Home Solar Electricity on the Cheap

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by DFINITLYDISTRUBD

what is the cost cuttoff Mr.Turtle?

If I don't have any bills like auto insurance, it takes me 2 to 3 months to save $200. No beer either.

Originally Posted by Roadam

You can always attach a car alternator to a bicycle rear spool or the shaft of a fitness bike. That way you would probably make more electricity than those panels. And cheaper too.

I've thought about that a bit, but I gave my bike away as it killed my back to ride it. But what do you think about using an auto voltage regulator for a charge controller on a single battery setup? Freezy and I researched them a bit and a good one is about $135. Joe's sold me a charge controller for $30 that was supposed to handle up to 7 amps of panels, but it quit working after a few months. We found out that the type it was can ruin the battery too. What's a reptile to do?

[Roadam]

Well as far as I researched it, 5 amp solar charge controller comes at about 40-70 $, thats converted from €.

But I dont see why the controller would damage the battery, well anything else than being set to a too high voltage. The only thing it has to do is disconnect the battery when the voltage comes to a certain level so it may be worth checking it.

Joe's sold me a charge controller for $30 that was supposed to handle up to 7 amps of panels, but it quit working after a few months. We found out that the type it was can ruin the battery too.

What kind of a charge controller was that and do you possibly know why it stopped working?

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Roadam

Well as far as I researched it, 5 amp solar charge controller comes at about 40-70 $, thats converted from €.

But I dont see why the controller would damage the battery, well anything else than being set to a too high voltage. The only thing it has to do is disconnect the battery when the voltage comes to a certain level so it may be worth checking it.

What kind of a charge controller was that and do you possibly know why it stopped working?

The info is in the other thread on Solar Power; I'll find it for you & get it posted here.

OK. Got it: post #182 over here is the primary reference: >> http://hypography.com/forums/technol...energy-19.html

[Janus]

Originally Posted by Roadam

You can always attach a car alternator to a bicycle rear spool or the shaft of a fitness bike. That way you would probably make more electricity than those panels. And cheaper too.

I worked it out once. It turns out that you wouldn't even produce enough electricity to heat the water for the shower you'd need afterward.

Of course, if you were already going to ride the bike for the exercise, it could defray the cost of heating the water, or you could just start taking cold showers.

[Roadam]

I worked it out once. It turns out that you wouldn't even produce enough electricity to heat the water for the shower you'd need afterward.

Well you wouldn't produce enough with those solar panels either.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Janus

I worked it out once. It turns out that you wouldn't even produce enough electricity to heat the water for the shower you'd need afterward.

Of course, if you were already going to ride the bike for the exercise, it could defray the cost of heating the water, or you could just start taking cold showers.

Originally Posted by Roadam

Well you wouldn't produce enough with those solar panels either.

Why do I bother. You all have convinced me to screw the future generations; I'm just going to stop trying to find efficiency & start wasting as much of whatever I can before I croak. Good grief.

[Roadam]

Oh, sorry, I didnt want to ruin any hopes with that.

Its just that using solar electricity for heating is a waste. It may be better to use a solar concentrator to heat water and then use it to heat the house. Or use the temperature difference to generate electricity with a stirling for example. Of course if you have the stirling in the house, all escaped heat will heat the house, so the efficiency would be greater.

Thing is that from my perspective 60watts is really small amount of electricity. With a solar panel like that you get say 0.5 kilowat hours a day at best. And while the house I live in (and seven others) use 22kilowats per day. So its small amount for me.

But for small houses which maybe aren't even occupied whole time its great. As long as you dont need to run washing machine, electrical cooker or any of bigger appliances.

Using solar for heating water is surely quite efficient, I guess more than 50%. I have been calculating how much energy our house uses for heating and the figure came about 4kw heater turned on all the time. Of course we use logs and we recently added more insulation, so the usage should drop from 30 cubic meters to about 20 a year.

Thing is that every day I go to my uni and back I use about 50 kilowat hours worth of diesel. So that about squashes anything I might do to reduce the use of electricity.

So I use 50kwh, my dad about 150kwh, house heating about 70kwh, and electricity about 22kwh.

Making the biggest consumers more efficient saves alot more than small ones.
So if ever cheap, long lasting, light and efficient batteries come around. I am gonna buy 2 of them, build a water turbine behind the house and use the electricity to charge the battery I am gonna put into en electric car. That way I may use only 10kwh on my daily trip to uni.

[alexander]

Originally Posted by Roadam

You can always attach a car alternator to a bicycle rear spool or the shaft of a fitness bike. That way you would probably make more electricity than those panels. And cheaper too.

not really. Your typical car alternator is what, 100 amp

great, you say, well there is a snag. standard operating speed of the alternator is twice the speed of your engine, so, at idle, your car runs about 700rpm, alternator thus spins at 1400rpm the alternator is producing a little juice, problem is, you would need to spin it at 1400 rpm, at those speeds the efficiency of your alternator is around 50-55% at best. At that you still need a recrifier bridge, to convert the ac into dc, which takes some of that efficiency down. But lets face it, you can not produce those kinds of rotations, there's no way you can spin that shaft 23 times a second, at any consistent rate anyways, so lets say, you spin it at 10rps, lets say you can even get it to output 10amps.... thats a hell of a lot, but lets say its 10 amps, at 12 volts dc when you are set and done.

how long do you need to be on the bike to charge a battery that is 100 amp hour, one battery? 5 hours or so... say you have an array of 3 batteries, now you would need to spend 15 hours on your bike to charge them.

Now lets say we use 2 panels that are 25W, say at average 1/2 load, we can only produce 25w, at 12s, thats only 2 amps, and it would take the solar array 5 times the amount of time, it would take you to charge a battery, so as we approximated above, you can charge it in 5 hours, it takes the 2 panels 25 hours. On average we have 5-6 hours of sun light a day, i say 5-6, counting cloudy days, in which panels still make some power, and normal what 8 hours of sun light on a sunny day, right. so it will take us 5 days to charge that battery, say even a whole week 7 days. So in a week i produce the same amount of electricity as you in a 5 hour period, without breaking a sweat... every week...

now you take 3 of those panels, put them into a 3x8 frame or something, throw it on your roof, get another set of 3, do the same, now i am rated for 150w, i can probably make 1/2 on average, so 75W, and without breaking a sweat, i can charge one battery in one day... and thats with a normal dumb system

and i save enough on my bill at the end of the month to pay for my gym subscription

[alexander]

Oh on getting the larger consumers to save... i've been trying to talk some people to put money in to putting a green roof on the building i work in... But yes, while getting the large consumers will make a bigger impact, every bit we can do to save, helps in the end, i've ranted on that before though, if you really care to hear it again, i can reiterate...