How I made a solar door bell
 

For those of you interested, our doorbell had a transformer consuming 2,7W doing nothing but waiting for someone to ring the bell...
I converted it to solar. Here it is: Deurbel op zonne-energie | OliNo
It's in Dutch, but Google translate can help.

https://translate.google.com/transla...-text=&act=url

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Pat

Nice project.
I have a quest to lower my vampire loads and you just reminded me that I have a door bell that draws power 24 x 7. I just ordered a wireless battery powered one. One less thing sucking away my solar power.

Does/did your doorbell drawing that many watts have a lighted button? If so, I wonder what they draw without one.

I'm redoing my front porch and we currently do not have a doorbell. We are going to put one in without a light. I hadn't even considered the transformer drawing juice. I do not want a wireless (one less battery to have to worry about)

The LED in a lighted doorbell button uses maybe half a watt or so. Easily dwarfed by the typically cheap and inefficient transformers.

What might be worth trying is to replace the transformer with a switching wall wart, since doorbells typically also work on DC.

I like your Mod , I am getting inspired by it. Also curious if my doorbell is drawing power without my knowing it. My doorbell has never worked and never had the light on in it, but , The Wall unit still may be drawing power if its transformer is still wired in. I am going to check that right Now - I am back from checking , the two thin wires that feed the low voltage to the chimes transformer were disconnected and were without power.

Their must be a transformer somewhere in the attic to feed the low voltage wires their voltage,I need to check and see if that is disconnected from the house power to know fore sure if its disconnected. I am tired already just typing it. I think I'll look into that tomorrow.

I like the idea of the the solar intercom , that is something I want once i get a proper gate up.

No, my doorbell did not have a lighted button. It were just transformer losses.

Thanks for this post because with everything unplugged in my house, I have a TED screaming at me with a 10/20 watt standby load with EVERYTHING unplugged that I have yet to track down. I'm going to be pulling the TED into the garage and shutting off circuits to see where this load is sitting. I have a feeling that the doorbell transformer may be a contributer, perhaps a large one to this. Other culprits are perhaps GFCIs, apparently they burn power in their monitoring circuit but I have yet to figure it out.

hvac was a control 40va transformer powered 24/7. If you have a heatpump sometimes its a 60va. It would be difficult to remove and keep the convenience of your thermostat.

Of course I don't know the details of your HVAC, but you might try a small 12V switching powersupply (taking less than 1 Watt) in series with a thermostat and relay. And then let the relay switch the mainpower to your HVAC.