Solar Panels

[Orefus]

Anyone play around with them here? Im looking into them as heating bills are going up like crazy around here. There gona b 70% more this winter. How much can solar powers put out, and how fast can they charge a heavy duty battery that can b used to heat a space heater?

[komodo]

You're thinking for your house I'm assuming? Unless you invest in HUGE panels, it's not really practical. If you're using things like TVs and lights at night, it'd barely help at all (wouldn't justify the cost). You'd pay thousands of dollars for a good quality solar panel that's a few square feet in size and with under 1 amps.

[EnvyM3]

I agree. The solar panels would cost way too much upfront and your ROI would take about 20 years.

[projal147]

yea there was a segment done by a local tv station here in the NYC area. it found that if you cover your whole roof in panels (there are companies that make panels for the house) it will take several years for you to get a ROI. But people on long island began doing it because the power company was giving the homeowner a $25,000 (i think) rebate if they had solar panels installed on their house. so it only cost the homeowner like 50,000 instead of 75-80k. but these houses were not that big, maybe like 2000 sq ft.?...

not really worth it right now, too expensive and you get a fugly looking house.

[bitcore]

It's a total pain in the ass. The equipment involved is expensive, inefficent, and electricity storage solutions do not last very long & don't like deep cycles very much.

The power the panels provide is constant, but very weak, so, they are hooked to large banks of batteries. They are linked up to provide a standard voltage in multiples of 12, (usually 12 or 46 volt) and charge banks of batteries wired at that voltage. Not only are the batteries really expensive, they don't last forever either. Now you need equipment that converts that good ol' DC battery voltage into 60hz AC.
In comes the expensive DC inverter equipment. Yah, 500W car inverters at a hundred bucks or so are comparitively cheep, but get into the 5-10Kw+ range and you'll be dropping $10k and up. You can't just pair up a bunch of those car inverters either, it just wont work. The stuff required to just set it up isn't cheep, nor are the batteries. Running a DC motor that turns an AC generator is horrifically inefficent, semiconductors are essentially required to make AC out of DC in this application.

I really would totally do that (yah, like at my parents house), not so that I get paid by the electricity company when my excess electricity is pumped back onto the grid, but cause then I'd feel somewhat good at at least being somewhat self sufficient. I mean, shit, the energy is flooding the earth anyawys... Why not use it somehow?


however, Solar water heat is rather effective, esp. if you take afternoon showers.