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.
