Forum Members Solar Installations With Pics
I thought I would start a thread with links to forum member's solar installations that have been documented with pictures. Thought it might be a good idea to have a one stop thread for anyone planning...
Forum Discussion
Here's a photo of our roof:
We started with 700 Watts (each of those panels is 175W), and then a year later added the two panels in the foreground to bring it up to 1050 Watts. Placing the panels was tricky because of the shadows cast by the satellite internet dish. However, when we put on the original four, we mapped it out as if we were putting six, just in case, so the two new ones already had places designated for them.
700 Watts really was "enough," but 1,050 is even better. :)
As for designing the system, the coach was pre-wired for solar, which was nice. And when we did it (in 2004), the coach was still pretty new so we just kept what the manufacturer installed--six golf cart batteries and a modified sine wave inverter (which will be replaced with a pure sine wave inverter if this one ever breaks).
Therefore, all we had to do was pick the panels and the controller (Outback MX60). Because we "overbought" on the controller, it handled the additional panels with no problem.
We've had this for 8 years of fulltiming now, and the only thing I would do different would be to use tiltable mounts, mainly so I could clean underneath the panels. An amazing amount of dirt and sticks and leaves gets under there. But tiltable mounts were surprisingly expensive back when we did this, so we more or less added a panel to account for the loss due to flat panels--we didn't even think about wanting to get underneath them.
We started with 700 Watts (each of those panels is 175W), and then a year later added the two panels in the foreground to bring it up to 1050 Watts. Placing the panels was tricky because of the shadows cast by the satellite internet dish. However, when we put on the original four, we mapped it out as if we were putting six, just in case, so the two new ones already had places designated for them.
700 Watts really was "enough," but 1,050 is even better. :)
As for designing the system, the coach was pre-wired for solar, which was nice. And when we did it (in 2004), the coach was still pretty new so we just kept what the manufacturer installed--six golf cart batteries and a modified sine wave inverter (which will be replaced with a pure sine wave inverter if this one ever breaks).
Therefore, all we had to do was pick the panels and the controller (Outback MX60). Because we "overbought" on the controller, it handled the additional panels with no problem.
We've had this for 8 years of fulltiming now, and the only thing I would do different would be to use tiltable mounts, mainly so I could clean underneath the panels. An amazing amount of dirt and sticks and leaves gets under there. But tiltable mounts were surprisingly expensive back when we did this, so we more or less added a panel to account for the loss due to flat panels--we didn't even think about wanting to get underneath them.
