My solar power system

[BT Humble]

Some pics of my solar power system.  I'm testing at half-scale (ie. 2 of the 4 panels) on my house in town prior to moving out to my land.



http://www.geocities.com/za2bb/solar/index.html



BTH

[Seth]

wow, now that is a bank....

[BT Humble]

They're about 12 years old, but they still hold a charge and only cost me $1500 (Australian).  500Ah @ 24V just wasn't going to cut it. ;-)

BTH

[Andrew]

Wow!

Very nice!

I'm trying to put together a small system right now.

Got most of the batteries figured out. Might buy some panels from silicon solar, or, if forcefield still stocks them.

I'm seeing if I can do it one room at a time. Don't want to dive into the whole 2kw system to find that my house is not good for solar. But hey, there's always wind!

-Andrew

[BT Humble]

Personally I think that your house, wherever it's located, is more likely to be good for solar than wind.  I'm still amazed that solar panels Just Work.  By that I mean that you point them at the sun, wire them up to your batteries, and watch the amps being pumped in.  It's just absolute magic.

The only bad thing about solar is that you don't get to tweak or build it from scratch the way you can with a wind generator.

For what it's worth, over the winter months my farmlet is close to ideal for wind too: I've had my anemometer on about a 10' tower, and the average windspeed over the past 4 months is approximately 1.5m/s.  I'm looking forward to moving out there and putting the generator up on its 6m tower. ;-)

BTH

[Andrew]

To get your hands dirty in solar, like I do, is to assemble them yourself. I buy the cells raw, Machine the backing, solder them together, and encapsolate them. I only got 50 watts of homemade solar up now, but I plan to expand!

-Andrew

[BT Humble]

Sounds like good fun, but unless you have a good source of cheap cells I think a preassembled panel would win on a $-per-watt basis.

Do you have any pictures of your project?

BTH

[Andrew]

Cheap cells?

I got them.  

Probably $2.90 a watt excluding aluminum for backing. Then it would be maybe 3.05 a watt. Cells are always cheaper. Think about it. If you buy preassembled, you always have to pay for labor, parts, machining, etc. It adds up. The best panel I seen was here at otherpower at 4.01 a watt. This is not much, but at 2000watts it adds up. Cells are cheap if you know where to look. http://www.siliconsolar.com sells very nice cells. Astropower might sell you some except you probably have to buy in the 1000's but if your wiring up your house it counts. Many companies like bpsolar, shell, kyocera have dealers that will sell you individual cells.

I myself got mine at silicon solar.

-Andrew

[Andrew]

Hey, you ask for pictures....

Here are the pictures of the raw cells I get from silicon solar.

And here is some pictures of my finished projects.

I usually do my solar panels in copperclad fiberglass, because it's easy to use, and easy to make panels from.

-Andrew