In reply to aircooled :
The system I priced is 12kw at 48 volts. That 250 amps at 48 volts from the solar panels.
It goes to the inverters that can provide 10kw at 240v. That's 42 amps at 240v or 84 amps at 120v. So a one-ton AC unit drawing 900 watts would use a little under 1/10 the available power. A 1hp well pump would draw about 2000 watts or 20% of the available power. The only real power hog in the average house is the water heater @ 4500 watts and a gas instant water heater or a solar water heater solves that problem.
Anything the house is not using is used to charge the batteries.
The batteries will also pick up the surges in the system like when the AC starts or the panels aren't putting out full power. A 30 kWh battery bank should do a pretty decent job of keeping the lights on until the sun comes out again. That's 24 hours of running the AC continuously or 12 hours of watering your grass.
SV reX said:
In reply to Boost_Crazy :
You forgot about the part where he may end up with a mortgage on his house which would have to be paid off before he could sell.
This is what I was going to say after talking to my realtor. Unless you can pay cash, solar doesn't play out in the long run with the lien on the house if you take out the loan.
Toyman! said:
It looks like peak solar hours in Charleston SC are the worst during December at 4.2 hours per day. January isn't much better at 4.45 hours.
Panel system sizing is monthly electric usage divided by monthly peak sun hours, times 1000. Then divided by the power rating of the panels.
So figure worst case @ 1000 kWh divided by the worst case peak sun at 126 hours/month is 7.93. Times 1000 is 7930.
Then divided by 420 for 420-watt panels in the kit above, I would need 19, 420-watt panels minimum to generate enough power during the winter months. The above kit comes with 15.
The house should use at the most about 33 kWh per day. So the 20kw battery would probably be just large enough to carry over to the next day but not have much if any extra. Some type of auxiliary charging would be necessary unless you up the system size.
With some careful shopping, I bet I could put together a complete system that would work 95% of the time for under $25k. The system payoff would be about 13 years assuming electrical rates stay close to the same.
1000 kwh, that would be nice. I just looked at my upcoming bill. It's estimated to be 2300 kwh. Crazy hot here the last few weeks.
In reply to z31maniac :
I'm glad we changed out the old sliders, added insulated siding and blew in an extra 10" of insulation a few years back along with new AC unit. For the 95+ days we would have ended up last month about 3000. We were higher, but only 1900.
In reply to Pennyovert :
Solar Canoe for sale have you?
