Welcome to Kim's Solar Page (Circa 1994)
The new system is further down this page

My hobbies tend to get out of hand, limited only by my credit limit at the time. Solar was no exception. I had been curious about solar for years but it wasn't until I got a line on some used panels that I caved in and started this project. My original intention was to provide power to my radio station in the event of an emergency.

After I got the system hooked up I realized that I had way more power than I needed for the radio station, so phase two started. I bought an inverter and we ran the T.V. and my computer off that..... Still had excess power. So I decided to wire the house for 12 volt lights in the living areas.

Now as winter approaches, and the available solar declines we shed loads back to the grid as needed. When the sun starts climbing back up in the spring we add them back in.


picture of solar panels These panels are old ARCO panels that were used in a solar experiment in Southern California. They were about 8 years old when I got them I gave about $3.50 per watt for them, the going rate on new panels was about $8.00 per watt. The brown color (they were blue when new) is because mirrors were used to focus about 3 suns on them, thereby increasing their output. The intense heat discolored them but did not really do any damage. Each panel (there are 12 of them) puts out about 42 watts in full sun.


picture of batteries picture of batteries This is my battery bank. It is a mish-mash of good and bad. The batteries on the right are golf cart batteries. The ones on the left are general purpose deep cycle batteries. If I had it to do over you would not see the general purpose batteries as they really are not suited for this type of operation.

With no sunshine, these batteries will provide about 4 days of operation of lights, T.V., Computer and Ham Radio.

picture of solar panels If you're thinking about building your own system here is some advice:





Disclaimer: I am not an engineer, electrician, contractor etc. If you decide to put solar in your house you're on your own. What I offer here is how I did it. If you decide to go solar be sure to adhere to the local building codes.

2001 update!!

Welcome to my 4KW installation

Well you know, I had a friend call me in January of 2001 and say "I saw a really great deal on 75 watt solar panels..." and next thing I knew I owned 40 Seaman's SP75, 75 watt panels. We stacked the boxes up in the living room while I figured out how to proceed. It took several months to thread through the permitting process and all the other governmental stuff. I also had to do battle with the P.G.E. dragon, as I was going to take advantage of the E-Net program, where I send power back onto the grid during the day, and take it back at night. But alas, in May I got all the Ducks in a row and we started construction.

 

Well all of the panels are finally up, only took Terry Boren and I two days to get this finished, Took me another two days to finish the wiring to the combiner box and then down through conduit to the power panel in the garage.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a Trace Engineering power panel with two 4 KW SW4048 inverters stacked to produce 220 volts.

If I had to do it again, I would look into another brand as the technical support from Trace has not been all that great. I had expected that the inverters  would work in unison, but what I have found is that only one of them at a time will go into "sell mode" where it is selling power to the grid, when that happens the other inverter decides that it is a great time to charge the batteries from the grid... So I have had to shut down one inverter and just use one instead of both. That was about a $4000.00 mistake.

The gray box to the left of the inverters is a sub panel. I have isolated a few key circuits in the house so that no matter what the power company does, these loads will be powered by the inverter from the solar panels or batteries. This web server is one of those protected loads. So when the big one hits.. unless it manages to collapse the house this web server will have power for several days from the batteries.

Speaking of batteries, here you can see my battery pack. It is 8 US Battery L16's in series to give me 48 volts. These only get used if the grid goes away, in witch case they power the web server, my entertainment center and the refrigerator, I do have my priorities, warm beer is a drag.

 

 

 

 

Say, wonder what happened to those panels that were shown in the 1994 posting? Well here they are, I moved them down into the back yard. They charge a bank of 6 volt batteries that run the low voltage lights in our house and the ham station and anything else that is 12 volts that I can think to wire up to them.

 

 

 

 

 

2004 We finally are off grid completely in Nevada

Please email me with any comments at kim@speeders.ws

Oh well so much for solar..... back to Kim's Page