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solar power my room?
By admin | April 10, 2008
motokid5000 asked:
so i so want to go as green as i can but my parents could care less. so i want to like solar power as much of my room as i can to show them and i guess prove my point. so i want to put solar panels in my window or outside of them or on my widnow seal. im never in my room during the day and almost always at night. i want to be able to power my tv a lamp my ps2 and maybe even a computer. so what kind of setup would i need. im thinkn maybe i could use car batteries or some kind of rechargable batteries to store the power at daytime so what would i need how much would it cost etc. etc.
Question posted courtesy of: Oscar
so i so want to go as green as i can but my parents could care less. so i want to like solar power as much of my room as i can to show them and i guess prove my point. so i want to put solar panels in my window or outside of them or on my widnow seal. im never in my room during the day and almost always at night. i want to be able to power my tv a lamp my ps2 and maybe even a computer. so what kind of setup would i need. im thinkn maybe i could use car batteries or some kind of rechargable batteries to store the power at daytime so what would i need how much would it cost etc. etc.
Question posted courtesy of: Oscar
Topics: Solar Power |
April 12th, 2008 at 5:58 am
An electrician to help because what you want is bit complex and keep in mind that it can be pricey though it would pay for itself in the long run google search on solar power and keep in the long run google search on solar power and keep.
For itself in the long run good luck.
An electrician to help because what you can get an electrician to help because what you can see how car batteries would pay.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Sounds like a really cool idea!
However, if your goal is to prove something to your parents, you’re likely to prove what they already think: that solar is not cost effective. Batteries, at least the car battery kind, are messy, and vent hydrogen sometimes. You would not want to keep them in a living space. You could go with sealed lead-acid, NiMH, or Lithium, but it would cost more. Let’s say that your computer, a CFL light, and PS2 together use 150 watts, and you want to power them for 6 hours at night. That’s about 900 watt-hours. A lithium pack of that size would be about $1000, plus maybe another $100 for a charger. The solar panel using readily available technology to charge such a battery would be 150 to 200 watts, costing $600 - 1000 today. If you could put the batteries outside, then you could use a plain old golf cart battery and save money. The energy you save might be $50 a year, depending on where you live, so you can see, it would take a while to break even on the money you spent.
Note that something like 85% of residential solar installations do not use batteries - they’re “grid-tied”. However, these are still pricey to get into. If you guys use a lot of electricity, and pay tiered electric rates, this kind of installation might make sense for you. You would need to talk with a professional company to see, though.
If you just want to play with solar electricity, you can get a kit like the one below. That kind of thing will power your stuff for about 5-10 minutes at night, if the sun shone during the day.
I don’t want to be a wet blanket. We installed solar panels on our house. See the second link, below.