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15 Feb ’12
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couple of notes, we did not mount the panels in the technically correct way, to be correct we should be at a 47 degree angle to get maximum solar output, but for aesthetics reasons and for what my fathers power usage is it shouldn't have been a big deal. He was basically using it for a computer. Well we were wrong, my calculations based on a 5 hour day and a 75 percent efficiency we should have been generating 600 watts of energy a day, well the power supply for my fathers computer alone was 400 w/hr. I caught him sneaking a extension cord to the cabin. Bad dad, bad. We fixed that by buying him a laptop that uses barely anything for power. We also added a third battery for extra storage.
15 Feb ’12
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Any specific reason why you used marine batteries?
the deep cycles are the cheapest local option, they need to be able to withstand the charge and discharge of numerous cycles or else you'll burn through batteries quick, a lot of people use golf cart batteries for a cheap system, but I don't have a local source for them. I have a chart somewhere that ranks batteries from best to worst, I'll see if I can find it.
15 Feb ’12
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but it is very important to make sure it is in a well ventilated space and the electrolyte level is maintained or else there could be a catastrophic failure with batteries due to hydrogen off gassing
15 Feb ’12
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here is a site that breaks down the different battery choices. We will be lucky to get 3-4 years use out of the batteries, a true commercial sealed properly maintained battery you can get 20 years out of them, but they are also thousands of dollars, we had a estimate for a system that was 50,000 dollars for our house and the batteries alone were about 17,000 of that
19 Feb ’12
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Hmmm....
How many of these panels am I going to need to run my AC in the summertime? LOL!
I remember when you first did this project. I was wondering if those panels mounted in that fashion was going to be enough for your purposes. I was pretty shocked to find you wouldn't need a more robust system. It sounds like you have everything worked out though!
15 Feb ’12
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if you were in a dryer area, you could do it.
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