Budget Home Solar Power Systems from China

Off-topic Chatter
1

Solar power seems like a good idea but it takes years to repay the outlay. Now with Chinese suppliers offering free shipping it seems so cheap.

I think one needs three or four things

  1. Panels at about $1 per watt eg this 250 watt panel
  2. A regulator at about $50
    (to regulate consumption of power from cells and batteries, and charge the batteries)
  3. Inverter
    (to create 110 V AC from the DC solar power/batteries)
    or instead of 2 and 3
  4. There are also systems that combine the controller/charger with an inverter such as this

5) And then get some golf-cart (or perhaps even truck) batteries locally.

For about $2500 one could get 2KW system. That buys a lot of flashlights but I guess it might pay for itself in less than 5 years.

Has anyone done this, or have a budget solar system recommendation, wisdom, forseeable problems, jokes?

2

From my point of view, first thing that “green oriented” person should do is to minimize power consumption of current appliances either by replacing them with more eco friendly or adjusting their use time, older devices often use quite a lot power in stand-by mode and turning them off when not used is recommended. This is especially important for 24/7 devices as fridges and other often used devices as PC, TV… Changing light bulbs/fixtures with more efficient (especially for most used ones)
All of this measures are much more cost effective than current solar panel systems.

For example my old TV 26” LCD is consuming 80-90W and around 18W for ten minutes after powering off (stand-by) New 26” LED LCD is using only 29W resulting in saving of 150kWh per year.

Only after this investing in solar panel systems can make sense.

3

What chiefinspectorfinch said!
I have a neighbour at country side who installed solar panels recently, Latvia isnt the sunniest country in the world, far from it, Ill see when I can talk with him about his investment and reasons to do so.

4

I did not mean to be particularly green but I do attempt to reduce energy costs in other ways.

What I wanted to draw attention to is the low cost of solar panels from the same places that sell budget lights (aliexpress in particular).

5

That’s good news, hopefully local suppliers will be forced to reduce prices. Thing is are these like Chinese lumens? 250w claimed = 100w actual lol

6

Solar's a GREAT Idea ...

Payback won't be for many years

Don't forget the US IMPORT Tax/Duty (which is considerable) costs for the panels.

7

Home LED lamps with decent CRI are finally coming down in price. I just replaced the 6 BR30 floods in our kitchen with 13W LED replacements. Our Costco has them for $5.99 (after $10 instant rebate). Went from about 390W to 78W.

After carefully reducing your usage, photovoltaic is interesting to look into. As you’re seeing, prices for panels and other associated equipment are coming down, although still not cheap. In places where grid power isn’t so expensive, it is hard to make the numbers work on a purely financial level. If you want to reduce your grid usage for whatever reason, then great. Other places where there are large government incentives or poor quality or crazy expensive grid power, then it can make a lot of sense if you can afford the initial buy-in.

Note that even high-quality panels will have a 20-30 year lifespan. Other things like strage batteries will have shorter replacement cycles.

8

I am planning on getting a 3 or 4-panel (monocrystaline) solar kit in the next month or two.

My ONLY reason for wanting it is to have a backup for my gas generator should the power go out.

By pulling a couple of deep-cycle batteries out of my boat and hooking them up to the panels, I would have a way to charge Li-on batteries and maybe watch a couple hours of TV (I have satellite), as well as run a couple of lights at night.

So far, the systems that are available are either pretty weak or very expensive.

So I'm still looking.

9

In some places here in Europe (I know it happens in Holland and Denmark, I'm sure of Germany as well) small solar power projects are organised and managed by groups of people (like: a neighbourhood), they buy directly from the chinese manufacturers, I can imagine they manage to get even better prices.