120 Watt Solar Panel Kit - $200

theflyingsquirrel wrote: ↑ Yes 1/0 awg should work, but another factor is the maximum output current of the battery. Need to get one with high output rate.

If I buy something that is not in deep discounted, my father will punish me; everyone will laugh at me. I will be the strange kid who doesn't fit in.

You know, your signature fits your comment.

Here's a reference that I found yesterday.

https://www.altestore.com/diy-solar-res ... c-systems/

With this, I would still double check the wiring and verify what spec it's been made to.
It wouldn't be the first time that someone cut a corner.

Exactly.
I calculated my solar panel that is used in summer for my background fountain. The saving on electricity bill would never break even for the cost purchased the panel and the battery.

thanks op, upvoted. This is perfect for keeping the tin boat 12v trolling motor battery topped up at the cottage, (before this it was either disconnect and lug the battery up to the cottage, or run a long extension cord down) and can be used in a bind to keep electronics topped up in the event of a power outage which are a regular occurance up there.

elfion wrote: ↑ why do you think solar is "clean"? Compared to what? Did you factor in how much stuff goes "wrong" during the full production cycle including production of panels, batteries etc? Nuclear for example comes with certain unquantifiable risks due to unforseen catastrophic events. But when it doesn't cause Chernobyl, nuclear is actually extremely clean and very very sustainable. Certainly solar is cleaner than burning fossil fuels. So if that's your point of comparison then sure

Not saying there aren't other options for clean energy. Until we get micro modular reactors, there really isn't any comparison for this application.

Any technology incurs a net negative on the ecosystem. What's the least impact? Did you consider nuclear waste and waste heat in your evaluation?

This is actually not a bad price for an off the shelf kit. If you bought all of these pieces yourself from Amazon you'd end up paying about the same. That said you could customize the bundle and get higher quality stuff, and for most real world solar use cases, you'd kind of have to.

Also, this thread is hilarious.

The reality is the usefulness for this kit as-is is extremely limited and I honestly have a harder time figuring out why you would need these 3 things in a bundle like this and what you're going to do with it. It is not going to be useful for backup power, it isn't useful for camping, it's not enough solar for an RV ... so what do you use it for?

Quentin5 wrote: ↑ That is very impressive.
I am interested in more details, how did you handle heating/cooling and cooking?
I am also curious on why such a large battery bank?

a full-time two person house with a bank allowing for multiple days of no sun/wind,
plus an average daily draw-down of less than 15% capacity to keep the bank from prematurely deteriorating

when there were multiple cloudy days, we could drop our usage to 10% comfortably
usually the wind would pick up the sun slacking off

heating was a wood stove and passive solar built home
cooking was propane stove w/o any pilot lights (as was the on-demand hot water tank that had a micro-turbine pilot)

yes, there were times we had to charge the batteries with a gennie
we could have survived without that boost had we really scaled back our electricity usage, but why?

personal non-grid tied solar/wind solutions are the best way, however large or small, even with a gas/propane gennie backup
all governmental projects are a scam (look at germany's abject failure, solardyne, pincher creek, etc.)
speaking of pincher creek, and any other massive wind farm, i never had to pick up one dead bird from under my wind generator in twelve years

brunes wrote: ↑ This is actually not a bad price for an off the shelf kit. If you bought all of these pieces yourself from Amazon you'd end up paying about the same. That said you could customize the bundle and get higher quality stuff, and for most real world solar use cases, you'd kind of have to.

Also, this thread is hilarious.

The reality is the usefulness for this kit as-is is extremely limited and I honestly have a harder time figuring out why you would need these 3 things in a bundle like this and what you're going to do with it. It is not going to be useful for backup power, it isn't useful for camping, it's not enough solar for an RV ... so what do you use it for?

personally i bought two kits
these will be used to run lights, computers, etc. in an outage, and to charge a batt for a trolling motor on an intek inflatble
cruising the salish sea looking for my white whale (or at least a white and black whale), is there a harpooning sub-forum?

timestop wrote: ↑ a full-time two person house with a bank allowing for multiple days of no sun/wind,
plus an average daily draw-down of less than 15% capacity to keep the bank for prematurely deteriorating

when there were multiple cloudy days, we could drop our usage to 10% comfortably
usually the wind would pick up the sun slacking off

heating was a wood stove and passive solar built home
cooking was propane stove w/o any pilot lights (as was the on-demand hot water tank that had a micro-turbine pilot)

yes, there were times we had to charge the batteries with a gennie
we could have survived without that boost had we really scaled back our electricity usage, but why?

Interesting.
I guess i have quickly forgotten about low discharging deep cycle lead acid, i am now anchored onto lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate
And Nickel Iron.

all governmental projects are a scam (look at germany's abject failure, solardyne, pincher creek, etc.)
speaking of pincher creek, and any other massive wind farm, i never had to pick up one dead bird from under my wind generator in twelve years

I disagree, there have been missteps but teething pains lead to lessons learned and better future outcomes. And Germany/Ontario are actually what likely led to today's low solar prices, apparently their early demand caused large scale solar plants to be built in China which dropped prices, creating a competitive learning curve escalation leading to our low prices today.
And Passivhaus took its inspiration from R2000 (a Canadian government invention), Norway has about half the cars presently sold being EVs thanks to government intervention in the market, and ICE bans on new cars starting from 2025 onward have been enacted in many countries (by governments), as have incentives and subsidies for EV production facilities by governments.

Edit: And the Tesla Model S was inspired by the Chevrolet EV1 which was mandated by the California Government in the 90s.

Quentin5 wrote: ↑ Interesting.
I guess i have quickly forgotten about low discharging deep cycle lead acid, i am now anchored onto lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate


I disagree, there have been missteps but teething pains lead to lessons learned and better future outcomes. And Germany/Ontario are actually what likely led to today's low solar prices, apparently their early demand caused large scale solar plants to be built in China which dropped prices, creating a competitive learning curve escalation leading to our low prices today.
And Passivhaus took its inspiration from R2000 (a Canadian invention), Norway has about half the cars presently sold being EVs thanks to government intervention in the market, and ICE bans on new cars starting from 2025 onward have been enacted in many countries, as have incentives and subsidies for EV production facilities.

thanks for your input, and optimism

it definitely could be done, it just seems no matter who gets in, the lure to the dark-side is too strong

timestop wrote: ↑ thanks for your input, and optimism

it definitely could be done, it just seems no matter who gets in, the lure to the dark-side is too strong

We are slowly moving forward, Trudeau is apparently going to stop subsidies for oil companies and Biden has made some small mandates and spending some money on renewables.
Europe is gung ho on slowing carbon emissions. In fact we have now gotten to the point that we will likely avoid 4ºC by 2100.
EVs are close to 5% market penetration, 10-20% in the next few years is likely as the number of models coming out in 2022 and 2023 is impressive.
IIRC Scotland produced over 98% of its electricity from renewables last year
China is actually doing a lot of good, having something like 20,000 electric buses on the road already is quite impressive. And a new Chinese plant is coming that will increase world solar panel production by 50%.

That said we still have a long way to go, we have to hold our leaders feet to the fire, China is still financing coal plants as well.
So we are not quite out of the woods yet.

Lots of good stuff here
https://electrek.co/guides/egeb/

brunes wrote: ↑ The reality is the usefulness for this kit as-is is extremely limited and I honestly have a harder time figuring out why you would need these 3 things in a bundle like this and what you're going to do with it. It is not going to be useful for backup power, it isn't useful for camping, it's not enough solar for an RV ... so what do you use it for?

Actually a panel this size is capable of charging 2 RV deep cycle batteries from 50% to full in a day. 90% of people who buy these will probably use them for an RV, that's why it's under RV accessories on the Costco website.

timestop wrote: ↑
personal non-grid tied solar/wind solutions are the best way, however large or small, even with a gas/propane gennie backup
all governmental projects are a scam (look at germany's abject failure, solardyne, pincher creek, etc.)
speaking of pincher creek, and any other massive wind farm, i never had to pick up one dead bird from under my wind generator in twelve years

Nice exaggerations. Germany isn't a "failure", theyre ahead of the curve in many categories vs other nations. The main issue is the housing, commercial sector that can't use renewables because theyre run on gas and oil.

and for every "oh look at Solyndra guyz" there's a Tesla (it's not just a car company) that also got massive loans/subsidies. Elon and his minions would never retell this.



Are subsidies a great way to do mitigate these massive negative externalites? ideally not but every major country have them including for agriculture and fossil fuels.

If you want to cook with solar look up fresnel lenses. Running electric is just way too inefficient for the limited amount of light we have.

alpha2omega wrote: ↑ If you want to cook with solar look up fresnel lenses. Running electric is just way too inefficient for the limited amount of light we have.

Actually electric is 100% efficient when it comes to heating.

zoso454 wrote: ↑ Actually a panel this size is capable of charging 2 RV deep cycle batteries from 50% to full in a day. 90% of people who buy these will probably use them for an RV, that's why it's under RV accessories on the Costco website.

This panel outputs 7A. A typical RV deep cycle battery is 100Ah. You would need at least 7-8hrs of full sunlight to charge just one(1) RV deep cycle battery from 50% to 100%.

In most parts of Canada, we only get 2 - 2.5 hours of full sunlight in the winter and maybe 4-5 hours in the summer.

To charge 1 RV deep cycle batteries from 50% to 100%. You need at least 4 of this panel in the winter and maybe 2 panels in the summer.
To charge 2 RV deep cycle batteries from 50% to 100%. You need at least 8 of this panel in the winter maybe 4 panels in the summer.

NOTE: Full sunlight is not the same as daytime.

https://www.solardirect.com/archives/pv ... hours.html

sip3261 wrote: ↑ Exactly.
I calculated my solar panel that is used in summer for my background fountain. The saving on electricity bill would never break even for the cost purchased the panel and the battery.

You are right..unless you have passion or love for Solar. It will take your maybe several years to break even unless the price of hydro goes up at crazy rate.

But think about..you can't put a price on backup power when there is a power outage. Being about to power essential things like your freezer or gas furnace OR having power in a place where there is no access to electricity.

donbamo wrote: ↑ This panel outputs 7A. A typical RV deep cycle battery is 100Ah. You would need at least 7-8hrs of full sunlight to charge just one(1) RV deep cycle battery from 50% to 100%.

In most parts of Canada, we only get 2 - 2.5 hours of full sunlight in the winter and maybe 4-5 hours in the summer.

To charge 1 RV deep cycle batteries from 50% to 100%. You need at least 4 of this panel in the winter and maybe 2 panels in the summer.
To charge 2 RV deep cycle batteries from 50% to 100%. You need at least 8 of this panel in the winter maybe 4 panels in the summer.

NOTE: Full sunlight is not the same as daytime.

https://www.solardirect.com/archives/pv ... hours.html

I also like to add more information for anyone is interested in setting up a off-grid system :


I love bluesea charging relay system to hook up with multiple charging options( including wind turbine, genset generator(disel+gas powered if gas ever get into it) but mainly it's solar.

love to hear more from you guys about how much power consumption /demand you would be using

and little bit off the topic here is I got my hands on a US At&T data sim card : walmart-us-t-40-t-25gb-plan-back-canada ... 91042/119/ and it always nice to lower your monthly fee of data and router( power consumption).

torontotim wrote: ↑ Actually electric is 100% efficient when it comes to heating.

So is solar

A fresnel lens the same size as this solar panel can actually cook a hamburger. You could barely melt butter with an electric heating element hooked up to this solar panel. You have losses in the solar panel, the battery, the inverter and to the environment.

Of course I can't think of a reason you wouldn't just use a campfire to cook. But if you were hell bent on using the sun to cook a fresnel lens is the way to go.

Sorry if I missed this - can someone point me to a 10% off code for these guys? I like the idea of stringing multiple panels together eventually.

Code is willprowse I didn't get charged tax either.