# Solar gurus



## maverickxxx (Jan 25, 2011)

So I'm just starting my reserch on solar energy. I've been looking at some of the build your own solar panel stuff. Is this for real? I can buy the cells for .11â¬ a watt. If I build panel myself doing my own sodering etc.. I've been doing some basic math on average house hold usage per 8900kw per year broke it down to I needed to produce 2.48 kw per day. An from stuff I read new York gets three hrs of peak sun an one 244 watt single panel produces .6 kw peak sun so I would need four to produce my 2.48kw per day. So from this point does everything seem right? I know there's tons of additional costs still. So my next step is my battery back up supply that I would need I've read a couple times about forklift batteris an deep cell. I would like to wire everything ac in house. Well I'm just in begging reserch phase. Oh I'll have a separate generator to power my shop in beginning running air compressors generators etc till I get better handle on how solar wrks


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## AVanarts (Jan 2, 2011)

I've built some of my own and don't plan on making any more once I have used up the cells that I have waiting to be soldered together.

The current price of panels makes the do-it-yourself kind impractical in my opinion.

Also, I've used a Kill-a-watt meter on the items that we plan to use in our off grid house, and I came up with 5 to 8 kilowatt hours per day. That was being relatively conservative in energy use.


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

Missed it by a factor of 10. You need to produce an average of 24.38KWH daily plus system losses.

8900/365= 24.38


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

And if you manage to cobble together home made panels and come anywhere close to 24kw/hr/day of production, I suspect you'd be the first to ever do it.


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Reguardless of how many cells you may cobble together you can NOT seal them like is done at the factory . . . . .
Therefore the life, --out in the real world,-- of what ever you put together will be very short compared to the factory sealed stuff.

On one of my pole mounted racks I have two old "Tri Lams" made by Arco back in the early 80's . . . . . . . . . .they were used for a short while in a huge 'concentrator' system in CA. (mirrors and reflectors so as to have 'more that one sun')
Those old panels are still cranking out the power......even after all these years....
------They are sealed behind tempered glass------

So ya, just for kicks, go ahead and solder up a bunch of cells . . . . .get your feet wet.

But for all the power your 'wanting' . . .buy factory stuff . . .you will be much better off 10 years down the road...............


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## maverickxxx (Jan 25, 2011)

I thought that might have seemed low. from numbers I ran night before so I'll re figure those numbers. What about a battery bank


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## Explorer (Dec 2, 2003)

Anything you can do to reduce your usage will pay for itself - repeatably.

My solar has been off line for the last few months due to illness and reconfiguring it, but all last year I averaged about 7 kWH per day.


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

maverickxxx said:


> What about a battery bank


OK....what about it ?


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## maverickxxx (Jan 25, 2011)

Well like I said I'm just getting started into reading about solar. I've been reading some about the gaint forklift batteries being used. I run heavy equipment an am around some mechanics etc... So if I wanted to I could prolly find some around prolly cheaper than solar stores also am kinda curious on how large some people's are I've seen some pictures of some banks an there's rows an rows of them an prolly 3-400 dollar batteries I know these are prolly the ones designed by solar companies an the very high dollar systems. I know I gotta do a take off of projected energy use etc... I haven't built the house so I can't really say what usage is going to be. I'm just trying to use average household stats I know my usage is going to be way under the average.


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## greg273 (Aug 5, 2003)

Batteries... well, you have a few options... it all depends on how much stored energy you want... Now if you already have grid power, and/or a generator, you can obviously down-size your battery storage capacity. At the low end of the scale, ya got your T-105 'golf cart' batteries, reasonably affordable, then there are the L-16's, (forklift?) batteries, which is what I have. I paid $200 apiece for them some 6 years ago, I just looked online and they are more like $350-400. But look locally, you wouldn't want to pay for shipping a thousand pounds of lead across the country. 

If you contact 'http://www.backwoodssolar.com/'. they will send you a small catalog for free that is also a planning guide to designing your system, they also have tech support available (they've always been pretty good about answering the phone and helping out with any questions). I used that little book extensively when planning my system, and it was a great help.


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