How hard is it to make your house solar powered or at least partially solar powered. How expensive is it? Are there any good websites that can help you accomplish this?
For about $10K you can put a 1 kWh parts only system on your home for grid tie only. This would hook to your home in the breaker box and would be powering any part of your home. It is not enough to run all of your home but it don't matter. The solar electric system will be feeding the 1 kWh back into the grid which brings down your electric bill. You can get a system as big as you want and can over produce in which case would be powering your whole home and over feeding back to the grid.
I have my solar electric system setup as an off grid system which I use as a battery backup. If the electric grid goes down it will auto switch to the battery bank which is powered by the solar array. If I want to go solar only I just turn off the main breaker and the system thinks the grid went down and switchs.
You can get grid tie with battery backup if you like depends on your needs or wants.
Take your last 12 months electric bill and total all the kWh used and divide it by 365 to get your avg daily usage. Then get your peak sun hours from this web page.
http://www.oynot.com/solar-insolation-map.html
Divide your daily usage by the peak sun hours which will give the system size in solar modules you need. Then go to this page and pick a system that fits your needs.
http://store.oynot.com/gts-grid-tie-systems.html
Or this page if you want one with battery backup.
http://store.oynot.com/gtb-grid-tie-backup-systems.html
There is a little more to it then this, but will give you a very good idea of the cost invloved and how large of a system you will require.
5 responses to How hard is it to make your house solar powered?
a 5kW system will run you about $40k. this is enough generation for you to be independent of the grid. Installation of this kind of system would take one person about 4 days if they were experienced. you need to have a licensed electrician commission the system and call for the inspection in most areas.
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It will cost you but in the long run it is well worth it you will need the solar panels on your roof and set of batteries and a inverter
solar is DC that is why the batteries are necessary
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Master Electrican 20 years
For about $10K you can put a 1 kWh parts only system on your home for grid tie only. This would hook to your home in the breaker box and would be powering any part of your home. It is not enough to run all of your home but it don't matter. The solar electric system will be feeding the 1 kWh back into the grid which brings down your electric bill. You can get a system as big as you want and can over produce in which case would be powering your whole home and over feeding back to the grid.
I have my solar electric system setup as an off grid system which I use as a battery backup. If the electric grid goes down it will auto switch to the battery bank which is powered by the solar array. If I want to go solar only I just turn off the main breaker and the system thinks the grid went down and switchs.
You can get grid tie with battery backup if you like depends on your needs or wants.
Take your last 12 months electric bill and total all the kWh used and divide it by 365 to get your avg daily usage. Then get your peak sun hours from this web page.
http://www.oynot.com/solar-insolation-map.html
Divide your daily usage by the peak sun hours which will give the system size in solar modules you need. Then go to this page and pick a system that fits your needs.
http://store.oynot.com/gts-grid-tie-systems.html
Or this page if you want one with battery backup.
http://store.oynot.com/gtb-grid-tie-backup-systems.html
There is a little more to it then this, but will give you a very good idea of the cost invloved and how large of a system you will require.
References :
it is not hard, in fact it is easy & better to have solar powered house.
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It is not easy and it is expensive and I would love to have my home retrofitted to be on the grid but mostly solar powered. I live in WV and the weather is tempremental. I doubt there are enough truly sunny days to be totally solar. I think the term is grid tied.
Check out Mother Earth News for info on going solar. I would do it but I can't afford it. Would also love to put in geothermal heating and cooling. Once again really expensive but ubercool.
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