A lot of people are taking their first small steps in to solar and reducing the electrical bill and as such the “cost of living”. A cost varying quarterly floating figure. This mean some will be paying less in summer and more in winter. Some of you will be stuck with high price contracts.
Is solar an answer? When is a good time to buy solar?
What the easiest things or a place to start with solar?
It was a very long time ago that I started “playing” with solar and even longer with “power” and “electronics”; but I would guess that many of you have solar garden lights, you perhaps have a battery charger and just small things and those garden projects. You may have a small inverter in the car? but times are changing.
These days there is the home battery portables power things and I am seeing more people using these, or coming from these types of things. If you don’t know what I’m trying to describe Ill put a picture here.
These portable power things to me are a hype, I’m sure you have seen many reviews and claims of how great they are great , but I see the videos of these broken for no reason in a short space of time.
They are interesting but at the same time eggs in one basket.
These tend to have quite a high price tag, low power and input limits, even on the bigger ones. ( as you can tell Im not a fan)
These appeared not long after the AIO systems for solar, and of course they are a neat in one package, which can be appealing to many looking for the “quick fix”.
If you’re reading this and have one, it is broken or you reached its limits and costs of upgrading is uneconomical I’m sure. If you are here to ask, can I use any solar panels with mine, the answer is yes.
What are the typical things needed?
Solar is not a “cover all” power supply. at least not in the UK and it really is down to the use case and where you sit with your budget, space as well as your expectations. There is redundancy, back up, online, off set and a few other ways or uses that would dictate how you would want pick the hardware and set the budgets as well as the compromises you may make.
Off setting, is probably the easiest and simplest.
Micro inverter, panels, and the wiring and protection. Cost wise around £300-550. These plug together without any additional configurations. “where to put the panels” is the main consideration here as the micro inverter will sit on the back of the solar panel. They are then wired to your home and there are a few way to do this.
With this type of solar solution being grid tied, you save what you use. L
ets say it provides 8 hours at 640w per hour of your power use is 400w then you are covered the remainder will be set to the grid freely. If you use 700w then you will draw 60w from the grid.
Over night will be from the grid and as clouds come over or weather varies the off set will change. This is why people look into the battery systems, also known as Hybrid Solar. As you tend to not get power when you need it and export too much power.
Hybrid solar is much the same as the grid tied, but adds a battery. These system are usually much lager and have more than 4 solar panels. The Battery buffers clouds and can provide power more than the solar is producing, this includes at night.
Off grid or split loads is a system that offers redundancy and can work without the grid, in a power cut for example. you can “pull” certain circuits from the grid to run on solar, or even the whole home.
Most of these off grid system are used in Summer houses and man caves and soon spread to the home.
HARDWARE
An AIO is a single unit that is made up of:
Solar Charge controller
DC to AC Inverter
These can be purchased as individual items but you will find the AIO has Fuses, does not need a bunch of cables and is generally more compact. While they may fail, everything goes rather than the individual items which may have a stand in replacement and keep something working. The AIO is a lower cost item, and may be less complex to set up.
There is a essential part the Solar panels.
Solar panels are pretty big while looking fairly small on the roofs. They have a weight of around 22kg and they are like sails to move. While you can buy smaller panels, due to the prices, you would be better off with the selection we offer.
Small 100W panels can be around £170 where as our 400w are around £60, so it does make some sense. But the main thing I wanted to mention is mounting solar panels.
Solar panels can be mounted anywhere and in a few different ways depending where they go. This can vary the costs and difficulty and also has to comply with regulations (the law). Any roof is a good place to put panels and we could be looking at around £20 to mount a single panel or 35 to mount 3. The price varies so much that we never include the mounts in the kits.
Low cost DC.
DC power is used more than you would think, while our homes are supplied with AC power most items in your home convert this to DC. There are always losses when converting one type of power to another. This takes us to the DC Buck and Boost converters.
A MPPT charge controller is a Buck boost converter Where as the DC to AC is a H bridge conversion.
within our projects section we go though how to make these as well as on our youtube channel.
In this typical use case, you would have a single panel connected to a buck converter that is connected to a battery. this would give you a basic solar battery charger
Solar Charge Controller Project — RenewSolar
Once you have a charging system, you can then use the power to power items, such as laptops, TV, heaters and such like, I think the most common use is for pond pumps, electric fences, and garden lights.
We do offer a range of “project packages” within the shop or just contact us for one.
PROJECTS
The shed or garage, or the man cave, it is very typical that most people venturing into solar will want some from of charging dock and light system for their space and this is very simple to achieve.
A level up from this is the “solar power for the freezer in the garage” These a little more complex as they have a higher start up current. but it is essential to have an ATS. the ATS switches between the solar and the grid so you always have power.
Lighting can be from LED (DC) lights and is simple to carry out, while you can run DC to AC and back to DC this is a option depending on your level of skill or involvement. but a battery for £35 and small 500W inverter for £35 along with a £65 solar panel makes for a low cost toy solar project.
You can run into issues here, in that the inverters wave form type can cause issue with some hardware, you should look for a “pure sine wave inverter” these tend to cost more. There is also the larger consumers using power tools such as a lathe you will find that the low cost inverters cannot start up and this is due to a High Frequency inverter (HF) the lower cost of these is due to the induction coil ( copper ball of wire) is much smaller and thus holds less power. The LF ( Low frequency) are best for inductive loads.
Where you will be.
Most people contact us with the “I want to test out solar”, there is the “go small to test” ethic which I tend to say you will pay more and find you cant upgrade well.
You see, you can buy small solar setups and play with them and its all good. but like most, you will soon out grow the items you put together and want to “upgrade” or “improve”. So where you are now, in 6 months will be very different. You will make more power and want to use it, and this is where you move from the shed to the house or your own mini grid as you learn and the fears holding you back disappear.
It is important that you think about your Solar upgrade path.
We can be here all the way through!
RECOMENDATIONS.
Micro solar is a low cost easy first step to off set your bills. These can be upgraded to a hybrid later on.
Small separate power source, then solar charge controller and battery with buck and boost controllers.
What is your plan?
Share it in the comment below!
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