How would I make a high capacity Solar Generator?
I want to make a solar generator for my apartment. I'm aiming for something that can put out about 400-600 watts for 20 hours a day, everyday. I plan ...
I want to make a solar generator for my apartment. I’m aiming for something that can put out about 400-600 watts for 20 hours a day, everyday. I plan on running everything electric through this, and I know all about how most things don’t use electricity when they are off but I’m asking because most of my appliances are always on. I’m using an old refrigerator that is broken or something because it ALWAYS runs(and its not because the knob is turned all the way up or because I have the door open all the time cuz its not), my TV is on for about 20 hours while I watch CNN, play video games, or watch movies, fish tanks that use water pumps, lizard tanks that use heaters and lights, fans and 2 window air conditioners are running 24/7, you get the picture. For the last 2 bill cycles my electric bill was around 0 both times and I’m really trying to eliminate that.
I’m not looking for answers like "get a new refrigerator," or "switch to energy efficient appliances," I AM GOING TO BUILD THIS AND I NEED TO KNOW HOW.
The way I envision it, I imagine the solar panels hanging outside of the window catching some sun, a sort of box thing which makes all the magic between the solar panels and the battery and such distributing out all the electricity to my stuff, and me sitting safely around my house working or playing video games or what have you all the while basking in the free electricity with the help of the geniuses here on yahoo.
I kinda have the jist down, solar panels get wired in series to a deep cycle battery (or 2), but past there I’m blank. Regulators, inverters, wire and plug types I’m completely lost with.
So here are my questions:
1. What do I need to get (assuming I have nothing and please make this so a 5 year old could understand)
2. How would I put it all together
3. What could I do to make it so it doesn’t overload/blow up/kill me and burn down my apartment?
I have a somewhat shallow understanding of electricity, ohms, amps, volts, how alternators work and i know how to solder, but all this to me is like catching a lephrecaun, i know its out there but I don’t know how to connect it all.
Thanks for your help.
Related posts:
- Predicting the capacity of solar heaters?
- I am wanting to build a batch solar water heater. I need a company to get 40 gallon water tanks from. Ideas?
- Do It Yourself Solar Panel-Cheapest Do It Yourself Solar Panel
- Do It Yourself Solar Panel-Cheapest Do It Yourself Solar Panel
- small residential solar power system
The gist of how a battery solar system works is as follows:
The solar panels generate DC power that goes into a charge controller. A charge controller manages the power going into the batteries to prevent them from over charging. An inverter converts the DC power from the batteries into AC power that you use from your outlets. There are breakers and various safety devices between all of these pieces, but that’s the general info.
If your electric bill is $270 a month, that’s got to be at least 60kwh a day, or 1800kwh a month (at 15 cents a kwh). Check how many kwh your bill is for to get an accurate estimate.
If my guess is right, to generate 100% of your power, you would need about 18,000 watts of panels, and another adjacent apartment to house all of the batteries. A 200W panel is about 5′ x 3′, do the math to figure out how much space you’ll need for 90 of them. My guess is about $200,000 for the system installed.
If you didn’t need a battery based system, and just used what you made during the day, and bought the rest from the electric company at night, you can get a much smaller system that just consists of the solar panels and the inverter and safety equipment.
If you just want to do a small percentage of your use, 600W for 20 hours a day as you said, that would be about 360kwh a month. Staying connected to the grid to buy the rest would eliminate the need for batteries. Depending where you are, a 3500W grid tied system would do about 1/5 of your use (again, if my first assumption was correct of 1800kwh). That would cost about $30,000 installed.
I know you don’t want to hear it, but for every $1 you spend conserving power, that $5 less you need to spend on solar. It costs much less to save power than to make it. Spend the money on a new fridge, CFL lights, timers to turn some stuff off; it’s a much better use of your money. Once you cut your use down, then you can look into solar.
1. Calculate how much power you consume (look at labels by cord will usually state how watts it consumes)
2. Get some panels usually under $800 X 2 of the power your pulling
3. Get a charge controller
4. 8 ga wire
5. some batterys
then go to a hard ware store and get some wire ties and wire stripers
and maybe an Electrical guide book
the just follow this picture
Dude, I run my lights and small appliances off a solar panel for the homes type setup. I downloaded the e-book from http://www.solarpowerforthehomes.com the instructions are easy to follow and pretty cheap to build.
That’s a tall order if you really mean to run this stuff for 20 hours a day. 500w for 20 hours works out to 10 kWh. This sort of thing is routinely done for off-grid cabins, but it will cost far more than you expect, and I doubt it would be practical for an apartment. It is, in fact, rather large for a cabin, though it would be modest for a grid-tied system. I’m not trying to ruin your day, just being realistic before you spend a lot of money.
Since you cannot discharge batteries more than 50% before ruining them (I’m being generous here), you would need a 20 kWh bank, or 1700 AH of 12V batteries. This is about 8 Trojan L16 batteries (about $300 each, 120 pounds weight each), possibly 10, disregarding any safety margin if you wanted to continue running through a rainy day when there was no sun.
The panels to recharge such a setup would be about 1500 watts in a sunny location like Arizona. You could find these for $5000, and the rest of the system for $1000, bringing the total up to $8000 if you install it yourself. It would likely be trouble if you live in apartment, as the array would be about 120 square feet.
Beware of internet scams that suggest you can power your whole apartment for less than $200. That’s just not realistic.