Wow......solar power doesnt seem to be feasible as I though!!

[Independent Patriot]

OK. I asked because if all you need is a day or two, you would have no use for solar panels.

Pretty much it. FWIW it is called efficacy measured in Lumens/watt.

Roger that.

I'm a little discouraged with solar power right now....mostly my fault for having such high expectations based on insufficient knowledge.

I'd like to put (10) 100w panels on my house but at this point, I'm not sure what real difference it'd make......or what I could actually do with them in terms of day to day practical application.

[Sunking]

I'd like to put (10) 100w panels on my house but at this point, I'm not sure what real difference it'd make......or what I could actually do with them in terms of day to day practical application.

Do not get hung up on panel wattage and sizes, huge mistake.

FWIW don't give up just yet on refrigerators. Click this link, then look on the right side near the top and download the Excel file. The sort out by whatever category you are looking for. Also read the tips. You just might find one that will fit your needs

[Independent Patriot]

Do not get hung up on panel wattage and sizes, huge mistake.

FWIW don't give up just yet on refrigerators. Click this link, then look on the right side near the top and download the Excel file. The sort out by whatever category you are looking for. Also read the tips. You just might find one that will fit your needs

Should I be more concerned with my battery bank and components?

[Sunking]

Should I be more concerned with my battery bank and components?

No not really. What you should be concerned with is how much power you need each day. With out knowing that you are screwed right from the start. There are only two outcomes if you do not know how much power you need each day.

1. The most likely thing to happen is the system will be grossly undersized and you go dark. Once you figure it out and find out how much more it will take you give up and just wasted a lot of money and time.

2. Over size the system which is rare, you just wasted a lot of money for something you do not need.

Being a Ham operator I assume you have some basic electronic circuit understanding and familiar with the math. If that is true, then you can quickly figure things out.

So the first thing you need to do is nail down daily power usage in watt hours. The formula for Watt Hours is 6th grade algebra, Watt Hours = Watt x Hours. Tough one huh? Once you nail that down I will walk you through the rest of it. It is really easy 6th grade math to design solar.

If C = A x B, then A = C/B, and B = C/A. So if you understand that simple algebra truism, you can design a system.

[Independent Patriot]

No not really. What you should be concerned with is how much power you need each day. With out knowing that you are screwed right from the start. There are only two outcomes if you do not know how much power you need each day.

1. The most likely thing to happen is the system will be grossly undersized and you go dark. Once you figure it out and find out how much more it will take you give up and just wasted a lot of money and time.

2. Over size the system which is rare, you just wasted a lot of money for something you do not need.

Being a Ham operator I assume you have some basic electronic circuit understanding and familiar with the math. If that is true, then you can quickly figure things out.

So the first thing you need to do is nail down daily power usage in watt hours. The formula for Watt Hours is 6th grade algebra, Watt Hours = Watt x Hours. Tough one huh? Once you nail that down I will walk you through the rest of it. It is really easy 6th grade math to design solar.

If C = A x B, then A = C/B, and B = C/A. So if you understand that simple algebra truism, you can design a system.

Understood.

Sunking, dont call me HAM yet. I'm studying for my Technician's License now. I got into communication like many others....playing with grandpa's old cb's. I got bitten by the CB bug pretty bad a couple of years ago and one thing led to another. However, as you know......CB leaves something to be desired....lol! It's a shame that the airways are littered with the garbage 11meter currently produces. I bought an old Kenwood 2m and built a J Pole antenna so I could start listening to HAM operators.....I figured I may learn something that way too.

Thank you again for your time and efforts. I'll spend some time calculating a projected approximation of watt hours and post them later.

BTW, I was looking at this guys system. Here are his claims:

I use my off-grid system to power my refrigerator and freezer. I started out with a basic system; PV panels, charge controller, batteries, and inverter. I wanted to automatically switch over to grid-power when battery voltage was low, so I added an automatic transfer switch and a voltage controlled switch. It's working well, and I'm happy to be getting as much as I possibly can from my system without the need to constantly monitor it and manually switch the loads. You can read more about my system here:

http://solarjohn.blogspot.com/2008/0...pv-system.html

He claims that he powers all of the above with the following components:

Type: Off-grid
PV: 7 X 85, or 595 watts
Batteries: GC2’s wired for 12 volts, 900ah.
Spare Battery Bank: Marine Deep Cycle, 420ah.
Controller: TriStar 60 with meter and remote temperature probe
Inverter: Exeltec 12-volt, 1100-watt pure sine wave
Automation: Morningstar Relay Driver programmed to enable/disable the inverter and an Iota Transfer Switch

I'm estimating he's got approximately $3500 invested in this set up. At least that's what I come up with when searching for each piece individually and adding a couple of hundred for incidentals.

What is your assessment of his system and claims. From reading his blog, I have no reason to doubt his claims......but then again, I have zero experience and zero knowledge on this subject.

[Mike90250]

PV panels, charge controller, batteries, and inverter. I wanted to automatically switch over to grid-power when battery voltage was low, so I added an automatic transfer switch and a voltage controlled switch.

But he has a limited system, that switches back to grid. It's not a fully independent system.

Consider the energy star freezers / fridge, get the power est from the unit, and caculate back from the 1 year consumption, what daily usage is. Twice daily consumption is what you need to harvest to allow for battery & system losses, and that's the bare minimun to power the system on a sunny day w/no clouds. Since you are planning for long term, you need to have batteries that can supply 3 or 4 days worth of cloudy power, and then a PV array, that can recharge when you get a sunny day, the x number of days you ran batteries down.

It gets very large, very fast. A small generator shuod be in your plans.

[russ]

Wouldn't you try to organize it so the grid does the bulk charging?

[Perry]

Wouldn't you try to organize it so the grid does the bulk charging?

That's what I was thinking. I can understand the generator requirement for off-grid but if you have solar PV with batteries AND the grid, seems like you could eliminate the generator for all but the longest grid power outages.

[Sunking]

seems like you could eliminate the generator for all but the longest grid power outages.

Well yes and no.

What is being described is a Hybrid GTI. IMHO one of he dumbest ideas to come down the pike looking for a pigeon to pluck. Well wait a minute, one of the best cons a manufacture can sell you to relieve you of your cash.

There are a few ways to configure a hybrid GTI.

1. Size the battery to take over the Emergency load just long enough to allow the generator to come on and take over and run until power is restored. Basically a UPS for critical emergency loads. What is funny is home owners usually do not have any critical loads.

2. Size the batteries to run emergency loads for several hours, and the generator comes on as needed to top off the batteries if the panels cannot keep up. This gets real expensive for batteries that are rarely if ever used.

3. Size the panels and batteries to power emergency loads indefinitely, with a generator as backup if many cloudy days are encountered. This is the really expensive option and just plain foolish to pays that much money for batteries that re rarely if ever used.

Smart money if they want solar is a standard grid tied system with generator back up to power your whole house when power goes out. As for me I just skip the solar, and have a LP generator. It actually got used in the last 2 weeks for a total of about 3 hours with the rolling Blackouts in TX. Other than that it has about 36 hours of real time use in the last 7 years when it was installed.