can i use a solar panel without using battery

[Mike90250]

This is a very old, dated thread, much of the gear has changed in the last 2 years

Yea, what themaxx69 said. Sorry. Just an attempt at humor.

Okay, well my name is James. I am new at this subject and am learning. <off topic deleted >

Just introducing myself, being honest and interested in learning from all of you. Thank you in advance for your patience, willingness to share your knowledge and all the education I'm sure I will get from you.

What is the best way to setup my own power generation system to supply power to my families home and NOT give huge chunks of money each month to the "energy monopolies"?

Simple, give even larger chunk$ to your battery supplier. The wear and tear cost of batteries has always been more that the cost of grid power

Is using capacitors instead of batteries better (longevity, space and reliability) or is the opposite true?

A bank of capacitors will only run a smallish inverter for a very short while. They are useful for some small surge applications, properly paired with batteries (like EV downhill recharge)

What about, as you said, smaller redundant systems and what's the ideal setup?

My goal is to build my generation/storage system into my mobile bugout vehicle with ability to run cables to home as needed but have it very redundant, packable and as stated, ALWAYS MOBILE. I need education on batteries, capacitors, inverters, step up/down transformers, etc. I have been an automotive technician most my life, separated military and survivalist with a large family. I'm not completely useless in these matters but do know that I need help to learn these key areas.

Thank you so much.
God Bless you and yours
and
GOD BLESS the USA and her Patriot son's and daughters.

Talk soon,
James

Going mobile, a can of gas, holds more power than a trailer full of batteries.
Transformers only work with AC, for DC you need DC-DC Converters
Batteries have 2 lives - Cycle Life, and Calendar Life, once they are built, the calendar life starts ticking down.

[KngJmz]

Yea, what themaxx69 said. Sorry. Just an attempt at humor.

Okay, well my name is James. I am new at this subject and am learning. <off topic deleted >

Just introducing myself, being honest and interested in learning from all of you. Thank you in advance for your patience, willingness to share your knowledge and all the education I'm sure I will get from you.

What is the best way to setup my own power generation system to supply power to my families home and NOT give huge chunks of money each month to the "energy monopolies"?

Is using capacitors instead of batteries better (longevity, space and reliability) or is the opposite true?

What about, as you said, smaller redundant systems and what's the ideal setup?

My goal is to build my generation/storage system into my mobile bugout vehicle with ability to run cables to home as needed but have it very redundant, packable and as stated, ALWAYS MOBILE. I need education on batteries, capacitors, inverters, step up/down transformers, etc. I have been an automotive technician most my life, separated military and survivalist with a large family. I'm not completely useless in these matters but do know that I need help to learn these key areas.

Thank you so much.
God Bless you and yours
and
GOD BLESS the USA and her Patriot son's and daughters.

Talk soon,
James

[Bluetick]

My question is
can i use a solar panel in daytime directly to supply electricity my home appliances without using battery.

i mean

one solar panel and then inverter and then load.

is it possible?
what possible safety measure should i have take into account to protect my appliances from overcurrent.

Yes, use a either a micro inverter or a grid tie inverter.

[J.P.M.]

I agree that there are a lot of variables that help determine the amount of energy used by a US household. Mine was over 26000 kWh/yr in 2010. Now after many changes I have cut that in half and still working on reducing it because IMO is too high.

With low cost electricity and the high number of electrical toys and appliances available it can be hard for a family of 4 to reduce their consumption without making some hard changes to their lifestyle. Going over to an off grid life style would require a quantum change in daily practices or paying for a "system" that costs over $100k US..

Aside from the cost, I suspect most folks have neither the knowledge or the inclination to acquire it, nor the persistence to incorporate the changes in lifestyle that are probably necessary to have an off grid lifestyle.

I kinda' suspect that the 11,000 kWh/yr. figure would need to drop by ~ half or more before off an off grid lifestyle became a realistic financial and practical possibility.

[SunEagle]

I believe the average in the U.S. for a household is somewhere around 11,000 kWh/yr. or so at this time, depending on who's doing the counting. However, that varies some by region, climate, family size, income and other variables.

I agree that there are a lot of variables that help determine the amount of energy used by a US household. Mine was over 26000 kWh/yr in 2010. Now after many changes I have cut that in half and still working on reducing it because IMO is too high.

With low cost electricity and the high number of electrical toys and appliances available it can be hard for a family of 4 to reduce their consumption without making some hard changes to their lifestyle. Going over to an off grid life style would require a quantum change in daily practices or paying for a "system" that costs over $100k US..

[J.P.M.]

Sorry I must have been distracted when I posted those figures...We use around 1825 kWh per year.

The average energy use of the rest of the people in my suburb is around 15 kWh per day or 5475 per year but I think this is far less than most users in the USA that contribute to this site. We have a temperate climate and therefore do not need to heat our homes except for perhaps in July. Most of our costs are for aircon during the summer months.

I believe the average in the U.S. for a household is somewhere around 11,000 kWh/yr. or so at this time, depending on who's doing the counting. However, that varies some by region, climate, family size, income and other variables.

[Beanyboy57]

Having lived comfortably on about 2,200 kWh/yr. for about 7 years or so in the first hose I owned, I believe you. You're also not in America where usage, for better or worse, seems to be profligate.

Nicely done.

Sorry I must have been distracted when I posted those figures...We use around 1825 kWh per year.

The average energy use of the rest of the people in my suburb is around 15 kWh per day or 5475 per year but I think this is far less than most users in the USA that contribute to this site. We have a temperate climate and therefore do not need to heat our homes except for perhaps in July. Most of our costs are for aircon during the summer months.

[J.P.M.]

Having lived comfortably on about 2,200 kWh/yr. for about 7 years or so in the first hose I owned, I believe you. You're also not in America where usage, for better or worse, seems to be profligate.

Nicely done.

[Beanyboy57]

What is your total, annual electrical energy consumption ?

You may not believe it but we are now down to an average of 5 kWh per day so that works out to roughly 175 kWh per year. Admittedly I am away from home for a large part of the year and we use natural gas for cooking and heating water but there is always someone living in the house.
I have a 3kw grid tied system on the roof of the main house and a 1kw off-grid system on the roof of my shed that has been operating for the last 3 years. Sunny Boy inverters produce around 19 kWh per day on average.
The grid tied system has already paid for itself after 4 years and I regularly receive a payment from my electricity provider of around $1000 per annum. I have not paid any money to the electricity supplier since the install in 2011.
The 24v off-grid system costs me around $4000 (because I bought high quality components and I live in Western Australia where everything is expensive) to set up and will never pay for itself although it may break even in two years. It has been a lot of fun though as I learned a lot about FLA batteries, charge controllers, inverter/chargers and power monitoring. I have several hobbies and the off-grid system in the cheapest of them all. Hahaha
Thanks to the advice of the experts on this site my FLA batteries are in excellent condition after 3 years of continuous cycling to around 30% DOD (70 % full).

[posplayr]

Terminal voltage would have been a much clearer choice.
In any case, as I understand the SPS, it does not have any surge capability at all. If it is asked to deliver more current than it can at the moment (not necessarily even the rated 1500W if there are weather or shading problems) it just shuts down rather than dropping voltage and trying to hang in until it overheats the way a battery inverter usually will.

Another absolute statement ;

it must have some capability else you could not even stick a laptop charger into it. But in effect I'm agreeing with you that whatever limited surge capability SPS has, it is limited. Whether you agree that the SPS is limited because it doesn't have a battery, it is clear with a battery and dual conversion SPS would have much better surge capability as in the case with a UPS sized for the 1500 watt SPS.

I think this is as close as you can get to answering the OP's original question.

[inetdog]

Terminal voltage would have been a much clearer choice.
In any case, as I understand the SPS, it does not have any surge capability at all. If it is asked to deliver more current than it can at the moment (not necessarily even the rated 1500W if there are weather or shading problems) it just shuts down rather than dropping voltage and trying to hang in until it overheats the way a battery inverter usually will.

[posplayr]

To me "so that the little bit siphoned off is not enough to pull the line voltage down." implies that the SPS will be running while there is line voltage present, unless you were referring to the DC bus. In which case the MPPT input makes the panel side voltage irrelevant.
It is true that the SPS may depend to some degree on a fractional cycle energy storage capacity inherent in the MPPT front end, but that has to be there for normal GTI operation only more so.

Sorry if I was not clear, the response was to the context of the OP question where he is trying to understand how SPS works without batteries when he has been told on the other hand how you can't use solar without batteries. (please read the title of the thread)

"little bit siphoned off", is referring to a portion of the total power available at the panel.

In SPS mode "line voltage" can only mean the output of the SPS as the grid is not there or disconnected (i.e. mutually exclusive with GTI which does operate as full output power). And I think most anybody with any background in this will realize that even the SPS 1500 watt will not likely be able to run a 500 watt motor with the surge requirements (motor surge being typically higher than even 3:1) without severely dropping the "line voltage". Perhaps terminal voltage would have been better choice.

My whole point was to explain in the simplest (non technical) terms why SPS did not needing a battery but was not in contradiction with in the general consensus that a solar panel can't be operated at full power without a battery storage capability. Even that is too absolute a statement, to my mind the issue is (as I also posted), the battery system is there to deal with the aggregate variability of loads and solar production.

If you just want solar during the day, you only need a battery scaled to the load (i.e. surge) requirements. If you want to go all night, then the battery is scaled to the solar variability which is obviously not there.

In this context, the only thing you can say about SPS is that the surge demand above and beyond the 1500 watt capability has to be either in excess solar capacity (unused solar watts) or capacitors in the case which there seem to be plenty in the Sunny Boy TL products. Where else could it come from? I guess there was an transformer version.

[inetdog]

Rather than call my statement total nonsense, you might have bothered to think about what I meant.

With a careful reading I don't think I suggested that the GTI and SPS had anything in common other than perhaps some of the power circuitry (the inputs after all are the same). In fact I'm pretty sure I have posted that they are two clearly different modes of operation, GTI is a programmable current source to optimize power delivered to the grid despite variability in those voltages and SPS is output voltage regulated. And I think any reading on the subject of SPS, it is clear that SPS and GTI are operationally mutually exclusive and have to be.

Despite, the variability of solar production and load demand SPS operates without batteries. Why do I need batteries to power my house using solar panels during solar daylight hours? One primary reason, surge requirements which is what necessitates an energy storage medium. So how does SPS operate without batteries, the excess panel power has sufficient capacity to deal with the surge requirement at 1500 watts.

I would go so far as to suggest that if it was so simple to just switch the invertor mode from GTI to Voltage Mode at full load capacity without batteries it would have been done by now, the market demand is there, it is just not possible.

To me "so that the little bit siphoned off is not enough to pull the line voltage down." implies that the SPS will be running while there is line voltage present, unless you were referring to the DC bus. In which case the MPPT input makes the panel side voltage irrelevant.
It is true that the SPS may depend to some degree on a fractional cycle energy storage capacity inherent in the MPPT front end, but that has to be there for normal GTI operation only more so.

[posplayr]

Total nonsense.
The SPS is a separate inverter control algorithm from that used for GTI operation and may not even have many parts in common other than the MPPT input circuitry.
It cannot be used at the same time as the GTI function by design.
A GTI designed for maximum output and efficiency at minimum cost will not have the components or design features to also deliver stand alone power at a lower maximum value from the same panel input.
The reason that you do not see standalone inverters with PV input and off grid output and no batteries is that it does not currently make economic sense. There is not a market for it. Laws of Economics rather than Laws of Physics.

Rather than call my statement total nonsense, you might have bothered to think about what I meant.

With a careful reading I don't think I suggested that the GTI and SPS had anything in common other than perhaps some of the power circuitry (the inputs after all are the same). In fact I'm pretty sure I have posted that they are two clearly different modes of operation, GTI is a programmable current source to optimize power delivered to the grid despite variability in those voltages and SPS is output voltage regulated. And I think any reading on the subject of SPS, it is clear that SPS and GTI are operationally mutually exclusive and have to be.

Despite, the variability of solar production and load demand SPS operates without batteries. Why do I need batteries to power my house using solar panels during solar daylight hours? One primary reason, surge requirements which is what necessitates an energy storage medium. So how does SPS operate without batteries, the excess panel power has sufficient capacity to deal with the surge requirement at 1500 watts.

I would go so far as to suggest that if it was so simple to just switch the invertor mode from GTI to Voltage Mode at full load capacity without batteries it would have been done by now, the market demand is there, it is just not possible.

[inetdog]

Basically the SPS is sized to some fraction of the solar charging rate capacity so that the little bit siphoned off is not enough to pull the line voltage down.

Total nonsense.
The SPS is a separate inverter control algorithm from that used for GTI operation and may not even have many parts in common other than the MPPT input circuitry.
It cannot be used at the same time as the GTI function by design.
A GTI designed for maximum output and efficiency at minimum cost will not have the components or design features to also deliver stand alone power at a lower maximum value from the same panel input.
The reason that you do not see standalone inverters with PV input and off grid output and no batteries is that it does not currently make economic sense. There is not a market for it. Laws of Economics rather than Laws of Physics.