04-09-2009, 05:05 AM
A Kill-o-watt meter or some such, isn't it called?
If you have any appliances which make a lot of heat for rather a long time - stoves, clothes dryers, etc., then try not to use them at all. Appliances which make a little bit of heat for a long time such as electric blankets, small incubators, etc., are fine. Appliances which make a lot of heat for a small amount of time such as a popcorn popper are good for limited use such as when the sun is brightly shining.
We ran our house on four 150 watt solar panels for seven years before we doubled our solar array to eight 150 watt solar panels. Some of the panels may be 160 or 170 watts, I think they don't exactly match, but they are close. Much more power now so we don't have to run the "iron sun" (Honda generator) very often and we can plug in more things such as a freezer and that second incubator now. At the moment, there are eight 150 watt solar panels, eight 6 volt batteries wired in series parallel to feed 24V to the inverter which can put out 15 amps max. We do have a new inverter which will be able to put out more amps with a pure sine wave but haven't hooked it up yet. We may increase the battery bank size to twelve batteries pretty soon, too. I don't know if it was that we were so limited in power before that the new array seems plentiful but we like it. There is a constant awareness of power usage when you are off the grid, though. I would suspect if folks on the grid were as aware of power usage as folks off the grid there would be a lot less power used.
"I like yard sales," he said. "All true survivalists like yard sales."
Kurt Wilson
If you have any appliances which make a lot of heat for rather a long time - stoves, clothes dryers, etc., then try not to use them at all. Appliances which make a little bit of heat for a long time such as electric blankets, small incubators, etc., are fine. Appliances which make a lot of heat for a small amount of time such as a popcorn popper are good for limited use such as when the sun is brightly shining.
We ran our house on four 150 watt solar panels for seven years before we doubled our solar array to eight 150 watt solar panels. Some of the panels may be 160 or 170 watts, I think they don't exactly match, but they are close. Much more power now so we don't have to run the "iron sun" (Honda generator) very often and we can plug in more things such as a freezer and that second incubator now. At the moment, there are eight 150 watt solar panels, eight 6 volt batteries wired in series parallel to feed 24V to the inverter which can put out 15 amps max. We do have a new inverter which will be able to put out more amps with a pure sine wave but haven't hooked it up yet. We may increase the battery bank size to twelve batteries pretty soon, too. I don't know if it was that we were so limited in power before that the new array seems plentiful but we like it. There is a constant awareness of power usage when you are off the grid, though. I would suspect if folks on the grid were as aware of power usage as folks off the grid there would be a lot less power used.
Kurt Wilson
Kurt Wilson