A great resource on how to make a solar powered generator for under 300$ that can power your whole house possibly... http://www.rain.org/~philfear/how2solar.html
very nice info. a note, I'd use the battery box anyway to moderate dust and moisture on the terminals.
The energy and oil it takes to make a solar panel are used once.. and a panel lasts for years. Once its made its made. Compare the energy to make that panel against how much energy it would take to run your lights, fan, cd player whatever on regular AC current. A hell of alot less. You can also make a small generator from a car alternator to charge deep cycle batteries for days when the sun ain't a shinin'...we bought 6 batteries and in winter charged them with a generator Larry made. we had no electric lines out here for a year after we bought the land. teepi
Unfortunately, you're going to be buying batteries left and right, if you drain your battery, and undoubtedly you will considering the panel is rated at 5.5 watts, and a typical light bulb is at least 40 watts. So, you drain that batteries a couple of times and it won't hold a good charge anymore.
This is the weakest anti-alternative energy argument I've ever read. I've considered how much energy and oil it takes to manufacture one solar panel. And like teepi said, its a one time energy expenditure. After that, energy is produced by the solar panel via a steady supply of sunlight. Oil, on the other hand, is a finite resource that must be continually transported to maintain a steady supply. It constantly needs other energy expenditures just to sustain itself.
anybody planning on using a solar panel to generate electricity isn't going to use ni-cad batteries ..they are going to use marine deep cycle batteries and those you can drain right down time after time and they will still hold a charge...i have one that i use right now that i have had for about 17 years ..and only twice the size of a car battery ..1000 amps at 12 volts
Anyone going to alternative energy is not going to use incandesent (spellingP lighting. Hell I am on grid and use Flourescent (spelling) and other items to conserve as much as I can. My main lights are 15watts that put out the light of a 60watt bulb. The screw right into a regular bulb socket and are pretty low cost. So far the bulbs I paid $3.00 a piece for are on there 4th year.
Right, but what's needed to transport it doesn't come close to what it can put out itself. That's the difference. Anyway, the average home will need something that can provide 10-15 kW. What's described on that site wouldn't even come close.
I worded that wrong, what I meant was that if you completely drain a lead-acid battery a couple of times, they essentially become more junk to put in the trash, if you let a battery like that completely drain, it damages the battery.
If you want to set your house up on a RAPS (Remote Area Power Supply) it costs a great deal more that $300. For some rural blocks it can be cost effective if the cost of putting on mains power is going to be prohibitive. In such instances it is always more cost effective to reduce power requirements than it is to buy more panels and batteries.An example would be to replace a standard cathorade tube PC monitor with an LCD one.
we need to go back to the drawing board on this. I´d like to see something more cost efficient and with more power output capacity.
