In a recent Diary by Valterra, Thurmund pointed out,
"Kaneka 60 watt CIGS panels $.98 per watt at
www.sunelec.com"
and since reading that and checking out the website I have been thinking I can go solar for a reasonable price where my payback time will be years, not decades.
My brother is an electrician who has begun doing solar installations and can help me with all the wiring, disconnects and permit but when it comes to specing a system he's still learning. He does installs that are already speced.
I want to design a simple system and I believe it all centers around the inverter if I want to be grid tied. so,
Available roof area is about 20' X 15' (a little less for spacing between panels for access) which should give room for about 24 panels and 1440 watts of panels. Using the 60 watt Kaneka panels I would like to find a good inverter that will grid tie those panels. (battery charging not nessecsary) I don't want to allow for expansion as that is all the roof area I would use.
I know where to get panels, I have an electrician, I just need the right inverter. The Sunelec website has quite a few refurbished at low prices and if I can use one of those I can almost eliminate electric bills for about $3,000 US. If I go for the 195 watt panels I could probably take my wattage up to about 2000 watts as they seem to put out more watts per square foot.
We have for wind turbines a number of designs that can be copied. Maybe we can put together a number of basic tried and true PV arrays to be copied also.