Comments for TechieNation.Com

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Dale

Dale — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:10:17 +0000

First off what a SUPER site for Solar info
I commend you !!!
what i would like to Know and not been able to find out is
I have 2400 watts of Grid tie Inverters ( 8 -300 watt stackables)
can i put a standard pure sine wave inverter on line with out grid power and stack my 2400 watts of gridtie inverters with it
(PLEASE NOTE THIS WOULD BE FOR USE AS BACKUP POWER ONLY WHEN LOSS OF GRID POWER USEING A TRANSFER SWITCH )

LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR RESPONSE
Dale

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by winston

winston — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:41:09 +0000

i have an 1800 watt honda generator, can my deep freeze operate with this generator?

Comment on Understanding Wind Power (Wind Generators / turbines) by martin

martin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:31:50 +0000

please can you help me i have made a stator with 12 coils and a rotor but how much of a gap do i need between them thanks

Comment on Understanding Wind Power (Wind Generators / turbines) by Benjamin thomas

Benjamin thomas — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:45:41 +0000

I m very happy to see this web site.this is very useful web site . i want to make a small model .can u give me some tips i m very much thankful to u. benjamin

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Dean

Dean — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:55:45 +0000

Hi from the rainy UK

Just want to say what a great effort is being put into this forum.

I have a large RV and have recently aquired 2×12w Solar Panels.
I want to run a conditioner charger from a 400w inverter to charge/maintain my RV batteries.

The conditioner charger is a 101w device but where we dont have many hours of sunlight, the inverter will drain my batteries out of sunlight hours - Do you know of a method to run the system for only several hours a day. The RV isnt kept where I live so I cant attand to disconnect the system daily.

Also, does the set up sound reasonable - 24w Solar to 12v Battery to 400w Inverter to run a 101w Device?

Many Thanks

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by robert

robert — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:14:15 +0000

i live in wisconsin and i am always camping on the river and i need to find a way that i can keep my phone laptop and possibly boat battery charged for days on end i have searched for solar panels and i am wondering what to get i am mostly looking at a solarroll or something flexible or portable like that and i need to know what power to get and other things like that your article has also been a great help.

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by mike

mike — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:29:51 +0000

Here is my question.. I have 12 100 watt solar panels and about 4 hours of sunlight a day.. I live in a rural area and a local electrican suggest i need 32 deka L16 batteries . 1 outback fm charger controller , 2 outback nfx3524 inverters.. Is this a little extreme, if all i can get is 4800 watts in a 4 hour period.? What might your suggestions be.? thank you.. mike

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Roas

Roas — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:30:08 +0000

Hi Digitalmind!
Please, i have 12V/24Volts Option solar Panel of 102 Watt.I could get the 24Volts Out put, whereas 12Volts is Ok?

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Meg

Meg — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:04:23 +0000

Hi, DiditalMind!
Weird question you may or may not know.. My hubby and I are building a house and trying to gather info to build our own solar panels and systems.. The county folks say the only requirement we have to pass for electric is to have at least 100 amps to the house.. (we aren’t required to hook up on grid! woo hoo! They’re more expensive to hook up to than building everything! $19,000, PLUS monthly fees! EW.). My problem is this.. I’ve seen amps referred to with batteries, which makes them seem more plenteous, but I’ve also read to them refer to amps through panels.. Which makes it seem like we’ll need LOTS of panels to get up to 100 (also read that going for 200 amps is better). Do you know what exactly folks refer to when they say a home needs to be powered by at least 100 amps? (to me, sounds like batteries’ worth of amps but I don’t want to mess us up..)
We’ll be using geothermal heating and cooling, but will be using a fridge on solar (yes yes, I read that a 12v fridge or propane would be best, but we’re trying to figure how to run EVERYTHING but heating/cooling by solar..) We don’t have numbers for appliances or anything yet as we’re just trying to figure out the amp thing so we can write up a plan to submit to county.. Just wanted to see what you had to say about that, and see if you had any thoughts on everything else!

thank you so much–Reading what you’ve said thus far has been a much bigger help than pretty much everything else I’ve found:) On top of the above, just need to figure out all the bits, pieces and workings of the whole home solar caboodle.. The challenge is fun, but they call it a challenge for a reason!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!
Meg in VA–Good sun, good hills:)

Comment on Living off-grid in your DIY house with Solar and Wind Power by Joanna Norrie

Joanna Norrie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:26:36 +0000

Reading Richards’ stuff too ….. hmmm …. it’s not so much the fridge issue as the freezing option … damn that romantic notion of ice cubes!! Sounds like it’s more that you need to get off grid … when are you planning to do that? - this has been 7 years of planning now - for us - yes …… only thinking about the energy issue now - not so good - but for me I had no head space to think about the nitty gritty of it until now - and we’re looking at another 8 months of “free electricity” at work - but i am taking a compass / PH tester for the soil and checking out the 2 wells on the place …. any other suggestions for what to look out for in trying to self sufficient (i.e. low consumption / no debt)?
I guess it sounds like we’re more like your sister - just so desperate to get out of the rat race (in our case london) that we’ll just go for it anyway - and enjoy the learning process - COZ IT WON”T BE WORKING FOR THE MAN NO-MORE - NO HOW!!!! Anyhoo from a VERY cold and grey London. Joanna and Douglas

Comment on Self Sufficiency by Joanna Norrie

Joanna Norrie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:45:47 +0000

Hello Digital mind.
i’ve been reading over your articles and they are giving me some good ideas, and it is, infact, a useful process thinking / realising how much electricity one can use!!
We (me and Douglas) are going to Portugal next week to look at a bit of land that is 800 metres away from the nearest electricity so “power’ has been on the agenda and is becoming more necessary to think about.
So … I wanted to ask - if I put a list together of everything i can think of that we would use on pretty much a daily basis are you kind enough to give a guide of what sort of solar paneling / batteries and inverter would be needed?
I think I get it though - you need enough solar panels to run the wattage you need on a daily basis - the batteries are there to store that energy - so you have a back up should you have less sunlight - and the inverter is a way of converting the energy from the solar panels / batteries for household use?
The other issue we’ll have is that as musicians we have amplifiers / electric guitars / microphones / keyboards - but I think for those we’d be better with a generator … is this also something you can advise on? I’ll await your reply and meanwhile start making a list of our technological junkie daily needs / maddness!!!!
And - by the way - my chickens will be on the chicken holiday paradise of joy!! (I’m allergic to eggs - so they’ll just be hanging out LOL!! Joanna

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Firas Mansour

Firas Mansour — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:30:39 +0000

I am looking to do the following

I make ups aps varries from 500 watt to 5000 watt

I use a transformers with the pwm board and an automatic battery charger

I need to charge a 12 volt with 200amp acid battery using a solar cells
how many cells do I need and where I can find them

thanks

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Gone Green

Gone Green — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:04:58 +0000

sorry i hadn’t read all the post before i asked my question. Where i live we average 8 to 10 hrs of sun light, i can figure out the rest thanks for the help. I’m sure i’ll be back with more questions

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by DigitalMind

DigitalMind — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:36:08 +0000

Hi Gone Green,
this is a good question, yet one that I was hoping my post above would have explained. If you need 6500 Watts of Solar Power per day, the next number I need is how many hours of sun you get on average per day. Lets say you get 5 solid hours of sun per day on average for the whole year. That means that you need to make 6500 watts of power in 5 hours. So 6500 Watts divided by 5 is 1300 Watts per hour. So you need ATLEAST 1300 watts of solar panels. So 1300 watts of panels at an average price of 5$ per watt means $6500 worth of solar panels.

Since you never want to use more than 30% of your battery bank, you’d need a battery bank of about 26,000 watts. (That way, if you go a couple of days without sun AT ALL you’ll still have power)

Feel free to ask more questions, welcome to TechieNATION !

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Gone Green

Gone Green — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:05:09 +0000

I will be using about 6500 watts of power a day, how many solar panels and batteries would i need to supply this?

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Robert

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:00:17 +0000

Id just rather not mess with the orignal set-up of the bus engine. If i purchased a small generator like this one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140374179841&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

then i could run the generator ONLY when im cooking. that generator has a battery charger at 10amps 12v so i could charge the batterys while im cooking. and the rest i can leave up to the panels. sound like a good plan?

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by DigitalMind

DigitalMind — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:46:29 +0000

I’m no mechanic, but I don’t see that being an issue. If your car has a 12 volt battery SOMETHING is charging it.

As far as picking a generator, that’s pretty tricky. Are you plannng on carrying it around with you in your vehicule ? Is there room for it ?
Obviously, you would want one that’s small and quiet. What it really comes down to, is how many amps can it output at 12 volts. Lots of generators have 12 volt outputs, but most of them are very low amperage compared to the power of the generator on 110 volts. So then you would also need a battery charger, to go from the 110 volts back to 12 volts. If you can find a generator that has a 12 volt output that is equal too or higher than the highest powered 12 volt battery charger that runs on 110 volts, get that.

I’m still a little confused that you can’t start your burner though. If your batteries are at 13 volts, that’s normally considered 100% charged. (Although some 12 volt batteries do go up to 14 volts)

It might be interesting to monitor the voltage on the batteries as you turn on the burner.

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Robert

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:01:44 +0000

*shouldn’t

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Robert

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:01:06 +0000

now that i think of it.. i should get power from my car engine. its 40 years old with old school generator style.. no alternator. so id rather use a small generator.. which do you recommended?

Comment on Solar Investigation : How many solar panels do you need? by Robert

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:56:03 +0000

didnt see the other post up there my bad..

ok i used a volt meter and got 13.03v .. so should i ditch one battery still? and buy realistically another 20w panel.

here is my controller: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230390463526&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

and i drive the bus every day. .but im planing a trip to canada/alaska from califnoria where i live.. but im going to be parking and stopping for weeks at a time most likely to record music in various forests etc. so i wanted the panels to power up the batteries while im sitting.. and the car can run while im going from place to place i guess..

if i cant use jumper cables.. what wire do you recommend for going to my car battery to my battery bank