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Solar Powered Starlink Terminal Kit?

Mark.J

Administrator
Staff member
ISPreview Team
I recently saw this article, which appeared to indicate that Starlink might soon be getting a solar-powered ground terminal and / or router. But I've not been able to find this actually announced anywhere else, yet.


Now of course anybody could create a solar setup to power Starlink's kit, such as through the simple combination of a few panels and some additional kit, like an inverter and solar regulator (or a power station to simplify things). But you'd need a fairly big panel (or panels) to generate coverage for the c.80 - 180 watts of load that it can gobble, and that's only on a sunny day with no clouds.

Either that, or perhaps they're thinking to make the kit even more power efficient than the latest hardware, which would then require a smaller solar setup. In any case, if SpaceX do end up launching a branded solution, then it'll probably cost a fair bit.
 
I recently saw this article, which appeared to indicate that Starlink might soon be getting a solar-powered ground terminal and / or router. But I've not been able to find this actually announced anywhere else, yet.


Now of course anybody could create a solar setup to power Starlink's kit, such as through the simple combination of a few panels and some additional kit, like an inverter and solar regulator (or a power station to simplify things). But you'd need a fairly big panel (or panels) to generate coverage for the c.80 - 180 watts of load that it can gobble, and that's only on a sunny day with no clouds.

Either that, or perhaps they're thinking to make the kit even more power efficient than the latest hardware, which would then require a smaller solar setup. In any case, if SpaceX do end up launching a branded solution, then it'll probably cost a fair bit.

Intresting starlink are finally building an off the shelf solution for this now.

We built our own solution a bit like this for mobile sites. Using 4x 570W solar panels (newer black style ones), charging a battery to keep the system online overnight, tested in the UK. Actually found it worked well with 4x 480W panels in hotter climates, with enough overnight charge - can't remember exact battery capacity.

Previously starlink only shipped an AC power supply with the terminal, So there were a couple of methods we explored to supply a custom DC power source like solar panels: One method was cutting the custom starlink cable (which is essentially a shielded ethernet cable), installing a shielded RJ45, and injecting our own 56V PoE from a solar system / battery controller; Another option was to just take the custom PoE board out from the starlink power supply and breaking out the ethernet to our own router, this required two DC rails from memoy, like 48 +12. In both cases a couple of wires need to be swapped as the PoE is not on the standard pair.

Idle for traffic on the pro terminal was indeed about ~112W with peaks up to ~180W when uploading from memory, was about 140W on initial acquitision.

I guess from the way the article is worded, Starlink is looking at something low power with the new gen mini, possibly to bridge the gab between D2C and fixed broadband at home/office. Definately interested in trying one when it's out!
 
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