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Renewable Energy
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RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS & COMPONENTS
Components Required for an Off-Grid Solar Electric System You, too, can size your solar array, or solar panels, in just two easy steps! (Well, okay, there's a little research involved, too.) To estimate the size of your solar array, you'll need to know:
Watt-hours A
Watt-hour is a measure of energy. Identifying your Watt-hours goal
is the most crucial part of accurately estimating how big a system--or
we might say, how many Watts of solar panel generating capacity--you
will need. If you plan to tie your solar array directly to the utility
grid to offset your costs, start by looking at your electric utility
bill for the kilowatt-hours (abbreviated "kWh") you use
in one month. If,
however, you will not be connected to the utility grid and you will
in fact be producing all your own electricity, the Watt-hours or kWh
number becomes even more important. For any off-grid cabin, home,
office or project, we strongly recommend completing a detailed Loads
List (Power, Energy and the Loads List ). If you have the patience
to live off-grid, then you definitely have the patience to complete
a loads list! If you don't know how many Watt-hours you are trying
to produce, stop here! Do not pass Go! There is very little estimating
you can do without that basic building block. Insolation
is a funny word for the number of hours in a day that a solar panel
will produce its rated voltage. While all the day's sunshine counts
toward this total, not just the brightest hours, not every daytime
hour counts equally. When the sun is low in the sky, a solar panel
facing it doesn't produce as much energy as it would at noon. Another
way of putting it would be to say that if you crammed all the day's
sunlight--weak and strong--into equivalent hours of "peak"
sunlight, you'd have the "sun hours", or insolation, number.
In your area, while the sun may be up for 10 hours during a February
day, not all that light is strong enough to be counted at full value,
so the insolation value in your area may be closer to 2 sun hours. We
are trying to obtain the number of Watts, in solar panels, we need
to produce a given amount of Watt-hours (or kWh) for our project in
our location. Example: 8 kWh / 4 hours = 2 kilowatts (kW) Step 2 : Allow for the normal energy losses and inefficiencies in a solar electric system. Do this by increasing the number of Watts (or kilowatts) you found in Step 1 by 30%. Example: 2 kW x 1.3 = 2.6 kW Now you know you can look for a 2.6 kW (or 2,600 Watt) system in order to produce, on average, 8 kWh per day (240 kWh per month) in our example location with its average of 4 hours of insolation. Expect an installed cost of approximately $8-$15* per Watt; this system would cost about $21,000 - $39,000 installed. * Costs vary by region and site. Components:
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