Amazon has a good price on these Renogy panels, plus the reviews were good. Just finished putting up 10 of them, and so far I’m getting over 600 watts on this cloudy and overcast day.
I’ll have to wait for full sunshine to see if I get over 1kilowatt. Reviews say they output more than the rated 100 watts each.
The array can be tilted east-west as needed. I suppose I could put an antenna rotator on it to tilt it by remote.
I built it close to the ground to keep the HOA from fussing about it, plus we all have 6’ block walls, which will block the high winds we often get.
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On a side note, no matter what, companies are still tracking us. Just looking around the web at solar panels I’m seeing ads everywhere for “Free Solar Rooftop Estimates,” “Your State has Free Solar Panels for You,” etc.
In an email to a friend I said I bought a Macbook Air to keep my financials separate from my Windows desktop. Next thing I know I started getting both email and junk mail ads for “Financial Services” to protect and invest my wealth. I’m not even close to being rich. I simply said “my Financials” in a personal email.
Scary.
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Where are you located? I must say I’ve been unimpressed with the 10x200watt panels from Renology I live in the UK. On cloudy days I’ve been struggling to even get a few hundred watts.
Las Vegas. It’s normally clear skies and sunshine here, but it’s been cloudy and overcast all week.
The reviews for the 100 watt panels say they output more than 100 watts.
No doubt cloud thickness varies. There’s really no panels designed for fog/clouds. About all you can do is add more panels to compensate.
You’re in the right place then. Here in UK we rarely get any uninterrupted sunshine. 6 months of the year Solar is pretty much a non starter, for me anyways.
My bluetti kit is more as a backup power source in case the shtf but I had hoped it would power some of my house but so far the results have been a bit disappointing.
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For that same reason, I first bought a back up inverter gas generator and a 25 gallon gas caddy. Every year I’d have to use up the gas by filling up my car (before the gas goes bad), then refill the gas caddy.
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Then I built a small emergency off grid system to get around the dependence on gasoline; 600 watt solar array, 1500 watt inverter and 6 Vmax Tank batteries, back when lead acid was pretty much the only way to go. Worked pretty well, but you can only discharge lead acid batteries to 50% before drastically shortening their life, plus the shelf life is only around several years whether or not you use them.
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The next step was to convert to LifePO4 batteries, but I also wanted a more plug and play system so I bought the AC500 and 2 batteries. (I can see now I already need more than two B300s.) I like that I can add more batteries down the road.
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I consider keeping a fridge running 24/7 a top priority for if/when the shtf. Then come lights and at least a fan or two, (it’s Las Vegas). I bought a small 5000 btu window A/C that my previous off grid system could run at least during the day. The AC500 should be able to run it nonstop. While 5000 btu won’t cool a whole house, I would use it just in one small room to escape the 115 degree heat we get in the summer. People do die from excessive heat and I don’t plan on being one of them.
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For your location, you’ll just have to put up more solar panels than usual, to recharge the batteries, to make the system viable. Those expensive portable panels just won’t be good enough. And don’t waste your money on wind power; they are noisy and unreliable. Your neighbors will be at your door with torches and pitchforks.
Have maxed out my ac200max and b300 with 2kw of fixed panels but unfortunately it just doesn’t cut it. Only now in March when we are getting slightly longer days and a bit of sunshine here and here am I able to run my mancave on the solar.
Has ended up being a £6k+ investment that will never pay for itself but at least I have some backup if the shtf. I enjoy prepping and see these things as a bit of insurance. I also have a gas generator if really needed but they are noisy smelly and expensive to run.
I have a diesel heater that has been quite good through the winter this year and as I get free diesel from work it has worked out well. It takes a while to heat up the large space but has saved me on expensive electric heaters with the cost of electricity and gas sky rocketing.
You can’t expect these systems to pay for themselves, but you can save some money on power bills, especially since they shot up here just last month; but my main motivation was wanting a backup for blackouts.
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The grid-tie system (rooftop panels) is not a bad idea, but there is no backup if/when the power grid goes down. The grid IS the “battery” for grid-tie. It can take +10 years to pay for itself, longer if you had to finance it. You may be able to sell power to the grid during the day, but you buy it back from them at night. You can buy a Tesla Powerwall, but you’d actually be better off with your own solar generator like Bluetti. And if you have an RV, you can take it with you on vacation.
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Our Power Company has a website map of outages, and at any time/day there’s always an outage somewhere in Vegas. We had 6 blackouts one year in our area, although they seemed to have fixed it since then.
