Solar discusion thread, is it right for you?
ok so we haven't had one fo these as long as I can remember. lets get a friendly discussion going on the pro's and cons of solar vs other power sources.
I'll start off.
its a given that my p...
Forum Discussion
The numbers and conditions that favor one or the other change daily and from situation to situation. What is not changing is that it’s all trending in the direction of solar and away from generators.
I own both, have for years. I have a 5500 watt generator for emergency power at the sticks ’n’ bricks. I had a 2000 watt inverter generator for several years until it sprang internal fuel leaks and became both unusable and unrepairable on a camping trip. I have built 3 entire camping/home solar rigs and currently have one running a household refrigerator in an outbuilding and another for boondocking in the RV. The latter features a 400 watt solar panel and a 314 amp-hour Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery, 2200 watt pure sine inverter, and 40 amp charge controller, which is enough power for everything except the AC for indefinite stays in the wild as long as we get a sunny day once a week or so.
My experience has been that on a cloudy/rainy day, you get about 1/10the the output from solar that you get on a sunny day, and that a sunny day with no shade, you will get 4-5 times as many watt-hours as you have watt panels, thus my 400 watt panel will produce 1600-2000 watt-hours on a good day. And that’s enough to light up all the lights, fridge and furnace control boards and fans, phone/laptop/tablet chargers, microwave uses I go through on a daily basis. Your mileage may vary, but the silence, lack of exhaust smell and carbon monoxide, oil changes, etc. work for me.
The price of components, panels, controllers, inverters, and batteries has come down over the last 5 years to where solar is cheaper in the long run by far. The only advantage left for generators is space/weight for high capacity uses, such as running AC.
what panels are you using? some of the newer panels out in the last few years have exceptional shade preformance. I haven't had anything cut me down to 1/10 of my normal output, usaly I'll get maybe 1/5th if its dark overcast/rain, the kind you would turn your head lights on if you were driving. I haven't noticed shade make a lot of difference, but thats just because the sun goes directly over head for two or three hours and that lets in it and is enough for alsmost two days power usage.
My experience is with panels that are now a half-dozen or so years old: some Grape Solar rigid panels and some Rich Solar flexible panels, and neither are very shade tolerant. If newer more shade tolerant panels only drop to 1/5 output on rainy days, that is great news.
not rainy days, shade. pure dark overcast and rain is the worst senario haha
I have stayed away from the flexibles, some of the newer types do put out pretty good and have exelent shade tolerance and are easy to install, just stick them down. but they have a 10 year life span and are only 60% as efficient as a hard mounted. now the effency is no big deal unless your tight on space, but the life span is what turned me off. questions like how hard are they ro remove, and they cost double for less than half the life came up in my head.
my 5th wheel ones are "go power" I know they are not a solar company but I don't know who makes them for them back when they were a canadian company out of victoria bc. they are simple 160 watt 12V panels in parallel on a PWM controler. on the truck camper I have canadian solar 325watt 24V split cell panels on a MPPt controler. its kinda funny as the 5th wheel puts out only 1 more amp of charging during the best 4 hours of the day. they also don't start producing till 8am , where the 325 watt panel will start putting out power at 6:30 am, mind you at that time its only 0.2 amps but thats enough to offset a light haha. that is a good example of a pwm 12V setup preformance compared to a 24V MPPT system.
