# Solar system suppliers



## markcrain (Oct 21, 2010)

Where is the best place to buy a small solar system. I want something to run my refrigerator and a couple lights.


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## Dan in Ohio (Jul 16, 2005)

One place to look is Renogy, they have some inexpensive kits that generally get good reviews. They have a website and you can find kits on Amazon.

I bought/pieced together a larger system from Civic Solar.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

Before you can do anything you need to determine how much power your need. You need to know how much sun you get on a daily basis over the year. 

What kind of frigde you looking at, standard home fridge or 12v fridge? If a home fridge then your going to need an inverter to get power upto 110v, A fridge has a motor and they needs a good amount of power to start but only run for short time periods.

Just taking some average home fridge ratings your going to need 1200 watts day. So you need to put 1200watts into the system just to keep even and , that's a lot of panels.

You might be able to move to a solar friendly fridge but they often are smaller in size.


Again, determine your needs before worrying about getting anything, then work backwards, need 2kw/day, ok need at least 2kw/day of inverter. I need several days of batteries that can handle 4kw of stored power and now I need charge controler to handle 2kw/day and then finally 2kw worth of panels.


As Dan noted, for small systems Renogy makes some nice system. I have not priced there larger 200w+ panels


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## markcrain (Oct 21, 2010)

My fridge uses 900 watts per day I think so I guess 5 200 watt panels would do the trick


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

markcrain said:


> My fridge uses 900 watts per day I think so I guess 5 200 watt panels would do the trick


I think I would want a little more overhead than 100 watts. But a 1200-1800 watt system is going to cost between between $2k-$3K. Lot of money to power a fridge . You might want to look at more energy efficient fridge. Put more money into the fridge to bring down your overall cost.


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## Dan in Ohio (Jul 16, 2005)

Gary, I'm sure you know but if he has 5 x 200W panels then his 1kW system (in TN will likely have 3 hours of solar insolation per day) will likely roughly average 3kw/day.

That would be plenty for the fridge and some lights, then it's just a matter of properly sizing the battery bank. Using 1kW for fridge, minimum bank would be 2kW since on most batteries you don't want to draw down more than 50% of capacity. Want to be able to bank that 3kW/day? Then you're looking at a 6kW bank. Me personally, I like to have at least 2x what I'm banking on an average day (gives you extra power for cloudy days) so then you're looking at 12kW bank. (I ended up using a 30kW forklift battery on a 4kW system.)

Just depends what you're trying to accomplish and what the budget is.

Andy had a real good link to a solar panel price comparison page and that's what I used when selecting where to buy mine. That said, depending on your system size it might be worth getting quotes as civic solar was much cheaper than their website when I called and talked to them and quoted things. If you are just looking for a 1kW fridge/light system I personally would have bought a Renogy system when I was looking.


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## markcrain (Oct 21, 2010)

Gary in ohio said:


> I think I would want a little more overhead than 100 watts. But a 1200-1800 watt system is going to cost between between $2k-$3K. Lot of money to power a fridge . You might want to look at more energy efficient fridge. Put more money into the fridge to bring down your overall cost.


A new fridge would be half the cost of the system. In the end it might pay off but I can't afford to do both.


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## markcrain (Oct 21, 2010)

Dan in Ohio said:


> Gary, I'm sure you know but if he has 5 x 200W panels then his 1kW system (in TN will likely have 3 hours of solar insolation per day) will likely roughly average 3kw/day.
> 
> That would be plenty for the fridge and some lights, then it's just a matter of properly sizing the battery bank. Using 1kW for fridge, minimum bank would be 2kW since on most batteries you don't want to draw down more than 50% of capacity. Want to be able to bank that 3kW/day? Then you're looking at a 6kW bank. Me personally, I like to have at least 2x what I'm banking on an average day (gives you extra power for cloudy days) so then you're looking at 12kW bank. (I ended up using a 30kW forklift battery on a 4kW system.)
> 
> ...


Do you happen to have that link to the price comparison page? That would be pretty handy. Also thanks for the info, thats very helpful.


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## moeh1 (Jan 6, 2012)

Here is one I bookmarked to watch panel prices, but you still need the other components too.

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/surveys/free-solar-panel-price-survey/


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

Dan in Ohio said:


> Gary, I'm sure you know but if he has 5 x 200W panels then his 1kW system (in TN will likely have 3 hours of solar insolation per day) will likely roughly average 3kw/day...


 He has a winter low of about 1.7 hours. You can't use average for an off-grid system. After calculating is losses his array would be about right for supplying 1.2 KWH a day in December. So as long as he only uses 300Wh of lights he's about right. This does allow for a lot of opportunity loads in the summer.

WWW


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## JeepHammer (May 12, 2015)

Just don't do what I did and back into solar...
Doing everything three times makes for expensive electricity!

If I were doing a small system, I would buy the panels with a built in inverter on the back.
They sync up with each other, and if one goes down, it doesn't cripple the entire array,
They are also infinitely expandable, you just buy more panels and plug them in to the string.

Home Power magazine has reputable advertisers and sellers, you can visit their web sites for info and canculators to size your initial purchase.

Stay away from places like Harbor Freight, everything they have is sub standard,
Not weather/moisture proof, under producing for their rated output, generally faulty all the way around.
(Ask me how I know that...)


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## markcrain (Oct 21, 2010)

JeepHammer said:


> Just don't do what I did and back into solar...
> Doing everything three times makes for expensive electricity!
> 
> If I were doing a small system, I would buy the panels with a built in inverter on the back.
> ...


Sound advice. I'll check out home power


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## JeepHammer (May 12, 2015)

Honestly, I screwed away more money trying to 'DIY' than I have in the current system.
If you ARE NOT going to be there full time,
Then the panels with inverters built in are the way to go,
They link/sync automatically, if one goes down, it doesn't cripple the rest of the system.
Virtually no maintinance other than cleaning panels once in a while.

You get losses with a bunch of smaller inverters, but the maintiance free part is worth the small losses, and slightly increased cost.

------

If you are electrically savvy,
You can get more power from less panels at a little less cost by using common panels and a single inverter.
A panel going bad will cripple the entire string until its removed, but that's NOT common,
And if the single inverter goes down, the system crashes.

If you are in residence, you will notice it right away...
Most have alerts or alarms that won't let you alone until the issue is fixed.

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If you want power at night, that's going to take batteries.

You get more power from flooded/wet batteries, but you have to watch the liquid levels.

A more expensive, but maintiance free option is 'Gel Cells'.
When you aren't in residence, these are the ticket, no maintinance other than the occasional terminal cleaning.

I found 'AGM' batteries to be super expensive, failure prone, short warranty, and not auto table for my applications.
AGM is 'Activated Glass Matt', and unless they have made some HUGE advances in the past couple years, I consider them useless and a waste of time/money.

Anyway, 
In my opinion, you buy as much system as you can scratch money loose for,
Its REAL EASY to buy too small of a system,
And you will grow into a larger system much faster than you think!
Everything in 'Modern' life plugs into the wall, so having a little extra capacity never hurts anything.


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## gundog10 (Dec 9, 2014)

I would recommend you take a look at DMsolar. There is nothing wrong with Renogy panels and I purchased eight 150 watt sets for our camp hosts. However compared to my DM solar 158 panels the Renogys are much lighter with thinner glass and frame. I would also recommend you buy the best controller you can afford. I have been using my Morningstar 65 for four years without any issues.


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