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Anyone DIY solar?

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dave_the_nerd said:
I don't think removing/reinstalling the solar panels is all that hard. Certainly not significant compared to replacing a roof.
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Neither should be "hard". I was thinking cost prohibitive. Removing the panels would involve some risk of breaking said panels. Also the cost of having them removed and properly reinstalled. I don't think the average roofer would be able to do this without issues.
 
Actually, a quick search shows that not one single state has banned solar. Check your area regulations, but you're not defeated by the boogey man.
 
stormkroe said:
That bill has absolutely nothing to do with banning solar, it's about increasing elco costs to end users that have solar. True it's BS, but it in NO WAY makes solar illegal.
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It's the same motivation though, basically they don't like the idea of people going solar so they are making it harder by increasing costs.

Carbon taxes are sorta the same idea too, most people are on carbon based energy because that's what's given to us. Gas cars, gas furnaces etc. So by taxing us even more it's less money in the bank to be able to save up to switch to greener alternatives. IF they truly wanted people to be more green they would make green energy more obtainable. Make electric cars actually available at dealerships, have charging stations everywhere, as a start. Make hydro cheaper than gas for heating, etc.

Lots of places in the states are under HOAs, which usually ban solar or anything that looks "ugly", as well. Sure it's a different jurisdiction but it's still an authority telling you you can't do it.
 
pcgeek11 said:
Doesn't seem very cost effective to me.
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The panels are usually warrantied out that far. They'll still be producing power but will have degraded capacity over time. I haven't looked at the curves but if say you still get 80% of rated power the could go back up after you get the roof replaced.
 
pcgeek11 said:
Neither should be "hard". I was thinking cost prohibitive. Removing the panels would involve some risk of breaking said panels. Also the cost of having them removed and properly reinstalled. I don't think the average roofer would be able to do this without issues.
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In places with a lot of rooftop solar it will simply become sop.
 
Ken g6 said:
I haven't seen a lot of answers here, so I guess I'll post what I've found. First, there's Solpad. If the iPhone popularized computers, Solpad, particularly Solpad Mobile, is the iPhone of solar panels. The only problems with it are it seems to be vaporware so far, and they don't mention a price. I can only hope it's priced like an iPhone. 😉

If you really mean DIY, the only place I've found a separate grid-tied inverter is, oddly, for an exercise bicycle. I think it can just plug into the wall, but I'm not sure.
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wth...that thing plugs into your exterior outlet to feed power back in? how is that not a suicide cord--does the power trickle out in teeny tiny mAmp bursts or something?
 
K1052 said:
The panels are usually warrantied out that far. They'll still be producing power but will have degraded capacity over time. I haven't looked at the curves but if say you still get 80% of rated power the could go back up after you get the roof replaced.
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I think 80 is about right from what I recall. They don't just stop completely, but they'll start to drop faster after about 25 years. Consider the ISS panels are still producing and they are in a harsher environment. though I don't think the ISS has been up for 25 years, when did it go up, in the early 2000's or did it go up before Mir?

Batteries should be good for about that long too if you take care of them. Stick to flooded acid and keep an eye on electrolyte and add distilled water as needed. I do my standby UPS batteries about once a year, for solar probably want to check once a month at least.

Speaking of DIY solar suppose I can mention this project I did a while back, basically a portable solar power pack for camping or emergency use. It's just a basic 12v system with a microcontroller that displays voltage and other info and also has an auto low voltage shut off relay. The box has a 300w inverter and a bunch of 12v sockets to plug accessories.





The wiring is kinda messy lol...




I chose gel cells for this particular application because it's portable and no need to worry about acid spills... but would not do that for a large stationary system





I need to do some tweaks to it though as when a load is added on the 12v the MCU resets, I need to figure out why. Maybe just need to stick a big ass capacitor in the right place. 😛
 
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I would think the ISS Panels are a bit better quality than what is available for home use. Or at least much better quality control. I don't think I would use them as a reference point.
 
The ISS has been up 16 years and a few months. they have 27000 sq ft of solar and no atmosphere to filter out the good stuff, also, the panels are temperature controled with ammonia and huge radiators. (no air to transfer heat away from the cells either). My Heat transfer Professor designed the cooling system.

edit: the white folding panels are the cooling system.
 
The thing I can't wrap by head around in the money calculations is the initial investment. When people go through to figure out when the system will "pay" for itself they don't take into account instead of installing the solar panels if you had invested that money. It puts the true paying for itself at insane levels, because by investing it you could have made about that same amount of money in the time it takes for the solar to make the initial investment back.

Most cases it seems installing a powerwall and charging it on offpeak nets close to the same results as solar panels (excepting the grants/discounts you can get for solar projects). So if batteries continue to get much cheaper that will be better than solar.
 
Suijin said:
The thing I can't wrap by head around in the money calculations is the initial investment. When people go through to figure out when the system will "pay" for itself they don't take into account instead of installing the solar panels if you had invested that money. It puts the true paying for itself at insane levels, because by investing it you could have made about that same amount of money in the time it takes for the solar to make the initial investment back.

Most cases it seems installing a powerwall and charging it on offpeak nets close to the same results as solar panels (excepting the grants/discounts you can get for solar projects). So if batteries continue to get much cheaper that will be better than solar.
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It depends, if you can actually go off grid you are going to save about 2-3 grand per year by not having hydro service. I'm not aware of any investment that can yield that much out of say, 20-30k (you could do a decent solar setup for that) But in my case we don't get enough sun in winter so going off grid would probably not work. Would still be nice to do solar, but whether or not I'd save as much money as if I invested it would probably be debatable. But if you are in a location that you can actually go off grid, and provided you're allowed (a lot of governments don't allow it, which is BS) then it's a no brainer. The less you have to rely on "the system" the better off you are.

I'd say solar is also something you do because you want to, if it's 100% only to save money then it may not be the best thing you can do to save money. Like I still want to do solar at some point even though it's not really viable here. It would still produce a lot in the summer months, perhaps enough to run the A/C, so it would be a cool feeling to know even if power goes out I can still generate enough.
 
I got solar just because otherwise it's a damn waste of all that sun in FL. Not doing it to "save" money since I won't really see any of that for 15 years until after it's paid off. My 11.7kWh system seem to generate all I need so far and banking some extra kWh for summer use. By calculation, instead of me paying the power company average billing of $250/mo, I now pay them $8/mo to stay connected and use the grid as my battery. You can't invest the money that has to be spent for electric bill anyway. The "investment" is that instead of paying the power company for usage that is gone, that money now goes into paying for the solar system.
Plus it's kinda cool to see the AC running and the meter still goes backward sending extra electricity back to the grid. Even if I don't generate enough to cover high summer month, I still won't go over the 1000kWh usage where I'll get charged like 30% more.
 
TXHokie said:
I got solar just because otherwise it's a damn waste of all that sun in FL. Not doing it to "save" money since I won't really see any of that for 15 years until after it's paid off. My 11.7kWh system seem to generate all I need so far and banking some extra kWh for summer use. By calculation, instead of me paying the power company average billing of $250/mo, I now pay them $8/mo to stay connected and use the grid as my battery. You can't invest the money that has to be spent for electric bill anyway. The "investment" is that instead of paying the power company for usage that is gone, that money now goes into paying for the solar system.
Plus it's kinda cool to see the AC running and the meter still goes backward sending extra electricity back to the grid. Even if I don't generate enough to cover high summer month, I still won't go over the 1000kWh usage where I'll get charged like 30% more.
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Wow, that is an amazing savings. How much did it all cost though? You probably had a substantial installation to save that much.
 
Second topic: old lithium batteries. It looks like you can actually take apart the battery packs of old laptops to extract the cells, which look like big AA batteries, and reuse them.

It would be cool if there were some self-healing lithium ion battery circuitry which just let me plug in random batteries and it would adapt. Unlikely, but cool.
 
desura said:
Second topic: old lithium batteries. It looks like you can actually take apart the battery packs of old laptops to extract the cells, which look like big AA batteries, and reuse them.

It would be cool if there were some self-healing lithium ion battery circuitry which just let me plug in random batteries and it would adapt. Unlikely, but cool.
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Keep in mind if you do this, you need to look into a BMS (Battery Management System. If not, fire potential is very high from what i've read.
 
I look forward to a future where everyone or at least the majority of people are running solar and battery packs to power their homes.
 
JoeBleed said:
Keep in mind if you do this, you need to look into a BMS (Battery Management System. If not, fire potential is very high from what i've read.
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Yeah lithium ion is very tricky when it comes to charging, you can't just put them in series and charge them as is, you need to charge each cell individually (basically what a BMS will do, though some "dumb" ones will actually just dissapate extra energy which is inefficient).

I'm also not too sure how they would work in a solar application as you need to be able to charge them while you are using them, this is something very hard to do in a multi cell setup, even single cell. I'm sure it's doable, but it's just that it will be more involved. Lead acid you can float them at 2.25v per cell and they're happy and keep charged.
 
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