What to do with free 10 watt panels

[4321loco]

I been working for this company and they gave me some used 10 watt panels made by solarex...They are the msx-10 model

Maximum power (Pmax) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10W
Voltage @ Pmax (Vmp). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17.1V
Current @ Pmax (Imp) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.58A
Guaranteed minimum Pmax. . . . . . . . . . . . . 9W
Short-circuit current (Isc). . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.6A
Open-circuit voltage (Voc) . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1V


So far I have 20 of them for a total of 200 watts, What can I do with them....I might be able to get more if the company lets me have them, they have like 400 of them next to a dumpster, they been there for days and up to 2 years...

I tested them on cloudy days with no load and they do like 18.3 volts and on milliamps they do like 400 before my meter goes off range, thats with no load and using my amp meter to the cables, since the fuse to amp setting is popped I cant do more testing...


Should I try to get more, if I get close to 1000 watts what should I do, or If I can only get like 400 watts total what do I do with them..

I don't know what use to give them other then using 1 on each of my cars to prevent the batts from dieing lol...


If I need to sell them I might and get diff size if needed..

Thanks

[Aussie Bob]

Well the question is what do you want to do with them? What do you want to achieve using solar panels to create self renewing energy?

[4321loco]

Well to be honest, I like to waste energy alot....

I was thinking about first getting, well so far I have 240 watts total in panels, who knows I might even get more...today I was able to get a 20 watt solarex and a 20 watt sunwize or solar wize...

Anyways, what would you do with solar power, I guess use it some how, I don't really know the exact steps but know about 90%...

If I were to only get under 500 watts what would you recommended me to try, I mean they are all 10-15-20 watt panels at 12v and 2 are rated at 12 or 24 volts...

If I were to get let say 1000-2000 or even 3000 watts total should I try to power maybe my 12,000 btu window unit.....

I would really like to power my a/c for now, its like rated at 115 v,10.2 amps and 1100 watts or so...Just wounder is a modified sine wave inverter will work, if not just order me a pure sine wave....




I might ask my main boss to see if he will donate them for scrap parts or recycling....

If that goes well and I can get a full pick up load I might be able to offer off a few I don't need for just shipping cost, I mean most are 10 watt panels and I know some people like to build like chargers for phones and small usb devices, maybe other projects..

Anyways I will see what he says by Friday if I can see him on time...

[Mike90250]

Trying to wire up 30 or 50 10W panels to get lots of power - you are going to have so many splices and junctions, my head will spin.

[4321loco]

I was thinking of using 10 of them to build me a 2x7 foot or so panel and since there is 20 wires, 10 pos and 10 neg I was thinking about using some terminal blocks, not cheapo ones at radio shack but good quality ones or something similar in a water tight enclosure....

Each 100 watt panel made from 10 individual small panels would have one main power wire coming out...As I get another panel built, I would use the same method of terminal blocks and also get a main cable coming out panel....


Once I have a few made up I will add them together as a 12-24-36 volt setup


I say about 1 hour I can bolt these panels together as they have 2 channels per side so you can add 1/2 inch bolts...U can run an aluminum tub under them and use bolts downward or you can screw them side ways...

Here is a picture of some of there panels..








Should I just running 2 250 watt grid tie inverters off some panels, or would having batts as reserve be better....I know batteries are expensive as heck and to have a 1000ah or 3000ah reserve cost a fortune, and you never know how long they take or conflicts you may have to throw them away....

I really want to run my AC unit, so maybe running grid tie inverters that match or exceed the usage from my AC unit would be cool....

Save a few bucks here and there...

I get confused with the math alot....

Let say I had 1000 watts coming from my solar panels into my grid tie inverter(S)...How much money would I save monthly, we hardly get a cloud here...We just had rain, 2rd rain in over 1 year....So we get lots of sun, Heat, yeah heat sucks...But let saw we have actually 1000 watts going into the inverters....We get like 10 hours of hard core sun, 8 a.m its like 80 degrees and noon like 104 and by 3 p.m like 112-115....

I always try to figure stuff out but get lost or just stop in teh process....

Maybe these panels woun't work, I don't know but I do charge my small batteries and car batts here and there...

[Mike90250]

Grid Tie inverters are THE MOST EFFICIENT way to use solar PV (the other way is conserve). Introduce batteries, and you loose about 40% power in charging and other losses.
Best bet - use grid tie, and even if you have only 700W of PV, your 2.1KW cooler only runs 25% of the time (if things re working right) and your PV solar is putting 95% of your harvest into the grid, all day long.

[4321loco]

Any particular brand you would recommended...I have heard of many over seas brands with bad quality control and parts coming loose during shipping and what not...

Should I stick with 2... 250 units or 1 600 unit..I already have 240 watts of panels ....I might be able to get some funds to get project going soon, I want to hurry up but I rather be patient and get the more info I need.....


I rather go efficiently, but I might buy a total of 220ah battery bank and run a separate panel to charge them for backup, like a storm or shortage, that way I have a little power and when the power come back on I am telling the company taste my power, it's better....

Been watching grid tie units for a while on ebay, websites and magazines.....But I don't see any good reviews online or know of any people who have them to get advice....

One thing I noticed at my mothers home, I replaced a total off 25, 100 watt bulbs for 14watt and 23 watt efficency ones and man did the price on her bill drop....Know I want to build me and her small setups to save more on power bills...

[Mike90250]

I like the Xantrex brand of GT inverters, fanless, workhorses and have a well supported RS232 port for monitoring. But not cheap.

[Aussie Bob]

. . . One thing I noticed at my mothers home, I replaced a total off 25, 100 watt bulbs for 14watt and 23 watt efficency ones and man did the price on her bill drop....

Great job! Conservation of energy should be the first steps to solar.

[4321loco]

Great job! Conservation of energy should be the first steps to solar.

If I were to install 3 12'' fans in the attic to vent the heat outward instead of downward into the living area, would I notice any difference in the bill or central air performance...

The house is like 40x40 and a addon to the side of like 15x30 so I think ruffly 2050 square feet, the highest part of the roof is like 9 feet and slops down, runs across and so on, its not really 2 or 4 sided, has all these designs specs..

I had seen some fans that were like 80 watts and 12'', like if I were to use 2 or 3 of those...Dang mosquito in my face..

Anyways I got more junk today and see what I do with it..

[NaturalSolar]

Free solar panels

Thats amazing, solar panels are not the cheapest things in the world, to get free ones is a great bonus, I would use them to power lights in any sheds or a summer house with no mains electric supply.

My summer house light is currently powered by a solar panel, old leisure battery and inverter, meaning I can also power an old stereo radio/cd unit on nice days in the garden.

[4321loco]

Thats amazing, solar panels are not the cheapest things in the world, to get free ones is a great bonus, I would use them to power lights in any sheds or a summer house with no mains electric supply.

My summer house light is currently powered by a solar panel, old leisure battery and inverter, meaning I can also power an old stereo radio/cd unit on nice days in the garden.

Thanks if you look at this link, I made this one last night

http://www.solarpaneltalk.com/showthread.php?t=1125

They gave me 4 used 42ah batteries and my sister gave me her old APC UPS back up unit, had 2 7ah batteries I think and I added 4 42ah...

Man they throw alot of these away all day long, some times I look in the dumpster from top of my truck and I see many of them in there jamed under 2"-6" pipes that way a lot, to bad I can't get in there, but when I see one I try to reach the wire with a stainless steel 10 foot piece i have then I try yank the panel out of the dumpster....

Every 3-5 years they replace these solar panels for a little bigger, all started from 5 watts, 10, 20 now 30, they have over 2000 locations that use 1,2 or 3 units, so you can calculate it...

If the electronic meter falls at night, they say change the battery and get a more powerful panel, been the same thing for years...

NOw we are upgrading these meters with new communication systems and they draw more power, so we upgraded the old 22ah batts to 42 or 44 ah depending on batts and the panels from 10 to 20 or 30 watters..

Free energy is cool, and hot some times....Burn you...

If anyone has a project they want me to try let me know, as soon as I get more panels I can try it...

I also have a broken 30-40 watt kyocera panel, May try to salvage the good cells if possible

[rmay635703]

What to do with free 10watt panels? How about you give me 4 or 8 to play with If your near WI I would love to have a small set to trickle charge my EV while it sits in the parking lot at work, my batteries would live longer and wear out less quickly (aka reduces sulphation)

Any ideas what type of places I could look around wisconsin to find low cost or free panels? I have been told the county dept tosses their sign panels every year not sure how to get any of them however.

Thanx
Ryan