Solar Power

[Cec]

Hi all
I am looking at trying to make my humble abode less dependant on mains power.
Has any one been down this track?
I have had a look at the net and it seems you can go one of two ways, either total self sufficient, with no connection to mains, or partial where you actually generate power to the mains grid, but are still connected to mains.
Has anyone any recommendations or experiences.
Thanks
Cec

[xelasnave]

If you are simply trying to reduce your carbon input my advice would be different... you can buy a 4 stoke genny for under $500.. it will charge your battery bank when its cloudy.
I live sometime..once all the time..without grid power.. you need some good batteries... you need to work out your production of power and adjust all the way down to that...I have two panels, an inverter, a charger, a small genny... that property is totally self sufficient... lots of wood for hot water etc.
Lights, easy..tv easy, fridge electric stove or heaters forget it.
Although some get a electric fridge and replace the 240 vlt with 12 vlt they still use lots of power.
You need to be able to add up your power needs and understand what uses what.
You may like to have a look at Rainbow Power company the original supplier for the hippy community up there... Peter Peddles is an interesting fellow.. used bicycle power to generate power, wind gennys from push bike bits, water wheel from spoons and bike wheels...
He has a large company now and exports around the world.
They have an excellent hand book explaining everything
I can live with two small globes, lap top, 12 vlt tv (so many are in effect 12 vlt)
But what seems to be the case you could get all your power from this little genny and it would probably beat your in town bill used wisely.
Run it for 90 minutes on a little over a litre and that charges the battery such that you can look at tv ,play the play station have lights charge the camera batteries power the scope mount etc until you go to bed...
But when you are responsible for you power supply you become more efficient in the way you use it.. and one can use so much less.
alex

[Cec]

I have had a look at Rainbow power on the net, he has some very interesting stuff.
He is only about two and half hours from me, so might pay to visit him
Thanks
again
Cec

[hookedonsaturn]

Cec hang tough ours will be hooked up on the 23 of this month so will be able to give you a better idea and you can drop down and take a look at it

John

[acropolite (Phil)]

I have a working solar system at my shack and was a reseller of solar equipment for around 15 years. IMO solar installations are best treated like a tank of water, you have a certain amount to use, use and monitor it carefully and your system, however modest, will deliver what you need.

At my shack (holiday home for north islanders) I run lights, a small colour TV, water pump and microwave oven. My fridge and stove are run from Gas. I have two 85 watt panels and around 500 Ah of battery storage. For intermittent use large battery banks are a good idea. My inverter is a 1200W sine wave from Selectronics (an Australian company) and will run a washing machine, 240V Onga pressure pump, Microwave oven and Vacuum cleaner.
It has remote control and will give statistics of power (ampere hours) in, out as well as control functions to allow generator start and anything else you may wish to program. Needless to say you won't buy something with those facilities from Dick Smith or similar for a few hundred dollars.

The two biggest hurdles for solar are refridgerators and freezers. Despite low power requirement refridgerators and freezers have a high duty cycle, i.e. they run a larg percentage of the time so they use relatively large amounts of power. Some have large start up currents and run poorly from inverters.

Your location and hours of sunshine will also effect the effectiveness of your solution. If you can also utilise wind power and micro hydro, these are excellent compliments to solar (and cheaper to implement). Regarding the power output of a solar panel, as a rough guide in Tasmania, mid summer and 85W panel will deliver around 35 amp hours into your battery on an average summers day, you can halve that figure for winter here as the daylight hours are less, so in my case I have around 70ah per day to use, which equates to 800 watt hours (.8Kwh) per day, more than enough for my humble needs. I run 240 volt compact flouro's for lighting and pump 100 gallons of water per day. There is enough power left over to run the lighting and water pumping needs of an adjacent shack.

Tracking can increase efficiency, but as tracking devices are relatively expensive it may be better to put any budget for tracking in to extra panels.
With batteries you get what you pay for, quality batteries don't come cheap. It's worth remembering that the shallower the discharge cycle of the battery is the more cycles you will get from the battery before it needs replacement.

In the final analysis there is no "one size fits all", you need to determine your power consumption, which, if any appliances you can run from alternate sources, and your budget and allow consideration for those days when the sun doesn't shine.

[KG8]

We use a ton of power here and our quarterly bill is around $250, or $1000 per year. To generate and store an equivalent amount of power (via solar) would require about $30 000 worth of panels, deep cycle batteries and assorted installation paraphernalia. In other words, 30 years worth of mains supply at current rates. Now power is going up in price, but your deep cycle batteries will be dead in 10 years or so and your panels will be half stuffed in 20 years or so.

Solar is great! But it ain't cheap.

[Cec]

Thanks all for your replies
From what I can gather the outlay has got to balance the savings now and the possible increases in the future, which are going to be pretty sustatial I think
Cec

[glenc (Glen)]

Last week we had 6 Sharp Solar Panels (1050W) and a grid inverter installed at our place. It should supply about 35% of the power we use. The system will cost about $3500 after we get the government's $8000 rebate and $500 in RECs. This will save us about $350 a year on our power bill. We see it as a 10% return on our money, which is better than the 6% we get from an online account and it reduces our CO2 output too.

[BC]

That's a very good price for the 1050W system. The same system down here in Canberra is $7,600 after both rebates. I've been doing lots of price comparisons and "$ per kw/h" saved calcs. The best starting point would seem to be a solar hot water system for energy reduction per $ spent. After that, then move to the electricity generation with PV cells.

Bruce