The Rainbow Hostel solar energy

Project data
Type Solar panels
Authors Liz Kimbrough
Location Costa Rica
Status Deployed
Years 2010
Made Yes

The Rainbow Hostel is located close to Golfito, Costa Rica. This forming community intends to serve as a learning center for social sustainability. The Rainbow Hostel is run completely on solar energy, system described below.

There are six Sanyo 120 watt panels that generate 720 watts at peak generation.

The solar energy is collected and stored in the batteries as a DC current. The Xantrex inverter changes the DC (direct current) to AC (alternating current) for use in standard household appliances. The controller box manages the charging of the batteries from the solar panels to the batteries.

The Batteries are 6 volt Rolls brand. There are 2 rows of 4 batteries wired as a series in parallel. This gives us a 24 volt system. 4 batteries x 6 volts = 24 volt

There is also a 6,500m KW Honda backup generator just in case!

See Appropedia's Solar PV page to learn more about solar photo-voltaic systems.

Page data
Authors Megan Moore, Liz Kimbrough
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Organizations Appropedia traveling intern
Cite as Megan Moore, Liz Kimbrough (2010–2024). "The Rainbow Hostel solar energy". Appropedia. Retrieved November 28, 2025.
This article is issued from Appropedia. The text is available under CC-BY-SA-4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.