openinverter forum

Does cleaning your solar panels make a difference? On this Sunday Solar episode:

so this morning I decided to hose off the ten 100 watt solar panels that make up Solar South

don't mind the free range organic cable installation, I am still chasing a potential bad connection

it's been a while since I compared how our house is doing energy consumption wise to that of our neighbors and our Electric Company allows us to do just that, so here's a look see:

the top gray line is the average of All our neighbors, we used to be above it, prior to rolling our own cheap, moist broadleaf tropical rainforest sourced solar, now look at us, the orange line [ pronounced: "winning" ] hewk we dip below the green line at times

it is so good to see the prices on the 100 watt solar panels coming down, and what I have learned over the last couple years is that Poly vs Mono it really doesn't matter for a DIY starter kit

and don't be shy to message the seller and negotiate and ask: "hey if I buy two of these beauties will you do $50 each?"

Sharing Is Caring

So I did this project using brand new AMAZON sourced solar panels so that anyone else interested could get the same stuff and because I didn't believe the deals people said they got on used panels. For example one of the forum members on here and a good friend of mine claimed he scored a bunch of 300w + solar panels with individual inverters strapped to the backs of each one for $40 dollars each, Yeah Right I thought under my breath.

Well then this happened:

a buddy of mine texts me and says a friend of his will be rolling by my house with a bunch of used solar panels and is wondering if I could take a look and tell them what I make of them and if I would want some for myself

so I ask how many you got and how much, he says we got 20 and they are $20 each, I say well sorry mate, they are total junk , but since you are here why don't you leave them, here's $400 - LoL


now they were leaning up against the side of my house !

Solar Panel Lessons Learned:


Solar panel cells are solar panel cells, they are the size they are, so if a 100 watt solar panel is yay big, than a 200 watt solar panel is about twice as big, and a 300 watt solar panel is you guessed it 3x as big... that's all there's to it, there is no magic happening there


100w solar panel vs 275w solar panel

so the plan is to throw 10 of these 275w panels up on the patio, Yes for a total of 2,750 watts or as the cool kids say 2.75 kW of potential energy, key word being potential, from what I saw in my initial test is that these are about 55% efficient so each 275w panel captures 150w of sun

and since some will be in the shade, and all will be at anything but the optimum angle to the sun, I should be fine with casting this wide net since I plan on upgrading from a 1,000 watt inverter to a 1,400 watt one, more on this soon

and who might you think WE have to blame for all this...

finally I see some being cleaned

finally got a chance to mount one of my 3 inverters, this one is for SOLAR East (I currently have five 275 watt panels connected to it) yes that is 1,375 watts feeding into a 1,000 watt inverter, but these old tech [Polycrystalline - pronounced: "blue"] used solar panels suck at electricity production mostly due to their location, position, shade, angle, etc, so they are maybe 50% efficient at best

so this little system costs
$100 for five used panels
$100 for the inverter
$50 for cables
===================
$250 TOTAL




below I am trying to show that the inverter is not touching the wall, I am using 1" aluminium spacers to allow for a gap of air / space behind it

and this is why I hate The Cloud

I was trying to see my energy usage and of course their website is down middle of the day

it's been a while so I figure I will share an update, here are three of my cheap crappy batteryless solar systems capturing over 10 kWh in one day in the winter, all three inverters and 20 used 275W solar panels plus miscellaneous cables cost me under $1,000 dollars

don't mind the In from Grid / Out to Grid lines, I am not using their solar aware hard wired meter, I am just aggregating 3 smart plugs which are too dumb to know if I am generating or using the energy so they think I am using all that electricity and not capturing it so Net Usage means Net Solar Generation etc.

Note: with the Sun riding lower in the sky during the winter my Solar West is mostly in the shade the majority of the day, my two story house is casting a shadow on those 5 solar panels as well as my neighbors house.