Solar Power/How To

[leilaniguy]

Here are a couple links to retailers: www.hawaiiislandsolar.org , and www.solarworks.com in Oceanview. Pahoa Battery & Propane at Malama Marketplace carries panels & inverters, has schematic layout plans.



Edited by - leilaniguy on 12/20/2005 16:35:05

Edited by - leilaniguy on 12/20/2005 16:37:22

[HADave]

Rob, and Fellow Forumers I've read and article that spoke of a Steve Burns, an electrical engineer, who worked for Helco developing their PV program. He is the current owner of Provision Technologies I presume he provides stamps for his own systems might he also stamps others? Or perhaps he knows of other engineers that do.

A very interesting article, that we can thank Mella for the back door to, is;

www.provisiontechnologies.com/power_to_the_people_53101.html

They also make reference to the connection costs for regular electric service, the distance between poles and the minimum distance from the grid to the home connection as of 05/2001.


Another great article was from back woods solar who we thank David M. for, the picture schematic lets you really get your head around the concept.

The other great site we thank leilaniguy for is the Solar Works site some great pricing for small startup systems as well as appliances and other energy saving items. Thanks Hutch

HADave





Edited by - HADave on 12/22/2005 10:37:07

[Royall]

Good morning all,

Has anyone come across DIY schematics/plans for building and installing solar water heaters? I’m at that point where I will go with gas fired tank-less heaters or with solar. Is it practical to make your own?

Royall

Edited by - Royall on 12/22/2005 10:56:38

[HADave]

Hey Royall and everyone else on the solar water heater train. I'm doing some solar reading and came across these solar insolation maps that are used for determining the size of your hot water heater hope it helps a little.

www.state.hi.us/dbedt/ert/solar-maps.html#hawaii

HADave





Edited by - HADave on 12/22/2005 11:59:57

[Hanalei]

Dave, the link does not work. Can you please resend?

[HADave]

oops try it now

[HADave]

Say Royall if your like me and willing to experiment with things here is a thought for you. Take an old large hot water heater, gas or electric doesn't matter. remove one of the plugs from the top. Retro fit for a 1 inch plastic line do the same at the tanks drain valve. build a 1 inch plastic pipe grid 100 sqft connect one end of the grid to the bottom of the water tank the other to the top and be sure the tank is higher than the grid. also be sure the grid remains in the most sun exposed area. connect to your plumbing system as normal during bright sunny daytime exposure you'll have very hot water. I did this years ago with a swimming pool 18ft round and rose the temp an average of 8 degrees during the summer. My pool was built up on a sand hill. 3 ft higher elevation and my grid was around one side of the hill. as the water became hotter than the pool it would constantly circulate on it own. i also used to keep 400 ft of garden hose charged all day and watered my veg garden with hot water. Maine soil temperatures are never very high it always helped. Any way it is a temporary method I will use while we are on our land there building our new home. my wife demands hot showers to go with her hot flashes. ha ha ha



Edited by - HADave on 12/22/2005 12:29:41

[leilaniguy]

Hey HADave, This thread brings back memories of when I was a kid. My Dad put a 200' coil of black poly irrigation pipe (do they even make that stuff anymore?)on the poolhouse roof, covered with black plastic to heat the pool in the grey chilly Oregon summer, worked great, much better than his previous contraption, an oil drum with a 50' coil of copper pipe, burning wood scraps. That worked really well too, 'til that day it exploded.

[mella l]

Thanks HADave for the links! I have been looking for information like this everywhere.

Looks like we will be living in the 350 to 400 range area which is interesting to me as Kona (the sunny side! not the rainy side!is in the 400 range. 600 less intensity solar with more clouds and higher elevations, 300 more intensive solar energy.



mella l

[emily]

An interesting topic since we just got our solar stuff working over the weekend! We bought quite a bit of equipment months ago and have had a hard time figuring out how to hook it all up. We have 4 - 64 watt panels. We also have a charge controller that helps the batteries not get overcharged from the panels on really sunny days. We went all out and got the fancy inverter/battery charger. It's an outback 2024 and it was $2,000! It should be able to run a whole house someday. Our 4 - 6 volt batteies connected all together make it a 24 volt system. Each solar panel is 12 volts also, so we had to hook up two together and then bring each set of two into the system. So to add more equipment, we have to get sets of 4 batteries and sets of 2 panels. It's pretty complicated stuff and hard to figure out if you have no clue what you're doing like we did. Finally a friend came over and helped us out. Turns out there was some sort of jumper in the charge controller that needed to be changed from 12 volts (which we used when using only 1 panel and a marine battery) to 24 volts, and our panels were not wired together correctly. Also important is to have a fuse that will blow if lightning hits the panels, at least you won't lose the whole system. The guy that sold us our equipment said that you'd be surprised how many people have lost lots of equipment from lightning. We also have a swith that turns off the whole system in case of a storm or if you are away for awhile and want to turn it all off. Yesterday we were running power tools off of the inverter during the day for short periods of time. It drew the power down while being used, but when we turned them off, it went right back up to 90 percent or so. It's so nice to have the lights on at night with no generator noise! I can also recommend the Honda 3000 EU Generator. It runs super quiet and has an Econo setting that runs even quieter when running small things.