If’s you’re headed North….
Get SOLAR!… Lots of FREE ENERGY up here with the very long days!
Forum Discussion
- Up here in AK now & batteries are full when I get to bed & full when I wake up; lots of free energy up here….
valhalla360 wrote:
Trackrig wrote:
The last couple of years there have been a lot of commercial solar installs going in both on buildings and out in the bush to save money from running the diesel generators. I'm not a green person by any stretch of the imagination, but yes there is a lot of solar power here and I like to see it because once it's paid for, it's almost free electricity from there on.
I just received my 400W solar kit for my TT. Installation starts next week and two more 6V batteries.
Bill
Solar will work in the summer but the initial implication that you will meet or exceed daily output compared to down south is false.
Who said we would exceed solar collection down south? I just said there is plenty of solar here to make it worthwhile. It's especially worthwhile for the summer tourism industry that does their main business during the summer.
Some one in AZ may get by with 200W, so I put 400W on my RV and will do just fine. Besides, how many people use their RV in the middle of winter well below zero. A few, but not many.
Bil
Permanent installations only work if they are heavily subsidized but that's often true down south...as someone else mentioned, solar needs basically 100% backup from traditional sources and those costs are rarely if ever considered when you hear about solar costs.- We spent three months in N. Canada/Alaska a number of years ago. Didn't bring a generator and and never plugged in once. Of course, that was in the summer................
This past winter, traveling in S. Arizona for three months, we brought along (and used) a generator (once). We were camped under trees and it was raining. Had we not been under the trees, we wouldn't have needed the generator. Actually, probably didn't really "need" to use the generator as we could have simply reduced our usage (i.e.; no microwave use)
We have 300 watts of solar, flat mounted to the rood and four 6 volt deep cycle batteries. Refrigerator and water heater are set to gas (all the time). We use a Fantastic Endless Breeze fan if it's hot. The DW uses the microwave daily.
Solar is great (for a RV) when supplemented with propane as needed. Trackrig wrote:
The last couple of years there have been a lot of commercial solar installs going in both on buildings and out in the bush to save money from running the diesel generators. I'm not a green person by any stretch of the imagination, but yes there is a lot of solar power here and I like to see it because once it's paid for, it's almost free electricity from there on.
I just received my 400W solar kit for my TT. Installation starts next week and two more 6V batteries.
Bill
Solar will work in the summer but the initial implication that you will meet or exceed daily output compared to down south is false.
Permanent installations only work if they are heavily subsidized but that's often true down south...as someone else mentioned, solar needs basically 100% backup from traditional sources and those costs are rarely if ever considered when you hear about solar costs.- We have 200 watts of solar with two 6 volt batteries on our camper up here in Canada and it keeps every battery charged up nice.
I’m not running a house, I’m running a camper. Don’t ever use A/C, so we didn’t order our camper with one, fridge and hot water tank runs on Propane. - Commercial solar up there is just a scam and you would never see it if it was not for massive subsidies from governments. No solar at night of course, not during storms or those long cloudy days during winter.
This means that for 1000 MWe for solar you must have 1000 MWe of traditional fossil or nuclear fuel powered plants standing by at all times to provide power when the clouds roll in or it gets dark. And those plants have to be kept running at minimal load (except for gas turbine units) because it takes hours to start a plant that is shut down.
And that means you are paying a full crew of operators to staff that plant at all times.
So actually you are just adding costs on top of the existing infrastructure not saving money. But when the greenies do not include that cost in their fake calculations of how much it costs to run these 'green' plants. Wind power is much worse.
Power plants calculate how most power they produce vs theoretical max power output. Fossil and nuke plants run at about 85 to 90% of max output. The difference being time spent in maintenance periods. Wind power runs around 20% and solar I'm not sure about but must be less than 50% because of night and cloudy weather.
Solar makes good sense to sites far from a power supply. RV's for example or remote buildings. Wind power never makes sense and never recovers it's true cost to construct and operate.
Green power is ALWAYS most expensive that traditional power sources, ALWAYS. - The last couple of years there have been a lot of commercial solar installs going in both on buildings and out in the bush to save money from running the diesel generators. I'm not a green person by any stretch of the imagination, but yes there is a lot of solar power here and I like to see it because once it's paid for, it's almost free electricity from there on.
I just received my 400W solar kit for my TT. Installation starts next week and two more 6V batteries.
Bill - Wouldn't off set the gas needed to get their! Lol. Have fun. One day.
#1Flyboy wrote:
Get SOLAR!… Lots of FREE ENERGY up here with the very long days!
What is your total watt-hours per day out of a 100w solar panel?
Do you get anywhere close to 100% of the rated watt output?
While the days are longer, when the sun is low in the sky, it may put out very little power.- Sorry solar works much better at lower latitudes. Florida, Texas, Arizona and so on make sense for solar panels. Minnesota, Maine and all of Canada so not:
"In northern latitudes, because because the angle of impact is less direct than it is at the equator, it is spread over a greater surface area and therefore you get a less concentrated energy output per unit area"
