Quote:
Originally Posted by squirrel
Solar panels are expensive, so it's probably worth making an effort to find the most efficient motor you can to run the pump.
Why spend $500-1000 for a solar panel to power a $5 pump?
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Although still more expensive than most other power sources, solar panels themselves have come down dramatically in price.
I'm currently qualifying a design for a 3kW residential/cottage solar + battery + grid-interactive system (can give or take from the grid as needed).
High-output solar panels can be had for about $3-4 a Watt, and those are for panels that put out 200+ Watts.
You can eBay clusters of cells, and broken panels for far less if you're just doing a small-scale hobby job like this.
Now for the original post:
You could build your own inverter, but if this something you expect to have around permanently, and you're concerned about your own workmanship and durability - I might suggest sourcing/trading for another pump or finding a transformer that allows it to run off 120V mains, and purchasing an automotive inverter.
Generally, inverters are expensive, but with good reason - for the solar power system above, I will expect to drop about $2000 on a high-quality true sine wave 3000W inverter. (You will probably need a very clean waveform for your motor application, so square wave, or modified sine won't cut it)
But a commercially available 75W true sine-wave automotive inverter can be had for as low as $19 - which probably a lot less than the time and effort to source and build your own comparable inverter, and hopefully offsets the cost of a 10:1 transformer, or even a different motor.