06/16: Looks like the pump is running from a bit after 9AM to a bit after 4PM.