Solar Panels For Homes, Anyone knows About It ?
Question:
Answer:
To start with most solar Modules have a 25 year garantee to provide 80% of the rated power.
Next the size of your home has nothing at all to do with the size of solar electric system you need. You have to size your system by your electric usage.
If you are wanting to go grid-tie, you will not be able to hook it up your self. The Electric Co. requires the local building inspector to sign the paper work and the building inspector requires a lic. electrical installer to get a permit. So most you could do your self is mount the hardware and hire someone to pull a permit and finish the wiring.
To start with you need get your last 12 months electric bills and find the kWh used and total it for the whole year. Divide that by 365 days and you will have your usage per day. Find out what the peak sun hours are for your area and divide your daily usage by the sun hours. Now you have the size of a system you need.
Start by reading this link
http://www.oynot.com/solar-power.html...
Go to this link to get your sun hours.
http://www.oynot.com/solar-insolation-ma...
Then go pick the system you need from one of the links this page.
http://store.oynot.com/gts-grid-tie-syst...
You can aswell use this link and it will do most of the math for you along with give you details on how much money you could save and priceing for the system you really need.
http://www.oynot.com/how-solar.html...
The first text link is an Excel spread sheet.. Try it out.
I would talk to a couple of local suppliers or contractors to look at your house, and design and price a system. Compare the two and pick the best value, not necessarily the lowest price. You might want to pick and choose features and make your own system too.
I don't know it all about the panels but I have heard that the panels are very expensive and lose about 30% of their output in five or six years (due to the discoloring of the plastic by the sun's ultra-violet rays).
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