When shopping for a solar panel and you are comparing models from competing sources, there are probably two main considerations:

1.  Quality

2.  Price

You are on your own for comparing the quality of the solar panels.  But for price comparisons, I found a helpful website I would like to share, that shows the going rate for solar panels.

According to SolarBuzz.com, the current price per Watt in the United States is:

$3.47 per Watt

A friend in Texas told me he has an opportunity to buy a 220 Watt solar panel for $450.  Is this a good deal?

Let’s calculate the cost per watt so we can see if it is more or less than the going rate.

Since the going rate is $3.47 per Watt, this deal in Texas, at $2.05 per Watt, looks to be priced cheaply.

Price isn’t everything, though.  We also should look at the quality.  If you find or know of a good resource for comparing quality, let me know.

Update March 22, 2011

The price per Watt is still dropping.  It is now down to $3.19 per Watt in the United States.  It is getting easier and easier to use solar energy.

Video after the break…

This post shows the progress in my solar panel installation.

Electrical cable and conduit going into the ground.

Put a hole in my garage wall. Now the electrical cable goes from the solar panel directly into the house. Connected the cable to a charge controller, portable 12V battery, and a strip of blue LED’s.

I leave the LED’s on 24 hours a day. It feels good to know I don’t pay a utility company for that use. It’s paid for and uses clean energy.

This video is a compilation of several days of work, whenever I could find some spare time.

VIDEO

RELATED

Mounting Solar Panel to Pole

Thief

Video attached…

VIDEO

A single contrail probably does not reflect a noticeable amount of energy back to space, but a sky full of air traffic 24/7 might.  I do not personally worry about losing a tiny fraction of power on my solar panels from contrails reflecting light back into space.

I recorded this video when working outside.  I thought the contrails looked interesting on a relatively clean, blue sky and decided to press the record button.  It occurred to me that contrails are like clouds, and I know that clouds reflect solar energy back to space.  A cloudy day is bad for solar energy collection, so contrails must take a fraction of our energy, too.

What’s the difference between a contrail and chemtrail?

There are many references online to “chemtrails”, where some people believe that unmarked jets are spraying the population with harmful chemicals.  Why do they believe this and where is the evidence?  I have not seen conclusive evidence showing that chemtrails are real.  However, contrails are real.  Just look up at the sky and you will see how real they are.  Contrails, like the proposed idea of chemtrails, are a form of pollution and do contain compounds poisonous to life.  But so is the exhaust coming out of petroleum-powered vehicles.  Contrails from aircraft are like the equivalent of land-based smog from automobiles.  Both are harmful to our health.

Is it a conspiracy?  I don’t see any proof for that.  But is is bad for our health?  Yes, it’s bad for life because contrails pollute our air.

Toxic Sky

NBC-4’s Paul Moyer hosted a series called “Toxic Sky”.

Whether you believe in chemtrails or not, if you want clean air to breathe, we should minimize the exhaust from aircraft and automobiles burning fossil fuel.  Switching to a cleaner energy source would be good for all of us.

Sources:

1.  The importance of the diurnal and annual cycle of air traffic for contrail radiative forcing [ abstract ]

Department of Meteorology, The University of Reading, Reading RG6 6BB, UK

2.  Ministry of Defense, Publication Date 8 April 2008:  Turbine Fuel, Aviation Kerosene Type, Jet A-1, pages 8 ~ 11

PDF:  http://www.dstan.mod.uk/standards/defstans/91/091/00000600.pdf alternate link

3.  Wikipedia:  Jet Fuel [ Wikipedia ]

I show how you could charge a cell phone in an emergency, if you get cut off from grid power.

I am using a 10 AWG extension cord to carry the power from the solar panel to my house.

The connectors came from a local auto parts store and are easy to crimp to the cables. No soldering required.

It's easy to connect to the solar panel. Only tool needed is a screwdriver!

Sunforce 60012 7 Amp Charge Controller

I bought the charge controller from Amazon.com back in August 2008 for $25.  It will handle a maximum of 7 Amps. [ Edit, Dec-9-2010: Amazon has been found enabling Internet censorship, so I will not buy from Amazon again. I am joining the boycott against corporations that enable censorship and hide the truth. I recommend that you look for charge controllers elsewhere. ]

VIDEO

Related Post:  Mounting Solar Panel to Pole

From the summer of 2008 when I started to get serious about solar panels.

I chose to use aluminum angle to construct my solar panel frame.

VIDEO

I cut through the aluminum angle using a hacksaw.

I drilled the holes into the aluminum using a drill press and a hand drill.

To protect the steel pipe from the elements, rust, and corrosion, I sprayed it with a cheap, $1 can of black spray paint.

-

Concrete

The pole is concreted into the ground with rebar.  I used 230 pounds of concrete.  The pole is plumbed to keep the pole perpendicular to the ground, letting the panel naturally balance on the pole without putting strain on the pole to either side.  But when the wind blows, it pushes on the large panel, so to keep it safely secured in the ground, I used concrete.

How do you know how deep the hole should be?  How big should the hole diameter be?  I referred to a chart at homepower.com.  PDF File

Chart from homepower.com

VIDEO – Putting the pole in the ground with conduit and concrete

Conduit

Conduit shields the electrical cables going from the solar panel to the house.  How do you get conduit out of the boxes anyway?  I think I spent way too much time trying to figure it out, trying to find the end of the conduit so I could pull it through the box.  It may be easier to cut the box all the way open and remove the entire coil of conduit from its box.  If you plan on using all the conduit for one job, why try so hard to preserve the box?

VIDEO – Frustrating Conduit Box Dispenser

-

In the next video, the solar panel is finally mounted to the top of pole and locked with a chain.  The solar panel can be manually rotated on the pole and aimed at the sun. To demonstrate that the panel is producing power, I show in the video how it can charge a portable 12V battery and power an air compressor. The air compressor performs useful work, inflating the tires on my son’s bicycle.

VIDEO

-

VIDEO – Using an extension cord to transfer power from the solar panel to the house.

Related Posts:  Charging Cell Phones in Emergency – Plus How to Add Connectors to Solar Panel Cables

Using Wolfram Alpha, you can find your longitude and latitude coordinates on Earth. Wolfram Alpha also has average wind speed data for your location. You can get weather forecast data to help determine when the best times might be for your wind turbine.

How do I find my latitude on Earth?  See the video below to see:

Lock up your solar panels to prevent theft

These panels cost a lot of money and they would make an easy target for a thief to steal for some quick cash.  An article at insidebayarea.com documents how a guy climbed up on the roof of a school at night and stole $70,000 worth of solar panels and then attempted to sell them on Craigslist.  We need to make more of an effort to protect our investments in off-the-grid power.

Here is one idea for securing panels that I am implementing using locks.

Drill a hole in the solar panel frame to attach a lock.  Then drill holes in a pole concreted to the ground.  Attach locks with a chain to make it harder for theives to take the panel.

The drill bits are titanium coated.

Drill press was used to drill holes into a steel pipe.

Hampton Bay Solar Light Reviews

The solar lanterns are made by Hampton Bay.  I see online there are many negative reviews for these lights.  Some of the complaints I also have:

• LED is too dim
• LED won’t turn on
• Not enough illumination
• Battery contacts corrode
• Solar panels darken and become cloudy over time
• Batteries included don’t last long (I replaced mine with batteries having more mA hours)

Here are some excerpts from other reviews on the web:

“I will never by anything with the Hampton Bay name again.”  complaintsboard.com

“Very dim, barely lights. Hard to see at night. Purchased at Home Depot…” complaintsboard.com

“Most lights quit between 10-18 months so if your looking for long term lighting solution, plan on continually buying replacements…”  homedepot.com

“I always get battery contact failure and end up soldering my batteries in.”  thestuccocompany.com

“I purchased a hampton bay solar walk light several weeks ago and it just stopped working.”  askmehelpdesk.com

Cleaning the Panels

The solar panels become cloudy and weathered in the sun.  The panels can be cleaned with rubbing alcohol.

The photoresistor works better if it is clean, so that the circuit knows when the sun is up.  There is no need for the light to be on during the day.  A clean photoresistor makes sure the LED is off during the day, saving the battery power until it is needed at dark.

VIDEO:  How to Fix Solar Lights

A few things that can be done to improve the solar light:

1. Clean solar panel with rubbing alcohol
2. Clean battery terminals
3. Press on capacitors
4. Replace batteries

If your rechargeable batteries are old or not holding a charge, you should change them with new rechargeable batteries.  Want to squeeze some extra life out of those old batteries?  You might try surging the old batteries.

Hydrolysis

To measure the power output of the small solar panel built onto these lights, I used hydrolysis.  I had a few questions:

How much power in Watts do these panels produce?

Answer:  84 mW in winter

Can low power be used in hydrolysis?  How many volts and amps does hydrolysis require?

As shown in the video above, hydrolysis can be achieved with low power.  With only 3.8V and 22 mA, we are splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen!  It doesn’t take much power to make hydrogen.  Looks like anyone can make hydrogen fairly easily.

]]> http://www.elperfecto.com/2010/01/01/solar-light-maintenance/feed/ 0 http://www.elperfecto.com/2009/11/03/combiner-box-for-solar-and-wind-to-charge-a-single-battery/ http://www.elperfecto.com/2009/11/03/combiner-box-for-solar-and-wind-to-charge-a-single-battery/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:58:03 +0000 Earl http://www.elperfecto.com/?p=433 The video below shows how to make a combiner box to allow solar panels and a wind turbine to charge the same battery.  Also shown in the video: How to make an extension cord out of spare CRT cables and heat shrink.

This combiner box could also be used for other power sources, like combining thermoelectric generation and solar panels.

Idea for box came from the video below.

I added Schottky diodes to the combiner box to make sure that current flows in one direction.