Small Off Grid Solar System ... I'm Taking the Solar Plunge

 
nealkas
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Post by nealkas » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 7:55 am

If it's January after weeks of snow and cloud it will not be charged period
Sure batteries self discharge some, but why do you assume he is starting with totally dead batteries?
weeks of snow and cloud
Maybe at Ultima Thule or Ice Station Zebra, but here we have numerous severe clear days during all the winter month; often the coldest of days as well.
panels covered with snow and ice
Correct installation mitigates much of that. Modern panels often have hydrophobic coatings to repel water/snow/dirt.
Also, it takes a fair amount of snow/ice to totally obscure light.
Certainly there is an efficiency hit, but not 100%.

I'm not saying he can run the house indefinitely, but like a gennie, etc., it will stretch things out when needed.
As for the money...better than playing the gigis. :shrug:

When we were out for almost 2 weeks, we ran all the household lights (led/cfls) and low draw stuff off of 2 deep cycle batteries and a $50 Black&Decker inverter.
Saved the gennie for the water pump/heater, HVAC, keep the fridge chilled, and the laundry.
So I could run the gennie while awake, but not have it running all night.

One project I do want is to have ~250-500 gallon water tank installed by the well.
Give us some more leeway without running the pump.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/business/gm-and ... .html?_r=0
Just interesting.


 
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McGiever
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Post by McGiever » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 9:34 am

Nice discussion, some will take their side and work to defend it...not at all a bad thing. :)

Is your cup half full or is it half empty?

Other than the 8 hrs. of sunlight part everything else is managable. And even the 8 hrs. part can be managed by adding a few more solar panels to compensate. ;)
Last edited by McGiever on Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 9:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

 
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Post by warminmn » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 9:36 am

Nealkas, how are you going to keep the water from freezing? Or will it be indoors? They used to install cisterns in hills above the house line in my general area. Never froze and had gravity flow.

I keep 150 gallons in my basement, which will last me a long time if not doing any laundry. It really helped me when my well quit once and it took me a few weeks to get it back working.

 
nealkas
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Post by nealkas » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 10:31 am

Not sure yet on the freezing.

Toying with putting a big freaking greenhouse up over it and using it like a winter sun room.

 
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Post by coalnewbie » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 2:29 pm

Interesting discussion, however, my number one worry is a frozen wellhead so that water storage outside would scare me. My base heaters can heat the house for ever. The well pump is 220V but in the farm we have a number of Amtrol tanks but those will up in 15 minutes with the genny. When I get motivated I must drive around the area and photo some mega solar systems are are not working well. The usual excuse is that somehow none of them were installed properly. I am not convinced.

 
nealkas
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Post by nealkas » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 2:40 pm

coalnewbie wrote:Interesting discussion, however, my number one worry is a frozen wellhead so that water storage outside would scare me.
Hence the greenhouse thought.

We get cold, but generally not Lake Gitche Gumee "frigid" for weeks on end.

Fun Trivia: Railroads once hired "potato bugs".
Anyone recall what they were?

 
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Post by coalnewbie » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 3:08 pm

Railroads once hired "potato bugs".
Leave William Sherrick out of this. :D


 
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Post by McGiever » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 4:45 pm

coalnewbie wrote: When I get motivated I must drive around the area and photo some mega solar systems that are are not working well. The usual excuse is that somehow none of them were installed properly. I am not convinced.
I am willing to come and remove these faulty systems, for a modest fee, of course. I could take all their geothermal systems for little more.:lol:

 
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Post by lsayre » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 6:46 pm

Our 4 day average electrical consumption since learning to turn off our computers stands at 5.625 KWH per day.

After accomplishing a solar site survey I now wish that I had purchased 6 solar panels instead of 4, but of such is the learning curve. My charge controller is only sized to handle a maximum of 4 panels at the Wattage mine generate. I think I will just wing it with my current 4 panels for a full year and see what comes of it, and then down the road a bit I can decide if it will be necessary to add another set of panels and another charge controller.

Something that I've learned post my purchases is that the wattage of the inverter and the wattage of the panels should be roughly equivalent. This is a well respected (and attested) "rule of thumb" guideline that indicates that for my 1,500 Watt inverter I should have gone into this with around 1,500 Watts of panels, or in my case 6 of the 260 Watt panels.

 
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Post by davidmcbeth3 » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 6:58 pm

Not just loss in sunlite hours in winter ... its the angle and power of the light that is able to shine.

I think, from my memory, in summer its 1500 W/sq. meter .... winter about 500 w/sq. meter. So not only is your hours of sun shortened so it the "power" of the sun that hits the panels.

About Florida latitude you start hitting the place where solar is at least somewhat economically feasible.

Unfortunately where I am at, latitude wise, solar options are poor choices for renewable energy. Coal is best [hey its renewable! Just takes time. LOL]

 
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Post by lsayre » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 7:19 pm

davidmcbeth3 wrote:Not just loss in sunlite hours in winter ... its the angle and power of the light that is able to shine.

I think, from my memory, in summer its 1500 W/sq. meter .... winter about 500 w/sq. meter. So not only is your hours of sun shortened so it the "power" of the sun that hits the panels.

About Florida latitude you start hitting the place where solar is at least somewhat economically feasible.

Unfortunately where I am at, latitude wise, solar options are poor choices for renewable energy. Coal is best [hey its renewable! Just takes time. LOL]
Then why is Germany (which is well north of Ohio) considered to be the solar panel capital of the world, with well more solar panels installed per capita than any other nation, and why are they generally quite satisfied with solar energy?

 
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lsayre
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Post by lsayre » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 7:48 pm

davidmcbeth3 wrote:Not just loss in sunlite hours in winter ... its the angle and power of the light that is able to shine.

I think, from my memory, in summer its 1500 W/sq. meter .... winter about 500 w/sq. meter. So not only is your hours of sun shortened so it the "power" of the sun that hits the panels.
All that is required to debunk this is to use the insolation data readily available from NASA, PVWATTS, and many other sources. It is true that due to the tilt of the earth a panel laying directly on the earths surface and pointing straight up will receive a cosine function based decrease in sun energy with respect to latitude. But wherever you are on the earth you can tilt your panels to point directly at the sun for any given seasonal solar noon.

It turns out that at the top of the atmosphere a panel tilted directly toward the sun receives about on average 1,367 Watts/Sq-M (a bit more than 1,400 at the earths annual closest approach to the sun, and about 1,330 at its annual furthest distance from the sun), and at the surface and at sea level at solar noon the same orientation of panel will receive about 1,000 Watts/Sq-M regardless of latitude (this being why the STC [standard test condition] for solar panels universally utilizes 1,000 Watts/Sq-M).

Panels at higher elevations actually receive more Watts/Sq-M than at lower elevations, eventually approaching 1,367 if you go high enough to leave the atmosphere. That is why my charge controller manufacturer warned me that if I lived at an elevation of 3,000 ft. or greater I would need to get their next size up (I.E., more expensive model) as to my charge controller, but for my 1,200 foot elevation they did the math and said I was going to be OK. They were given my latitude when I requested that they assess this (being concerned as I am that to save money I had to buy components at the lower end of the money scale, meaning components that are potentially marginal). If it were true (as you state) that less sun hits a panel titted directly at the sun with rising latitude, then the charge controllers manufacturer would have chuckled at me and told me: "No worries, as at your high latitude angle there won't be as much sunlight as at the equator anyway. But alas, in the end they were ONLY (and highly) concerned with my elevation, and not with my latitude.

It is true that my area receives about 4.1 insolation hours per day overall on average, and as much as about 5.9 in the summer and as little as 2.1 in the winter, but the sun is the sun, and if you can point to it directly at solar noon you will receive its maximum possible energy (on a perfectly clear day of course). The only deficit of latitude is the disproportional amount of time available per day to point at it, and not in the energy it delivers.

The cosine of 90 degrees (the latitude of the north and south poles) = 0
The cosine of 50 degrees (Germany's latitude is somewhere in this ballpark) = 0.64
The cosine of 40 degrees (I,m in this ballpark) = 0.77
The cosine of 0 degrees (the latitude of the equator) = 1

But teams of scientists studying Antarctica (albeit admittedly that they only generally stay during the summer months) routinely utilize solar panels to provide their energy, as it isn't going to conveniently come to them in any other form. Even there you can angle them to point straight at the sun, thus proving the irrelevance of this cosine matter.
Last edited by lsayre on Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

 
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Post by lsayre » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 8:44 pm

The literature that accompanies my solar panels rates them at 16.1% efficient. What does that mean?

Well, lets begin with the STC figure of 1,000 Watts/Sq-M. Next lets look at the surface area that each of my panels covers (edge to edge, not just where the cells are located). My panels measure 38.7" wide (983 mm) by 64.76" tall (1,645 mm). My panels are rated to deliver 260 Watts when at STC.

983mm x 1645mm = 1,617,035 Sq-mm, which equals 1.617035 Square meters.

1.617 square meters x 1,000 Watts/M = 1,617 Watts (this is the amount of energy that my solar panels would yield if they were 100% efficient)

1,617 Watts x 0.161 (16.1% efficiency) = 260.337 Watts

Thus my panels are rated at 260 Watts.

A great misnomer is that the higher the efficiency, the better the panel, but a 260 Watt rated panel at 21% efficiency (the highest possible efficiency you can actually purchase at present) yields 260 Watts, and a 14% efficient x 260 Watt rated panel yields 260 Watts, so there is no difference sans for size. If you don't have a concern for the surface area covered by the panels you will accomplish the exact same task at 14% as at 21% efficiency, and save yourself a huge bundle of money in the process by choosing 14% efficiency.

 
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Post by warminmn » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 9:55 pm

I wonder if it works so well in Germany because possibly they are building them in their country? They are known for very high quality items. Just a thought and they may be using China made for all I know.

Also, there must be some advantage to higher efficient panels? Longevity?

 
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Post by lsayre » Fri. Jun. 19, 2015 10:00 pm

warminmn wrote:Also, there must be some advantage to higher efficient panels? Longevity?
Nope, the guarantees are generally all the same these days. Including the guarantee of Wattage delivered over time. The only advantage to the end user is that the higher efficiency panels take up less space (and for some end users this is a serious issue, either due to space concerns, or shading concerns). The disadvantage is that the really high efficiency panels cost nigh on twice as much as middling efficiency panels.

But the manufacturers of the highest efficiency panels (and the contractors that install for them, the ones who come to your home to push sell you on solar) will talk your ear off as to the superiority of their panels until you sign on the dotted line for twice the price that will accomplish the same task in the end.


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