The last place I worked we did this (though with some permission). One of the guys made friends with some people at a thin film solar plant down the street. He got a bundle of manufacturing rejects (300w panels that only made 280) for free. We strung them up on the roof and were raking in the kWh. Enough to charge 3 electric vehicles without paying the power company.
Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
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Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#22The last place I worked we did this (though with some permission). One of the guys made friends with some people at a thin film solar plant down the street. He got a bundle of manufacturing rejects (300w panels that only made 280) for free. We strung them up on the roof and were raking in the kWh. Enough to charge 3 electric vehicles without paying the power company.
This makes me wonder why the panel manufacturer doesn't bin panels like they do with CPUs? Surely they could sell them for less than the 300W panels, but more than zero?
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#23I find the title kind of click baity, "$200 solar self sufficiency for my bedroom" would be more accurate
Hey. You're completely right :) My original title was was "Solar Self-Sufficiency for Renters", but my mates in marketing told me to clickbait it the f up. Would you have clicked on the former, though?
Personally, I would. What you wrote is very interesting, and interesting content can stand for itself. No need to clickbait things up.
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#24> Unless you live on an RV or a boat it doesn’t make financial sense yet
If you're curious about what a system for an RV does look like, I work remotely full time in an RV and built my own system: https://therecklesschoice.com/2016/04/29/diy-rv-solar/
6.5 times the solar, 15 times the storage, 20 times the inverter (but mine is overkill for us honestly).
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#25It better be attached well. If there's a windy day, and that thing flies off and kills someone, you will not only be liable, you will have to live for the rest of your life with it.
Very true. I've tested this thoroughly and it won't. Obviously there's always a residual risk, which I've mitigated by moving the panel to a window further back on the roof. Then I'm going to see if the panel's moved after a year. Another solution would be outdoor glue, but that messes with the ephemeral nature of the project. Thanks for the input!!
What's that puppy's wind loading in an 80mph gust?
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#26Fun stuff. I've built several systems just like this one for camping, they let you keep things like iPads or laptops charged and they aren't noisy like running a generator.
Something that my wife discovered was that an igloo "lunchmate" cooler was perfect to hold the battery and charge controller. Makes it easy to carry. I recommend using Anderson Powerpole connectors (https://powerwerx.com/anderson-power-powerpole-sb-connectors) to make it easy to set up and tear down. I typically use one pair of colors for the connections to the battery, and another pair of colors for the panel to charge controller.
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#27Fun stuff. I've built several systems just like this one for camping, they let you keep things like iPads or laptops charged and they aren't noisy like running a generator. Something that my wife discovered was that an igloo "lunchmate" cooler was perfect to hold the battery and charge controller. Makes it easy to carry. I recommend using Anderson Powerpole connectors ( https://powerwerx.com/anderson-power-powerpole-…
Damn, that's some inside advice. Let me try it out and I'll post a follow-up! Thanks so much!!
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#28Cool! The one thing I notice the author gets wrong is (out of modesty perhaps) claiming the system isn't very financially successful. But it actually is! > 200W system payback period: $300 / $48 = 6.5 years until payback > Either way you cut it, this is not a money saving machine. Energy prices are just too low. That represents like a 16% rate of return with little risk, which any investor would take in a second. How…
Unfortunately it isn't a 16% return because he can't sell that system for what he paid. If you buy a stock at $300 and sell it for $348, that's a 16% return. But for him, he probably would have trouble selling all of that for $100 (the battery will be worthless in about 2 years given how far it is being discharged and very few people buy these things on craigslist for anywhere near what they cost). If he can sell it in 6.5 for $100 he has now made $400 in 6.5 years, a 4.5% annual return.
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#29Far more cost-effective would have been to skip the battery and just put a cheap chinese pure-sine-wave grid-tie inverter to bridge between the wall outlet and the panel. It's simple- it has a 110V line cord and plugs into the outlet, sending current the opposite way of normal. Do a search on your favorite e-commerce site for "grid tie inverter" and you'll see what I mean. These cheap inverters have most of the same…
Couldn't you risk shocking some poor electrician that thought the power was turned off? Maybe the inverter has some sort of safety system that I don't know about; I'm no expert on this.
Re: Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency Without Your Landlord Noticing
#30Cool! The one thing I notice the author gets wrong is (out of modesty perhaps) claiming the system isn't very financially successful. But it actually is! > 200W system payback period: $300 / $48 = 6.5 years until payback > Either way you cut it, this is not a money saving machine. Energy prices are just too low. That represents like a 16% rate of return with little risk, which any investor would take in a second. How…
Those calculations also assume he'll use all of the energy it produces, every day, with no loss; it's a back-of-envelope best-case calculation, at best.