Our 180w panel on our camper van roof produced way more power than needed most days. We wanted our freezer compartment to be frozen, all our devices charged and our electric bike batteries topped up when needed. Over 30 days we only had one cloudy day when I felt the need to use a pre-charged battery pack. The van has 2 leisure batteries.
Interesting... My cooler takes up a good amount of power, so I have 2 100 watt panels to just ensure that has what it needs, and one more 100 watt panel to satisfy the needs of everything else (phones, recharging things like lanterns, electric lighters, vape, cochlear implant batteries, Kindle, Anker 20k mah power banks, etc, as well as running a couple of small items like a 2 watt 6 inch fan, a mini Bluetooth speaker, and whatever else I haven't remembered to list.) Which freezer do you have that it's that effecient to run?
This is an excellent report. I don't know from energy at all, and so having a description of what actually can be powered using your panels makes it more meaningful for me.
I'm in southern Arizona and have 12 255 watt (at STC) SolarWorld single crystal silicon solar panels all in series pointed due south at a 18.5 degree tilt from horizontal. It pretty much has full exposure to the sun from sunrise to sunset year round. The string of 12 is connected to a SMA Americas Sunny Boy 4000s MPPT/Inverter (grid tie). The system was put into use in early October of 2012 and has, on average, delivered over 16 kw-hours of energy per day.
Interesting. The "rule of thumb" I've heard is on sunny days you will get about 5 times the solar panel wattage per day, and your results just about match that (12 x 255 = 3060 watts, 16000 / 3060 ~= 5.23 kw-hours).
@@cocoavideos Yup. I sized my system based on the average energy I use per day (about 16 kw-hours) and the "peak sun-hours per day" of sunshine I'd get (5.5 hours). Divide the 16 kw-hours by the 5.5 hours and it dictated I'd need 2.9 kw worth of solar.
@@cocoavideos Our roof is small and we have a few panels on the sloped roof in front, and on a flat roof out back. Some panels perform better in the morning, others later in the day. Total of 12x 400Wp panels, each with its own micro-inverter. On sunny days such as the last few weeks, the system will peak at around 14:00 at 4200-4500W output. Daily output on sunny days averages 30kWh. Slightly more than that rule of thumb. No idea yet how well they perform in winter, but these panels are supposed to perform well in low light, and perhaps that's why we get a few kWh more, some extra being eked out around dawn and dusk.
@@kaasmeester5903 Interesting information. We don't have solar yet but are considering it (electrical rates in the city of Santa Clara are pretty good, around 0.12-0.15 per kWh). About how much did you spend to set this up or did you do the work yourself?
@@cocoavideos I had them installed… it’s not that hard to do yourself actually, but I’m lazy and this way the system is under a full guarantee. I did do the wiring from the fuse box to the roof myself. Paid around €6,500 all in. At €.35 per kWh, it should pay for itself in 5 years.
Thank you for sharing this experiment. I reside in Cape Town and, due to the limited options available, I have installed four sets of 70W panels inside my north-facing balcony windows. Although it may not be the most ideal setup, I made the best of the situation. I also utilized MPPT and Lifepo4 technology. As a result, I have observed a significant reduction of approximately 40% in my electricity bill. This is particularly beneficial in South Africa, where electricity costs are notably high. Moreover, we frequently experience power outages, known as "load shedding," due to the inadequate supply of electricity by the ANC government-owned and managed electricity provider. This situation is primarily attributed to issues such as theft, greed, and corruption. These blackouts can last up to 10 hours per day. In my case, the solar panels have been a lifesaver. They have provided me with a reliable source of electricity during these challenging periods.
Wow thanks for sharing. Glad to hear it's worked so well for you. I've heard from some other viewers about load shedding, sounds like solar with backup is a good solution
Many many moons ago (20 or so years ago) when I worked at a solar shop in Sydney Australia, we mounted 3 x different panels to the top of a mobile frame. One was a monocrystaline panel 80w (BP solar?), the closest we sold in a polycrystaline was a Sanyo? or was it Sharp 75w panel, and a 64w Unisolar amorphous panel (I think they were actually rated at 68W). All 3 were linked via a Plasmatronics PL20 controller to a well discharged Trojan 120Ah 12v battery each. Results were interesting - early in the morning and overcast days, the Unisolar amorphous panel out[performed the other 2 despite being rated as the least powerful. One hot sunny days the monocrystaline was the winner - but only just. Over the course of a month in Sydney, the total outputs were pretty similar. It vindicated Unisolar's boasts about extracting more power in low light conditions, and the lack of glass meant they were extremely tough. BUT the old drawback of efficiency meant that they were huge for the output. It you had the space, then in my opinion, they were the bees knees.
This panel can put out close to 100 watts ruclips.net/user/postUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg when positioned in the appropriate southernly direction, tilted to the optimal angle for your latitude/date, and connected to a higher capacity device than a 500. The built in kickstand angle is a fixed at 50 degrees. Up to 20% more power can be output by selecting the actual date and latitude optimal angle.The 500 will only input 3.5A maximum at 18 volts for 63 watts. Some of the excess power from the panel can be fed into a USB battery bank, charged directly from the panel while also charging a 500. This will allow you to harvest as much as 63 + 15 = 78 watts.If this panel is used to charge a larger device, such as the power station, then its full output potential can be realized.
I wanted to thank you for the idea of PVC pipe solar panel stand. I did a slight Mod. but your design was great and saved me lots of money. I used it for 2 full size panels and used 1" and 3/4" pvc. Works Great. Thanks (didn't know where else to post thx)
We have a 100w panel for our Microcamper which I attach to the roof with suction cups which allows me to move it - for example onto the windscreen facing the sun in the morning/evening. When we’re driving it goes inside and we charge the power station with the alternator. The panel can get 80+ watts and everything between 0 and 80 and keeps the power station charged when we’re parked up. We are in the north of the UK and my experience has been in March and April.
Victoria Australia. Four years ago I installed a 3.75 kW = 14 Panels at 250 Watt each. Worked out the math in advance it should pay itself off in 3-5 years. If it did I would upgrade. It did in 4 years or less so that's the sell on me to upgrade. I now have 24 panels diverged facing East, North and west. It works very impressive when its sunny in summer but! I now have live monitoring with this upgrade with battery system. Its shocking to see how much the power drops as soon as a cloud passes over. Then we have had mostly cloud and rain through this last winter the system is making up for losses of sunlight. Its like it produces near nothing under heavy cloud weather its such a shame really. My new 12 panels are 450 watt each. Its auto calculations say I'm 25% self efficient at these weather conditions so that's not that bad really. I'm waiting to see how high that gets through the next year etc,
bottom line is your 4.3 Kw made roughly 65 cents worth of power using 15 cents per Kw for the calculation. If you are paying 25 cents per Kw then just over a $1 total. In a year (weather pending) you might make about $36 worth of power. What's your payback time versus cost? (you didn't mention cost)
A conservative estimate / rule of thumb, is for every 1000 watts of solar panels, you will get 4,000 watt hours per day. So 100 watts of solar panel is about 400 watt hours per day give or take (good quality monocrystalline panels new or used).
Ideally, you should orient the panels perpendicular to the sun. That is if you put a square on the surface of the panel, it should not make a shadow. Of course the apparent position of the sun will change, and this is what makes sun trackers attractive. For a rough estimate, tilt your panel at the same angle as your latitude. Georgia is located between 34.9° and 30.6° North, so you should have a tilt somewhere between those two values. If you are in Atlanta, in the spirng, for example, use 33° and orient the panel due south. Your current setup appears to have a tilt of about 25° The tilt can also be adjusted for the season: In summer, subtract 12°, ie 21° and in winter, add 12° for a tilt of 45°.
Side note. I have a solar can heater that runs into one of my upstairs windows. It's tilted at a 30 degree angle to match the sun during the winter months.It raises the air temp running through it by around forty to fifty degrees without a fan using just convection air movements. Maximum output is around five hours per day during the winter and will produce some heat even on overcast days while it's freezing outside.
This was great. I just got my setup going and playing around trying to figure this exact information out. Dec 14th in Virginia is a really bad time to test solar. I was disappointed I was only getting about 14 watts and wasnt sure I had this right. Based on this video, looks like I'm on track. Thanks!
Your 100 W rated panel produced 4310 W-hrs over 240 hrs so it produced about 18% of its theoretical output (4310/(100*240). For a grid power system, about 80% of the time it would need a backup power source. Or, 5 panels could be deployed to charge a battery. Since levelized battery storage costs are about twice that of panels, to get a 100% reliable equivalent system would cost 15 times the cost of a panel (1 panel plus twice that for battery storage per panel). If a natural gas or nuclear plant were to be making up the difference, it would have to be continuously adjusting it’s power level to match supply and demand which is a very inefficient way to run these plants. None of these costs are factored in to the cost of solar panels when the claim of cheap solar energy is made. I have solar panels on my roof and it’s worked out well. However, I got a lot of tax and financial incentives from the government and local utility, I live in southern California where it is almost always sunny and I got the system basically at cost since my wife works for the solar panel company that supplied the system.
This assumes the grid has the same consumption 24/7. It does not. Energy consumption is high during the daytime, especially on workdays. Conventional power plants can provide power 24/7, but must be built to keep up with peak demands. This results in under-utilization at night. The result are cheaper prices at night. Solar will invert this. Prices will be low around noon, and high at night. The cheapest prices will be noon on a sunny weekend day.
Was looking to get solar panels, but for what they said I'd need, I'd be paying 350 a month for 20 years to pay for it. But after 20 years, id paying nothing. But seeing as how i average less than that a month on electric bill and have a car payment, just wasn't worth it.
I was also surprised to get more than 100 watts from a 100 watt panel. The way this happens, is when you have the combination of direct sunlight and some clouds near the sun. Those clouds are illuminated by sunlight that would ordinarily not reach your solar panel, but once the sun illuminates them, some of that light adds to the direct sunlight that your panel sees. It's kind of like having an extra Sun or two.
I also think there can be other deflection of objects, in particular windows or shining and light painted structures in the right angle and size. Ive had the same readings of exceeding the performance stats.
Another major factor is that the panel is often cool when the sun is behind clouds, and hasn't had a change to heat up when the sun comes out from the clouds. Every *C above 25*C often has a 0.3% to 0.5% drop in output, so the panel heating from 30*C to 50*C could drop the output by 10%. Of course, the extra sunlight increases the output so its a balance.
The panel can do that because a new panel actually puts out considerably more electricity than its rating, so that, at the end of the warrantee period, it is still putting out its official rating (see my explanation, above). When attached to a household system, the output of the panel is regulated so as not to over stress the inverter or battery bank to which it is attached. Since this was simply attached to a meter, the regulation of the output didn't matter.
It's true - one company that I know had a customer with a South facing roof overlooking the sea - he was getting almost double what he should have been getting.
to capsulize , 1m²(10square feet) solar panel allows you to light up the bulb of your grandmother's old refrigerator (you know, the one where we don't see anything when we open the door!)yes a single bulb between 20 and 60 watts!...and this between 11 in the morning and 4 p.m. in the afternoon.
The numbers appear very plausible for spring/summer season. Here in Germany, I operate a small "insula network" independent from regular power grid. Reason is that I want to supply some few very small devices independently from the regular grid. Power source is just a small 80 Wp panel, and I actually need only about 50-65 Wh per day. Nominal battery capacity is 1280 Wh, and in reality I can get something about 1100 Wh out of it. This setup is sufficient to power the small devices connected there for most of the year. Only in a period of approx. 6 weeks in the winter, it's necessary to charge the battery from the grid. Here, typical daily results from the small 80 Wp panel are 40 Wh on real bad days, and 400 Wh on optimal days. The panel, however, isn't optimally adjusted to catch as much sunlight as possible. I'm living in some rented apartment, so the pane is just is attached to an outer wall here below a window, and orientation is to the western side. In summary, that "insula network" does exactly the job for which I've done that setup. The entire setup is up and running for 27 months now and is working reliably.
I’m looking to install a solar panel system on a future project, since I’m in Quebec I experience a lot of different skies. Your video today was most interesting thanks 🙏
I have a question for you, please... I have a Starlink and use a small generator to power it. The problem is, when the generator runs out of gas, the Starlink loses its connection. I find when the Starlink resets, I lose a constant connection and often my calls are affected. I'm trying to find a solution that will allow me to run my Starlink 24 hours a day. Any bright ideas? I'm looking into the Jackery power bank with solar power panels, but I'm not sure what's going to be best here. I don't even mind plugging in my generator into the power bank once a day. I really just need a constant signal while I'm at my vacation for high-quality business calls.
Hey Alex, I really enjoyed this video and your video running a fridge on 100ah lithium battery - I predict you are going to gain a lot of followers if you keep producing fun, interesting science type videos.
As a techie, I have 2 problems. The variabilities ,as others have said, are just too great to make solar cost effective in most cases. And please don't throw back at me that we have to save the planet. My other problem, your comparison using an i phone on power usage I find a bit strange. Thats pretty low power conpared to most household useage. Here is a third point as a post script. Regardless of the design, there will be an output level below which the panels will not be able to charge any batteries etc. This must be taken into account re efficiency.
You can easily buy a Charge Controllers capable of ~150v input and then buy panels enough to put in series to get VOC up in the neighborhood of 120v or whatever and you will ALWAYS have minimum voltage pretty much before the sun even gets up over the horizon in the AM to charge a 48v battery bank. "there will be an output level below which the panels will not be able to charge any batteries" This is literally a non-issue if you build out your setup anything remotely close to correctly. My lifepo4 battery started charging off a 1500 watt array at 6:03AM this morning... in Montana, at a rate of about 2 watts. That was well before Sun Rise. And I can say that with certainty as I look at my victron solar charge controller's logs, of which it holds the last 30 days worth of data.
So... what does that actually mean? "300-500 watt hours per day" doesn't mean anything to me (or, I suspect, to most people). How does it compare with the grid? Or in terms of running heating, lighting, A/C etc in a house? Telling us how many times it would charge a phone is meaningless.
Watts is an instantaneous measure of power. Watthours is a measure of power across time. A 60 watt lightbulb uses 60 watts. If you left the 60 watt light on for only 30mins, then you used only 30watthours. The same bulb being on for one hour will use 60watthours. For ten hours it will use 600watthours (0.6kwh). This is how your electric company bills you... by the kwh (1,000watthours = 1kwh). You could glance at your electric bill and see the kwh you are paying for every month to get an idea of how many panels you'd need to replace what you pay them. It would, at the very least, give you a much clearer picture of what you're looking at. Anyway, 500watthours [0.5kwh] (the most a 100 watt panel could realistically produce across an entire day) is neat, for like a science project, or to keep a small battery topped off, being able to blast a small stereo system on a boat on a lake for hours without draining a battery. I don't think most people would buy a single 100 watt panel to do anything particularly serious around the house, though. You're usually putting at least a few panels into an array (connected together). You can buy two 100watt panels for like $160 dollars on amazon (twice the 300-500watthours per day figure if you buy two, obviously). Anyway, if we assume you have all the necessary equipment (inverter, battery, etc as necessary), the 500 watthours (the total power produced by the single 100 watt panel in an entire single optimal day) could run most deep freezers for 6 hours. It would run a Window Unit on full tilt for ~25-30mins (depending on power draw of the exact window unit). It would run a 1,000 watt microwave for 30mins. It would charge your cell phone like 20 times from dead to full. It would run a 12 watt LED lamp for like 40 hours. It would run most 60" TVs for something close to 5 hours. Heat and Air Conditioning will generally be a house's main consumer of electricity.
I have 720 watts of solar on my van using 4 matching panels and I average around 450-500 watts input at any given time on a decent day. I was expecting a bit more but they are flat mounted with no tilt mechanism, which I may add in the future.
When I was installing SCADA systems in solar plants it was not unusual for the output of the plant to go from 100% down to 20% in less than two minutes when a cloud came floating by. Fortunately these were only a 30 MW plants tied to a very stiff power grid. However, I can’t imagine how a control center is going to be able to follow the load if the grid has a lot of solar plants connected to it without sufficient spinning reserve from fossil or nuclear energy plant. Batteries might help but I see black outs in our future!
Honestly, this is why small storage but matching output batteries should be installed alongside solar farms, E.g. a 100MW solar farm should have 100MW/50MWh battery smooth the output.
Well now, them there clouds may be shading one solar plant, but the others just a few miles (or km) up the road and down the road, are not experiencing the same shading at the same time. So your observation is in isolation of the real world scenario.
I have never spent time at a really large solar plant so maybe cloud coverage doesn’t effect the whole plant but I know it effects 30MW plants pretty severely in Georgia and north Florida. I have been at large Wind Turbine sights in Texas where wind has unexpectedly died out or never appeared and the power markers have had to scramble to find enough on line fossile reserve to make up the deficit. Since they are buying that power at spot prices the cost can be pretty high. Luckily there was enough spinning reserve available to make up the difference regardless of cost.
You can lose ~20% efficiency if the panel is hot. 90 degree day ambient likely means well over 100 degrees on the surface of the panel itself. This is just the nature of transporting electricity and more or less applies in all areas of electrical transportation. Electric Companies deal with this issue also where on hot days, their efficiency to transport the power to you is less (which means more power is burned up just trying to get it to you in the heat). Panels are rated for 77F basically always. Industry Standard. If the panel says it's 100 watts, it means it's a 100 watt panel in 77F direct high noon kind of sun light. Shade, Clouds, debris, bird poop, etc can all inhibit the power generated from a panel noticeably. Really dark clouds, like the nastiest of storms is trying to roll in on you, can take power production down to 5% if you're lucky. Full cloudy day where the clouds are whiter, thinner and you can still kinda see your own shadow, power can vary around 20 to 50% in my experience. DC voltage pushed from a solar panel will also lose voltage across the distance of your wire. If you're running a 30 meter wire vs a 100 meter wire, you will lose more voltage on the 100 meter run than the 30meter run. Wire gauge can also affect losses. Using a thicker wire will lose less voltage across larger distances. Plenty of resources online to help figure this, but please do not get trapped on using a resource that's designed very specifically for boating. I see charts in solar communities all the time and people saying which wire gauge to run and different things and then they link a chart as there supporting evidence and you can clearly see on the bottom it says something about "the chart may not cover all unique situations on a boat". Those charts are very specifically for 12/24v systems only. The voltage tolerances can be critical in boating due to how it might be your life out on the water or due to the amp draw that can be happening at those low voltages to get big watts out of the system depending on high lumen light use, stereo, or other equipment and those charts are designed to get the most power across the boat with minimal losses per an industry standard. You can reference that chart but it's pretty pointless to do so if you're running a 100v solar array, as an example. You can move a LOT more power at 100v than at 12v a lot more efficiently, a lot less heat, a lot thinner wire, etc. Volts * Amps = Watts. Volts * Amphours = Watthours. Watts is an instantaneous measure of power. Watthours is a measure of power across time. A 60 watt light bulb uses 60 watts. If the light was left on for an hour, it did not use 60 watts, but rather it used 60watthours. If the same light was left on for 10hours, the light used 600watthours. Lots of people mess this up when communicating or trouble shooting or any number of things, and it can sometimes make it difficult to help because they aren't communicating effectively. If you buy an all-in-one system (Bluetti, Echoflow, etc) and you see two different ratings on it like 2,200 watts and 2kwhs, they are not interchangeable, and they do not mean the same thing. Most likely the 2,200 watts I exemplified is in referenced to the inverter's capability. the 2,200 watt rating is telling you that the inverter can deal with you pulling 2,200 watts out of it. The 2kwh rating, which may also read as 2,000wh instead (it's the same exact thing: 2,000wh = 2kwh) is probably telling you how much power the battery can store. Those are two very different characteristics. You could have a 200wh battery and a 600watt inverter in an all-in-one product making these "solar generators", as they are often marketed, and the product page might not be super clear about which characteristic is for which part... but if you see the "h" for hours, that is telling you there's a time component to that rating. So if it says 200wh and 600watts and you can't figure out which is which or what it's trying to tell you or how it can be both... the 200wh (watts across time) is almost certainly the battery and the 600 watts (instantaneous) is almost certainly the inverter capability. Colder temperatures will increase the voltage produced by the panel. If your solar charge controller is rated for 145v and you purchase panels to get you to a 140v VOC, you're risking over volting your charge controller in the Winter. Obviously this scales with the temperature, which means it will depend where you live. Increasingly colder temps can mean increasingly higher volts. If you see -30F temps, you probably don't want to push more than maybe 110v VOC on a 145v charge controller. My experience in northern latitudes of the states is that a 1500 watt array of Renogy 100 watt panels will generate around 9.5kwh in a day as a best case scenario. I can see this fairly easily as I use a Victron charge controller and it logs power production per day with a 30 day history. In addition to the 20% hit to your power generation from the panels because of heat, you should also expect that when it comes time to converting that DC power you've stored up in some kind of battery to Alternating Current, you will have inverter efficiencies to deal with also. A lot of inverters will not have more than maybe 92% efficiency across varying loads averaged. The simple math, I usually just subtract 10% off from whatever power you generate, because you'll definitely lose something in that ball park converting it from DC to AC. So if a 100 watt panel makes 80 watts on a really hot day, you'll get maybe 72 usable watts out of it once you've run it through an inverter. I know some of this stuff sounds like it really sucks or it's a scam or whatever people want to say or think once they realize some of this stuff, but like I said... even your electric company has to deal with a lot of this same type of stuff. It's not free to move power around, there's losses. And those losses are bigger the hotter the day it is. Signed, Self Researched, Self Setup, 2700 watts total in panels, 22kwh total of battery, did not go to school for this stuff, just played with electricity taking things apart since I was a kid and got into this stuff on my own, originally out of curiosity, and then later to see what I could make of it all. I probably could've easily tripled my text trying to explain stuff about solar. Series, Parallel, startup resistors, dc to dc converters, soft-starters, pure-sine vs modified sine inverters, transfer switches, etc, etc, etc.
It will produce approximately 4-6 cents of power daily on average. That's what it means in practical, real world terms. "What can it be used for?" wire it to your house and lower your power bill by $1.25-$1.85 a month.
@@mariabaptista-pt Then you need to install larger PV panels or multiples of the 100w units. The theoretical upper limit on PV power output is roughly 1 kilowatt per square meter. This assumes a PV panel mounted on Earth, it grows as you get closer to the sun and diminishes as you further from the sun.
@mariabaptista-pt As a test. Would you purchase a 16KW solar array of panels just to learn about "solar" advantages and disadvantages? At that point, deciding against solar power would be way too late. No refunds.
During days of heavy overcast (not even snowing, just overcast) in December up here at 47 degrees North I see about 7% of rated nameplate capacity. Add to that the day is only 8 hours long and output is hurting in the winter.
I'm the same down here in Southern Spain - in Summer I'm feeding 7-12KWh a day into the Grid. In Winter on a sunny day I can barely fill the battery - the days are shorter, the sun is lower in the sky and there are more days when we have some clouds. As for clouds - on the days when you have white clouds and you can almost see the sun trying to get through I get about 20% of rated power, on grey days maybe 10%. Usually in Summer the system hits 85-90% of rated capacity.
your power output is closely matching your hours of usable sunshine. Great validations of on already known number. It would have been more interesting if you were to compare a couple of different brands of panels, but overall, well done.
Very good test. Thanks for posting. Awesome videos. I could have swore that your channel and had like five hundred subscribers a few weeks ago. Crazy progress.!
4,31 kWh for a heavy duty hour for a regular household would imply you can cook, use a microwave oven, coffee maker, do a short load of laundry and vacuum some stuff. In addition o use a PC with peripherals for approx. 4 hours. Good going, you charged enough for one half day of my regular workload days in little less than 10 days. Considering the cost of setting up a system to sustain my usual workload I guess I would need some 10-20 12V batteries at 75 Ah, 10 charge controllers at 30 A rating, 20 solar panels at 150 W each and a chunk of cable. In my locale at a reasonable priced cost of equipment we're talking 190 USD per panel, 10 USD per charge controller, approx. 50 USD cable and between 900-1800 USD of batteries. The whopper will likely be the inverter required costing some 1 000 USD to reach reasonable levels. (Sum total 5850 - 6750 USD) Cost drops per kWh over time until failure rates increase at aging of equipment but the first 43 kWh's would run me approx. 157 USD per kWh. Anyone have questions about the reasoning? Mind you I am not saying it is a bad technology, just that the step to enter is leaving quite a lot to be desired.
MPPT does a better job. I've tried both here with a small 80 Wp panel, and with MPPT I effectively get about 15 % more charging power than with a PWM module. Simply said: PWM fails on cloudy/rainy days. With MPPT regulation, you almost always get at least a little bit of power from your panel.
Any idea why my victron mppt 100/20 only bulk charges a depleted 12v lead battery for a few seconds then goes into absorption ... voltage raises from 10v to 14.4v within about 10 seconds then jumps from bulk to absorption so it then starts slow charging... at a painfully slow rate... on a 70% dis charged 105ah 12v lead battery. Im puzzled
Great video. I think the big take home is you need battery storage on your solar panel(s) for it to be really useful. I have 18 400w panels on my on grid solar system with a 10Kwh battery. Even on a cloudy day my battery is recharged just after lunch time. By morning my battery is down to 50% after my fridge and freezer has run all night. However rainy days are the killer. Two rainy days in a row and I’m drawing from the grid. Luckily I’m in Australia…
@ Rain absolutely kills the panels ability to generate anything. I pay about $100 per quarter to be on the grid which is about a dollar per day. That is mostly the service charge and not buying power. The alternative is to buy a decent backup generator at around $5000 plus fuel. So it would take a very long time to make that a worth while option. So my backup generator is on the grid 🤠
@@DavoShed Why so much for a generator?There are cheaper ones that surely would do the job? In any case, rainy days are a real thing to consider, as well as cloudy days.
I have a 100 watt solar panel installed (original equipment) on my 2019 Flagstaff E-Pro travel trailer connected to a Victron 100/30 SCC charging a 400 AH lithium battery. The panel has only been able to produce about 65 watts at peak. I guess I need to upgrade my panel to get the kind of results that you are getting. I have never seen over 70 watts from this panel.
Interesting...in this video I'm using a newer 9 busbar (9BB) panel and I see really good output from those types, typically to 85-90 watts in good sun as shown in the video. Also if the panel is mounted horizontally on your vehicle I'd suggest cleaning it semi-regularly since rain doesn't do as good a job cleaning horizontal panels.
There's a rule of thumb ratio in the solar industry of Panel Watts to Yearly kWh. Your location determines the ratio. Here in New England it is about 1:1 Meaning the 100 Watt panel would make about 100 kWh over the course of a year. Places like Arizona would be much higher. No just because they have more sunny days, but the sun also strikes the earth with more Watt per meter squared. New England is about 800 w/m2. AZ can be as high as 1,200 to 1,300 in places.
This depends if your panels are fixed mounted, too. If you have ground mount simple setup you can face the panel manually more to the East in the AM and adjust through the day. There are systems that can automate the movement of the panels, too. Fixed mounted panels on a East or West slope of a house's roof will be the worst for efficiency since half the day it'll be facing the wrong way for good sunlight.
@@cameronbateau6510 A relative indication of how much power you'll produce from a given panel. Like Arizona will yield much more power than Vermont for the same panel. More sunny days and more watts per sq meter when it is sunny
Yes, it was definitely that 1 or 2 blades of grass that were denying the crucial photons from collapsing into the critical section photoelectric array and thereby preventing the panel from reaching 100W.
Without by-pass diodes, it doesn't take much partial shading to ruin the power production of the whole panel. It's almost like kinking a water hose. Even though the kink is only 2inches of the whole 100 foot hose, it ruined the water pressure through the whole hose. Most modern panels will have at least some of these by-pass diodes (kind of like adding a 2nd hose), which can help a lot, but adds a bit to the cost.
I have 2 180 solar panel each that only produces 80w max power here in Nigeria, what could be the problem? I use 1, 220ah tabular battery and mppt solar charge controller.
So, do you buy solar panels to charge cell phones or do you buy solar panels to run your house. This 500 watt a day production wouldn’t even run my shaver or hairdryer. My home here in north texas runs around 30 KWh a day which is 30,000 watts. Nothing like natural gas produced energy from mega power plants.
I’m looking at using a small solar panel to power grow lights to grow food inside. What size would I need? I’m totally new to this. Any pointers would help. Links to products too
Ok thanks for the info. But whats your opinion on using this for say: power a basic wifi or t.v. or a single household appliance? And for how many hours?
I’m curious to know what brand PV and converter are you using I have a 100w Renogy PV panel with a Bioenno Charger controller connected to a 20ah Bioenno LiPo4 battery.
For us non-tech guys, how about putting this in real life explanations. How long will that run my refrigerator? Or 10 light bulbs? How much did the panel cost and how much electricity, in dollars, did it save/produce? thanks.
I have a "350W" panel that typically generates about 4A (basically 100W). It's actually looks about the same size as yours, so I assume the Chinese retailers inflate the power to sell them.
How much would this panel "out out" if the waste heat was extracted for use? This is an area the PV Panel industry needs to invest R&D time and money into.
Hi everyone, expert or close to expert advice wanted. A 38’ Dutchmen trailer powering stove, electric, heater in the winter, t.v, lights and miscellaneous gadgets. What should I buy for the whole set up? Thanks.
I have a Biolite 100w solar panel, and after almost 6 hrs today in full sun (georgia) I only gained 20% before the base charger over heated and quit charging (biolite 600). I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Input was never more than 40 Watts. Started with 21% battery. Ended with 47%
@bobhilder1469 I've tried. All week. Over a dozen emails. "Someone will get back with me" No phone number. I did learn a good bit from your video. Thank you.
@@barbshubert9667 I'm sorry to hear that Biolite is not being supportive. FYI, I'm not the creator of this video. I just watched it and commented on it.
❤❤ REQUEST: Hi , please 🙏 do a video with night time experience. Using LED lights to power the solar and results over a week. Also include which gadgets can be powered. 🎉🎉🎉 Thanks 🙏🙏🙏
nice vlog straight forward unlike other videos 12 mins or more do the same hahaha.. save my time.. thank you new subscriber from Philippines mabuhay! mamatay!
I aim panels toward morning sun and toward evening sun. Result: Longer charges instead of strongest charges. The night battery has a shorter no charge time. The battery is the weak link. Also, do not connect lead batteries in parallel. Sooner or later they get into a voltage fight. Don't force everything to run off a pure sine wave inverter. Use 12 volt appliances. Keep your 12 volt chest freezers in ECO mode for longest appliance life. Success in a solar world.
How much more power would be generated if the panel was turned to track the sun during the day? That's what I do with the one that keeps my camper battery topped off.
This can actually be a tricky question: Do you manually adjust it ever so often or do you use an automated system? If the system is automated, the draw to run the system must be included and measure the net output for the difference to have any practical applications.
I been playing with a renogy solar system I built with 2 renogy x100 watt panels in series and a renogy 20 amp rover elite mppt controller and been seeing 140-150 watts. Southern Manitoba, Canada.
Great video. Cloudy days really kills the watts! 😳 The day to day. Amiability is the real issue. On low days what takes over? And if it’s wind and the wind isn’t blowing 😳 That’s why we need a mix.
At about $100 for the solar panel, and 14 cents per KWH in Georgia, not count all the hardware, setup cost and maintenance pluse no winter season, your payback time would be over 4.5 years
3:15 Isn’t 4.31 kWh = 4310Wh? K = Kilo = 1000. 4.31 x 1000 = 4310. Anyway, I got 6 of Renology 100W, connected in a way of 2-in-series x3. On a sunny day, the system generates maximally 493W at an instant. I did not actually calculate total daily input, as the power input fluctuates due to sun light intensity. Here I am in South Carolina, just FYI. Forgot to mention: one of the 3 pairs was laid only about 20-degree, while the other two pairs were about 30 degrees. We stored the energy in Bluetti ac200max and output to transfer switch, connecting to our breaker switch.
Yeah 4.31 kWh = 4310 Wh, and I tested the panel for 10 days so that is 431 Wh per day. Awesome, sounds like a powerful setup you got there. How do you like the Bluetti? Been thinking about trying out some solar generators
I’ve got 4-320 watt and 3-315 watt panels charging 6-6volt AGM 460 batteries and when I have full sun my batteries are fully charged in 2.5 hours. Winter here with less sun it takes much longer.
Never. Billions of panels all around the world are mounted fixed. Think only how massive any tilting mechanism would be needed to withstand a storm. And now imagine you install 50 panels on your home and want to tilt each one...
Our 180w panel on our camper van roof produced way more power than needed most days. We wanted our freezer compartment to be frozen, all our devices charged and our electric bike batteries topped up when needed. Over 30 days we only had one cloudy day when I felt the need to use a pre-charged battery pack. The van has 2 leisure batteries.
May I ask what setup you use? Currently researching to set my van up with solar
@@Frogandfish we have two leisure batteries (Agm not lithium) and a victron controller that’s Bluetooth. It’s a rigid panel on the roof
@@ianferguson3543 Thank you!
Interesting... My cooler takes up a good amount of power, so I have 2 100 watt panels to just ensure that has what it needs, and one more 100 watt panel to satisfy the needs of everything else (phones, recharging things like lanterns, electric lighters, vape, cochlear implant batteries, Kindle, Anker 20k mah power banks, etc, as well as running a couple of small items like a 2 watt 6 inch fan, a mini Bluetooth speaker, and whatever else I haven't remembered to list.)
Which freezer do you have that it's that effecient to run?
This is an excellent report. I don't know from energy at all, and so having a description of what actually can be powered using your panels makes it more meaningful for me.
I'm in southern Arizona and have 12 255 watt (at STC) SolarWorld single crystal silicon solar panels all in series pointed due south at a 18.5 degree tilt from horizontal. It pretty much has full exposure to the sun from sunrise to sunset year round. The string of 12 is connected to a SMA Americas Sunny Boy 4000s MPPT/Inverter (grid tie). The system was put into use in early October of 2012 and has, on average, delivered over 16 kw-hours of energy per day.
Interesting. The "rule of thumb" I've heard is on sunny days you will get about 5 times the solar panel wattage per day, and your results just about match that (12 x 255 = 3060 watts, 16000 / 3060 ~= 5.23 kw-hours).
@@cocoavideos Yup. I sized my system based on the average energy I use per day (about 16 kw-hours) and the "peak sun-hours per day" of sunshine I'd get (5.5 hours). Divide the 16 kw-hours by the 5.5 hours and it dictated I'd need 2.9 kw worth of solar.
@@cocoavideos Our roof is small and we have a few panels on the sloped roof in front, and on a flat roof out back. Some panels perform better in the morning, others later in the day. Total of 12x 400Wp panels, each with its own micro-inverter. On sunny days such as the last few weeks, the system will peak at around 14:00 at 4200-4500W output. Daily output on sunny days averages 30kWh. Slightly more than that rule of thumb.
No idea yet how well they perform in winter, but these panels are supposed to perform well in low light, and perhaps that's why we get a few kWh more, some extra being eked out around dawn and dusk.
@@kaasmeester5903 Interesting information. We don't have solar yet but are considering it (electrical rates in the city of Santa Clara are pretty good, around 0.12-0.15 per kWh). About how much did you spend to set this up or did you do the work yourself?
@@cocoavideos I had them installed… it’s not that hard to do yourself actually, but I’m lazy and this way the system is under a full guarantee. I did do the wiring from the fuse box to the roof myself. Paid around €6,500 all in. At €.35 per kWh, it should pay for itself in 5 years.
Thank you for sharing this experiment. I reside in Cape Town and, due to the limited options available, I have installed four sets of 70W panels inside my north-facing balcony windows. Although it may not be the most ideal setup, I made the best of the situation. I also utilized MPPT and Lifepo4 technology.
As a result, I have observed a significant reduction of approximately 40% in my electricity bill. This is particularly beneficial in South Africa, where electricity costs are notably high. Moreover, we frequently experience power outages, known as "load shedding," due to the inadequate supply of electricity by the ANC government-owned and managed electricity provider. This situation is primarily attributed to issues such as theft, greed, and corruption. These blackouts can last up to 10 hours per day.
In my case, the solar panels have been a lifesaver. They have provided me with a reliable source of electricity during these challenging periods.
This is a reality check for me. Thank you
Wow thanks for sharing. Glad to hear it's worked so well for you. I've heard from some other viewers about load shedding, sounds like solar with backup is a good solution
Hahaha, as a fellow saffa your comment (although very accurate) made me laugh 😂
What did you observe in your electricity bill?
Many many moons ago (20 or so years ago) when I worked at a solar shop in Sydney Australia, we mounted 3 x different panels to the top of a mobile frame. One was a monocrystaline panel 80w (BP solar?), the closest we sold in a polycrystaline was a Sanyo? or was it Sharp 75w panel, and a 64w Unisolar amorphous panel (I think they were actually rated at 68W). All 3 were linked via a Plasmatronics PL20 controller to a well discharged Trojan 120Ah 12v battery each.
Results were interesting - early in the morning and overcast days, the Unisolar amorphous panel out[performed the other 2 despite being rated as the least powerful. One hot sunny days the monocrystaline was the winner - but only just. Over the course of a month in Sydney, the total outputs were pretty similar. It vindicated Unisolar's boasts about extracting more power in low light conditions, and the lack of glass meant they were extremely tough. BUT the old drawback of efficiency meant that they were huge for the output. It you had the space, then in my opinion, they were the bees knees.
This panel can put out close to 100 watts ruclips.net/user/postUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg when positioned in the appropriate southernly direction, tilted to the optimal angle for your latitude/date, and connected to a higher capacity device than a 500. The built in kickstand angle is a fixed at 50 degrees. Up to 20% more power can be output by selecting the actual date and latitude optimal angle.The 500 will only input 3.5A maximum at 18 volts for 63 watts. Some of the excess power from the panel can be fed into a USB battery bank, charged directly from the panel while also charging a 500. This will allow you to harvest as much as 63 + 15 = 78 watts.If this panel is used to charge a larger device, such as the power station, then its full output potential can be realized.
Great putting it in understandable language. And thanks for not asking for like before the information was given.
I wanted to thank you for the idea of PVC pipe solar panel stand. I did a slight Mod. but your design was great and saved me lots of money. I used it for 2 full size panels and used 1" and 3/4" pvc. Works Great. Thanks (didn't know where else to post thx)
So happy to hear that it worked out well for you! Appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment 😊
We have a 100w panel for our Microcamper which I attach to the roof with suction cups which allows me to move it - for example onto the windscreen facing the sun in the morning/evening.
When we’re driving it goes inside and we charge the power station with the alternator.
The panel can get 80+ watts and everything between 0 and 80 and keeps the power station charged when we’re parked up.
We are in the north of the UK and my experience has been in March and April.
Victoria Australia. Four years ago I installed a 3.75 kW = 14 Panels at 250 Watt each. Worked out the math in advance it should pay itself off in 3-5 years. If it did I would upgrade. It did in 4 years or less so that's the sell on me to upgrade. I now have 24 panels diverged facing East, North and west. It works very impressive when its sunny in summer but! I now have live monitoring with this upgrade with battery system. Its shocking to see how much the power drops as soon as a cloud passes over. Then we have had mostly cloud and rain through this last winter the system is making up for losses of sunlight. Its like it produces near nothing under heavy cloud weather its such a shame really. My new 12 panels are 450 watt each. Its auto calculations say I'm 25% self efficient at these weather conditions so that's not that bad really. I'm waiting to see how high that gets through the next year etc,
bottom line is your 4.3 Kw made roughly 65 cents worth of power using 15 cents per Kw for the calculation. If you are paying 25 cents per Kw then just over a $1 total. In a year (weather pending) you might make about $36 worth of power. What's your payback time versus cost? (you didn't mention cost)
A conservative estimate / rule of thumb, is for every 1000 watts of solar panels, you will get 4,000 watt hours per day.
So 100 watts of solar panel is about 400 watt hours per day give or take (good quality monocrystalline panels new or used).
Nice experiment test, in here Indonesian country. The 100 Wp solar panel can produce 70 - 80 Watt Average, using MPPT solar charge controller.
Ah that's interesting, thanks for sharing!
Ideally, you should orient the panels perpendicular to the sun. That is if you put a square on the surface of the panel, it should not make a shadow. Of course the apparent position of the sun will change, and this is what makes sun trackers attractive. For a rough estimate, tilt your panel at the same angle as your latitude. Georgia is located between 34.9° and 30.6° North, so you should have a tilt somewhere between those two values. If you are in Atlanta, in the spirng, for example, use 33° and orient the panel due south. Your current setup appears to have a tilt of about 25° The tilt can also be adjusted for the season: In summer, subtract 12°, ie 21° and in winter, add 12° for a tilt of 45°.
Side note. I have a solar can heater that runs into one of my upstairs windows. It's tilted at a 30 degree angle to match the sun during the winter months.It raises the air temp running through it by around forty to fifty degrees without a fan using just convection air movements. Maximum output is around five hours per day during the winter and will produce some heat even on overcast days while it's freezing outside.
This was great. I just got my setup going and playing around trying to figure this exact information out. Dec 14th in Virginia is a really bad time to test solar. I was disappointed I was only getting about 14 watts and wasnt sure I had this right. Based on this video, looks like I'm on track. Thanks!
Your 100 W rated panel produced 4310 W-hrs over 240 hrs so it produced about 18% of its theoretical output (4310/(100*240). For a grid power system, about 80% of the time it would need a backup power source. Or, 5 panels could be deployed to charge a battery. Since levelized battery storage costs are about twice that of panels, to get a 100% reliable equivalent system would cost 15 times the cost of a panel (1 panel plus twice that for battery storage per panel). If a natural gas or nuclear plant were to be making up the difference, it would have to be continuously adjusting it’s power level to match supply and demand which is a very inefficient way to run these plants. None of these costs are factored in to the cost of solar panels when the claim of cheap solar energy is made.
I have solar panels on my roof and it’s worked out well. However, I got a lot of tax and financial incentives from the government and local utility, I live in southern California where it is almost always sunny and I got the system basically at cost since my wife works for the solar panel company that supplied the system.
This assumes the grid has the same consumption 24/7. It does not. Energy consumption is high during the daytime, especially on workdays.
Conventional power plants can provide power 24/7, but must be built to keep up with peak demands. This results in under-utilization at night. The result are cheaper prices at night.
Solar will invert this. Prices will be low around noon, and high at night. The cheapest prices will be noon on a sunny weekend day.
Mate no where other than the arctic and antarctic circle has sunlight 24 hours a day..
Was looking to get solar panels, but for what they said I'd need, I'd be paying 350 a month for 20 years to pay for it. But after 20 years, id paying nothing.
But seeing as how i average less than that a month on electric bill and have a car payment, just wasn't worth it.
I was also surprised to get more than 100 watts from a 100 watt panel. The way this happens, is when you have the combination of direct sunlight and some clouds near the sun. Those clouds are illuminated by sunlight that would ordinarily not reach your solar panel, but once the sun illuminates them, some of that light adds to the direct sunlight that your panel sees. It's kind of like having an extra Sun or two.
I also think there can be other deflection of objects, in particular windows or shining and light painted structures in the right angle and size. Ive had the same readings of exceeding the performance stats.
Another major factor is that the panel is often cool when the sun is behind clouds, and hasn't had a change to heat up when the sun comes out from the clouds. Every *C above 25*C often has a 0.3% to 0.5% drop in output, so the panel heating from 30*C to 50*C could drop the output by 10%. Of course, the extra sunlight increases the output so its a balance.
The panel can do that because a new panel actually puts out considerably more electricity than its rating, so that, at the end of the warrantee period, it is still putting out its official rating (see my explanation, above). When attached to a household system, the output of the panel is regulated so as not to over stress the inverter or battery bank to which it is attached. Since this was simply attached to a meter, the regulation of the output didn't matter.
Were you as surprised when you realized a 12V battery is actually 14 volts!
It's true - one company that I know had a customer with a South facing roof overlooking the sea - he was getting almost double what he should have been getting.
Also you should see the performance of a solar panel when it is -20° outside and it is perfectly sunny and windy.
Well done. Straight forward and to the point.
to capsulize , 1m²(10square feet) solar panel allows you to light up the bulb of your grandmother's old refrigerator
(you know, the one where we don't see anything when we open the door!)yes a single bulb between 20 and 60 watts!...and this between 11 in the morning and 4 p.m. in the afternoon.
The numbers appear very plausible for spring/summer season. Here in Germany, I operate a small "insula network" independent from regular power grid. Reason is that I want to supply some few very small devices independently from the regular grid. Power source is just a small 80 Wp panel, and I actually need only about 50-65 Wh per day. Nominal battery capacity is 1280 Wh, and in reality I can get something about 1100 Wh out of it. This setup is sufficient to power the small devices connected there for most of the year. Only in a period of approx. 6 weeks in the winter, it's necessary to charge the battery from the grid. Here, typical daily results from the small 80 Wp panel are 40 Wh on real bad days, and 400 Wh on optimal days. The panel, however, isn't optimally adjusted to catch as much sunlight as possible. I'm living in some rented apartment, so the pane is just is attached to an outer wall here below a window, and orientation is to the western side. In summary, that "insula network" does exactly the job for which I've done that setup.
The entire setup is up and running for 27 months now and is working reliably.
I’m looking to install a solar panel system on a future project, since I’m in Quebec I experience a lot of different skies. Your video today was most interesting thanks 🙏
I have a question for you, please... I have a Starlink and use a small generator to power it. The problem is, when the generator runs out of gas, the Starlink loses its connection. I find when the Starlink resets, I lose a constant connection and often my calls are affected. I'm trying to find a solution that will allow me to run my Starlink 24 hours a day. Any bright ideas? I'm looking into the Jackery power bank with solar power panels, but I'm not sure what's going to be best here. I don't even mind plugging in my generator into the power bank once a day. I really just need a constant signal while I'm at my vacation for high-quality business calls.
Hey Alex, I really enjoyed this video and your video running a fridge on 100ah lithium battery - I predict you are going to gain a lot of followers if you keep producing fun, interesting science type videos.
Wow! Thanks, Paddy!
As a techie, I have 2 problems. The variabilities ,as others have said, are just too great to make solar cost effective in most cases. And please don't throw back at me that we have to save the planet.
My other problem, your comparison using an i phone on power usage I find a bit strange. Thats pretty low power conpared to most household useage.
Here is a third point as a post script. Regardless of the design, there will be an output level below which the panels will not be able to charge any batteries etc. This must be taken into account re efficiency.
You can easily buy a Charge Controllers capable of ~150v input and then buy panels enough to put in series to get VOC up in the neighborhood of 120v or whatever and you will ALWAYS have minimum voltage pretty much before the sun even gets up over the horizon in the AM to charge a 48v battery bank.
"there will be an output level below which the panels will not be able to charge any batteries" This is literally a non-issue if you build out your setup anything remotely close to correctly.
My lifepo4 battery started charging off a 1500 watt array at 6:03AM this morning... in Montana, at a rate of about 2 watts. That was well before Sun Rise. And I can say that with certainty as I look at my victron solar charge controller's logs, of which it holds the last 30 days worth of data.
So other words I can run a light bulb in a shed. Gotcha! 👍
Definitely
Additionally, even when you are not in the shed.
So... what does that actually mean? "300-500 watt hours per day" doesn't mean anything to me (or, I suspect, to most people). How does it compare with the grid? Or in terms of running heating, lighting, A/C etc in a house? Telling us how many times it would charge a phone is meaningless.
Watts is an instantaneous measure of power. Watthours is a measure of power across time.
A 60 watt lightbulb uses 60 watts. If you left the 60 watt light on for only 30mins, then you used only 30watthours. The same bulb being on for one hour will use 60watthours. For ten hours it will use 600watthours (0.6kwh). This is how your electric company bills you... by the kwh (1,000watthours = 1kwh). You could glance at your electric bill and see the kwh you are paying for every month to get an idea of how many panels you'd need to replace what you pay them. It would, at the very least, give you a much clearer picture of what you're looking at.
Anyway, 500watthours [0.5kwh] (the most a 100 watt panel could realistically produce across an entire day) is neat, for like a science project, or to keep a small battery topped off, being able to blast a small stereo system on a boat on a lake for hours without draining a battery. I don't think most people would buy a single 100 watt panel to do anything particularly serious around the house, though. You're usually putting at least a few panels into an array (connected together). You can buy two 100watt panels for like $160 dollars on amazon (twice the 300-500watthours per day figure if you buy two, obviously).
Anyway, if we assume you have all the necessary equipment (inverter, battery, etc as necessary), the 500 watthours (the total power produced by the single 100 watt panel in an entire single optimal day) could run most deep freezers for 6 hours. It would run a Window Unit on full tilt for ~25-30mins (depending on power draw of the exact window unit). It would run a 1,000 watt microwave for 30mins. It would charge your cell phone like 20 times from dead to full. It would run a 12 watt LED lamp for like 40 hours. It would run most 60" TVs for something close to 5 hours.
Heat and Air Conditioning will generally be a house's main consumer of electricity.
I have 720 watts of solar on my van using 4 matching panels and I average around 450-500 watts input at any given time on a decent day. I was expecting a bit more but they are flat mounted with no tilt mechanism, which I may add in the future.
When I was installing SCADA systems in solar plants it was not unusual for the output of the plant to go from 100% down to 20% in less than two minutes when a cloud came floating by. Fortunately these were only a 30 MW plants tied to a very stiff power grid. However, I can’t imagine how a control center is going to be able to follow the load if the grid has a lot of solar plants connected to it without sufficient spinning reserve from fossil or nuclear energy plant. Batteries might help but I see black outs in our future!
Honestly, this is why small storage but matching output batteries should be installed alongside solar farms, E.g. a 100MW solar farm should have 100MW/50MWh battery smooth the output.
Well now, them there clouds may be shading one solar plant, but the others just a few miles (or km) up the road and down the road, are not experiencing the same shading at the same time. So your observation is in isolation of the real world scenario.
I have never spent time at a really large solar plant so maybe cloud coverage doesn’t effect the whole plant but I know it effects 30MW plants pretty severely in Georgia and north Florida. I have been at large Wind Turbine sights in Texas where wind has unexpectedly died out or never appeared and the power markers have had to scramble to find enough on line fossile reserve to make up the deficit. Since they are buying that power at spot prices the cost can be pretty high. Luckily there was enough spinning reserve available to make up the difference regardless of cost.
Hey no problem, every time there is a cloud cover and solar energy production drops the wind picks up and wind generation power goes up!
You can lose ~20% efficiency if the panel is hot. 90 degree day ambient likely means well over 100 degrees on the surface of the panel itself. This is just the nature of transporting electricity and more or less applies in all areas of electrical transportation. Electric Companies deal with this issue also where on hot days, their efficiency to transport the power to you is less (which means more power is burned up just trying to get it to you in the heat).
Panels are rated for 77F basically always. Industry Standard. If the panel says it's 100 watts, it means it's a 100 watt panel in 77F direct high noon kind of sun light.
Shade, Clouds, debris, bird poop, etc can all inhibit the power generated from a panel noticeably. Really dark clouds, like the nastiest of storms is trying to roll in on you, can take power production down to 5% if you're lucky. Full cloudy day where the clouds are whiter, thinner and you can still kinda see your own shadow, power can vary around 20 to 50% in my experience.
DC voltage pushed from a solar panel will also lose voltage across the distance of your wire. If you're running a 30 meter wire vs a 100 meter wire, you will lose more voltage on the 100 meter run than the 30meter run. Wire gauge can also affect losses. Using a thicker wire will lose less voltage across larger distances. Plenty of resources online to help figure this, but please do not get trapped on using a resource that's designed very specifically for boating. I see charts in solar communities all the time and people saying which wire gauge to run and different things and then they link a chart as there supporting evidence and you can clearly see on the bottom it says something about "the chart may not cover all unique situations on a boat". Those charts are very specifically for 12/24v systems only. The voltage tolerances can be critical in boating due to how it might be your life out on the water or due to the amp draw that can be happening at those low voltages to get big watts out of the system depending on high lumen light use, stereo, or other equipment and those charts are designed to get the most power across the boat with minimal losses per an industry standard. You can reference that chart but it's pretty pointless to do so if you're running a 100v solar array, as an example. You can move a LOT more power at 100v than at 12v a lot more efficiently, a lot less heat, a lot thinner wire, etc.
Volts * Amps = Watts. Volts * Amphours = Watthours. Watts is an instantaneous measure of power. Watthours is a measure of power across time. A 60 watt light bulb uses 60 watts. If the light was left on for an hour, it did not use 60 watts, but rather it used 60watthours. If the same light was left on for 10hours, the light used 600watthours. Lots of people mess this up when communicating or trouble shooting or any number of things, and it can sometimes make it difficult to help because they aren't communicating effectively. If you buy an all-in-one system (Bluetti, Echoflow, etc) and you see two different ratings on it like 2,200 watts and 2kwhs, they are not interchangeable, and they do not mean the same thing. Most likely the 2,200 watts I exemplified is in referenced to the inverter's capability. the 2,200 watt rating is telling you that the inverter can deal with you pulling 2,200 watts out of it. The 2kwh rating, which may also read as 2,000wh instead (it's the same exact thing: 2,000wh = 2kwh) is probably telling you how much power the battery can store. Those are two very different characteristics. You could have a 200wh battery and a 600watt inverter in an all-in-one product making these "solar generators", as they are often marketed, and the product page might not be super clear about which characteristic is for which part... but if you see the "h" for hours, that is telling you there's a time component to that rating. So if it says 200wh and 600watts and you can't figure out which is which or what it's trying to tell you or how it can be both... the 200wh (watts across time) is almost certainly the battery and the 600 watts (instantaneous) is almost certainly the inverter capability.
Colder temperatures will increase the voltage produced by the panel. If your solar charge controller is rated for 145v and you purchase panels to get you to a 140v VOC, you're risking over volting your charge controller in the Winter. Obviously this scales with the temperature, which means it will depend where you live. Increasingly colder temps can mean increasingly higher volts. If you see -30F temps, you probably don't want to push more than maybe 110v VOC on a 145v charge controller.
My experience in northern latitudes of the states is that a 1500 watt array of Renogy 100 watt panels will generate around 9.5kwh in a day as a best case scenario. I can see this fairly easily as I use a Victron charge controller and it logs power production per day with a 30 day history.
In addition to the 20% hit to your power generation from the panels because of heat, you should also expect that when it comes time to converting that DC power you've stored up in some kind of battery to Alternating Current, you will have inverter efficiencies to deal with also. A lot of inverters will not have more than maybe 92% efficiency across varying loads averaged. The simple math, I usually just subtract 10% off from whatever power you generate, because you'll definitely lose something in that ball park converting it from DC to AC. So if a 100 watt panel makes 80 watts on a really hot day, you'll get maybe 72 usable watts out of it once you've run it through an inverter.
I know some of this stuff sounds like it really sucks or it's a scam or whatever people want to say or think once they realize some of this stuff, but like I said... even your electric company has to deal with a lot of this same type of stuff. It's not free to move power around, there's losses. And those losses are bigger the hotter the day it is.
Signed,
Self Researched, Self Setup, 2700 watts total in panels, 22kwh total of battery, did not go to school for this stuff, just played with electricity taking things apart since I was a kid and got into this stuff on my own, originally out of curiosity, and then later to see what I could make of it all.
I probably could've easily tripled my text trying to explain stuff about solar. Series, Parallel, startup resistors, dc to dc converters, soft-starters, pure-sine vs modified sine inverters, transfer switches, etc, etc, etc.
All those figures don't mean a thing. What can the panel be used for in the home?
It will produce approximately 4-6 cents of power daily on average. That's what it means in practical, real world terms.
"What can it be used for?" wire it to your house and lower your power bill by $1.25-$1.85 a month.
This is a fabulous product that I would buy again
Thank you so much mate. As I was palnning to buy 100 w solar panel ,this video is exactly what I was searching for. Thanks you for your effort
You're welcome!
Why a 100w only... You need higher for better output...
@@mariabaptista-pt I'm just thinking of a budget mini setup to charge my phone , run a dc evaporative cooler .
@@mariabaptista-pt Then you need to install larger PV panels or multiples of the 100w units. The theoretical upper limit on PV power output is roughly 1 kilowatt per square meter. This assumes a PV panel mounted on Earth, it grows as you get closer to the sun and diminishes as you further from the sun.
@mariabaptista-pt As a test. Would you purchase a 16KW solar array of panels just to learn about "solar" advantages and disadvantages? At that point, deciding against solar power would be way too late. No refunds.
During days of heavy overcast (not even snowing, just overcast) in December up here at 47 degrees North I see about 7% of rated nameplate capacity. Add to that the day is only 8 hours long and output is hurting in the winter.
I'm the same down here in Southern Spain - in Summer I'm feeding 7-12KWh a day into the Grid. In Winter on a sunny day I can barely fill the battery - the days are shorter, the sun is lower in the sky and there are more days when we have some clouds. As for clouds - on the days when you have white clouds and you can almost see the sun trying to get through I get about 20% of rated power, on grey days maybe 10%. Usually in Summer the system hits 85-90% of rated capacity.
your power output is closely matching your hours of usable sunshine. Great validations of on already known number. It would have been more interesting if you were to compare a couple of different brands of panels, but overall, well done.
Very good test. Thanks for posting. Awesome videos. I could have swore that your channel and had like five hundred subscribers a few weeks ago. Crazy progress.!
Thank you, Ray!
4,31 kWh for a heavy duty hour for a regular household would imply you can cook, use a microwave oven, coffee maker, do a short load of laundry and vacuum some stuff. In addition o use a PC with peripherals for approx. 4 hours. Good going, you charged enough for one half day of my regular workload days in little less than 10 days. Considering the cost of setting up a system to sustain my usual workload I guess I would need some 10-20 12V batteries at 75 Ah, 10 charge controllers at 30 A rating, 20 solar panels at 150 W each and a chunk of cable.
In my locale at a reasonable priced cost of equipment we're talking 190 USD per panel, 10 USD per charge controller, approx. 50 USD cable and between 900-1800 USD of batteries.
The whopper will likely be the inverter required costing some 1 000 USD to reach reasonable levels. (Sum total 5850 - 6750 USD)
Cost drops per kWh over time until failure rates increase at aging of equipment but the first 43 kWh's would run me approx. 157 USD per kWh.
Anyone have questions about the reasoning?
Mind you I am not saying it is a bad technology, just that the step to enter is leaving quite a lot to be desired.
1:50 Okay.... But how are we supposed to tell you what kind of output we get from our Solar Panels? What tools do I need to even check?
Watch a YT video titled: Measuring Solar Panel Output | Ultimate DIY Guide
I’m in the northern UK - near Newcastle upon Tyne - which is mostly cloudy. A sunny day is like hitting the jackpot for my roof solar rig.
Thanks, great info. Love to see a comparison between a pwm controller and a mppt controller in low watt application.
MPPT does a better job. I've tried both here with a small 80 Wp panel, and with MPPT I effectively get about 15 % more charging power than with a PWM module.
Simply said: PWM fails on cloudy/rainy days. With MPPT regulation, you almost always get at least a little bit of power from your panel.
@@danielrodding8522budget issues
Any idea why my victron mppt 100/20 only bulk charges a depleted 12v lead battery for a few seconds then goes into absorption ... voltage raises from 10v to 14.4v within about 10 seconds then jumps from bulk to absorption so it then starts slow charging... at a painfully slow rate... on a 70% dis charged 105ah 12v lead battery. Im puzzled
Great video. I think the big take home is you need battery storage on your solar panel(s) for it to be really useful.
I have 18 400w panels on my on grid solar system with a 10Kwh battery.
Even on a cloudy day my battery is recharged just after lunch time.
By morning my battery is down to 50% after my fridge and freezer has run all night.
However rainy days are the killer. Two rainy days in a row and I’m drawing from the grid.
Luckily I’m in Australia…
I think u can add more panels
@
Rain absolutely kills the panels ability to generate anything.
I pay about $100 per quarter to be on the grid which is about a dollar per day.
That is mostly the service charge and not buying power.
The alternative is to buy a decent backup generator at around $5000 plus fuel.
So it would take a very long time to make that a worth while option.
So my backup generator is on the grid 🤠
@@DavoShed Why so much for a generator?There are cheaper ones that surely would do the job? In any case, rainy days are a real thing to consider, as well as cloudy days.
I have a 100 watt solar panel installed (original equipment) on my 2019 Flagstaff E-Pro travel trailer connected to a Victron 100/30 SCC charging a 400 AH lithium battery. The panel has only been able to produce about 65 watts at peak. I guess I need to upgrade my panel to get the kind of results that you are getting. I have never seen over 70 watts from this panel.
Interesting...in this video I'm using a newer 9 busbar (9BB) panel and I see really good output from those types, typically to 85-90 watts in good sun as shown in the video.
Also if the panel is mounted horizontally on your vehicle I'd suggest cleaning it semi-regularly since rain doesn't do as good a job cleaning horizontal panels.
@@footprinthero Thanks for the reply! Yes, the panel is mounted horizontally but I will take your suggestion to clean it. I never thought of that!
There's a rule of thumb ratio in the solar industry of Panel Watts to Yearly kWh. Your location determines the ratio. Here in New England it is about 1:1 Meaning the 100 Watt panel would make about 100 kWh over the course of a year. Places like Arizona would be much higher. No just because they have more sunny days, but the sun also strikes the earth with more Watt per meter squared. New England is about 800 w/m2. AZ can be as high as 1,200 to 1,300 in places.
This depends if your panels are fixed mounted, too. If you have ground mount simple setup you can face the panel manually more to the East in the AM and adjust through the day. There are systems that can automate the movement of the panels, too. Fixed mounted panels on a East or West slope of a house's roof will be the worst for efficiency since half the day it'll be facing the wrong way for good sunlight.
What does your location determine?
@@cameronbateau6510 A relative indication of how much power you'll produce from a given panel.
Like Arizona will yield much more power than Vermont for the same panel.
More sunny days and more watts per sq meter when it is sunny
How did he measure the wattage? Have a fixed load and record the voltage over time?
ruclips.net/video/btIJWYor8KA/видео.htmlsi=31FOWfvMg6P53QN9
Doing some boondock camping with our RV this summer. Thanks for the great video and useful info!
Yes, it was definitely that 1 or 2 blades of grass that were denying the crucial photons from collapsing into the critical section photoelectric array and thereby preventing the panel from reaching 100W.
Without by-pass diodes, it doesn't take much partial shading to ruin the power production of the whole panel. It's almost like kinking a water hose. Even though the kink is only 2inches of the whole 100 foot hose, it ruined the water pressure through the whole hose. Most modern panels will have at least some of these by-pass diodes (kind of like adding a 2nd hose), which can help a lot, but adds a bit to the cost.
Awesome!! Interesting to see such a range
And in just 10 days of testing!
I have 2 180 solar panel each that only produces 80w max power here in Nigeria, what could be the problem? I use 1, 220ah tabular battery and mppt solar charge controller.
You looked blazed @ 0:23 my man!😂 ✌️
So, do you buy solar panels to charge cell phones or do you buy solar panels to run your house. This 500 watt a day production wouldn’t even run my shaver or hairdryer. My home here in north texas runs around 30 KWh a day which is 30,000 watts. Nothing like natural gas produced energy from mega power plants.
Please check the efficacy of PPTS with it and without and what is the difference in output
I’m looking at using a small solar panel to power grow lights to grow food inside. What size would I need? I’m totally new to this. Any pointers would help. Links to products too
Great test. Definitely want to make the best use of the energy when there is a lot of sun, and have backup plans for when there isn't.
Ok thanks for the info. But whats your opinion on using this for say: power a basic wifi or t.v. or a single household appliance? And for how many hours?
Important detail: What's the size of that solar panel (in square meters)?
Hi I’m Angelo from Maryland can you do this same experiment with mirrors attached around all the sides to see if wattage production goes up?
Do high heat affects?? Here in the sunny Florida have issues with mine not charging too much.. Sun its perfect but way too hot.
Can you take a solar panel and use a dc-dc buck boost converter to up the voltage to 50v from the 15 to 20v to increase wattage?
I had a 2250.w system in Australia. It often produced 2650w
I have 4 12 volt batteries in motor home and need to charge them when in storage will 1. 100watt penal work
Thanks friend, great experiment! What program did you use to collect data? Sorry if you mentioned this in the video, English is my second language.
I’m curious to know what brand PV and converter are you using
I have a 100w Renogy PV panel with a Bioenno Charger controller connected to a 20ah Bioenno LiPo4 battery.
Was in panels connected to charging a battery during this days
Hi what system did you use to keep track of to output?
For us non-tech guys, how about putting this in real life explanations. How long will that run my refrigerator? Or 10 light bulbs? How much did the panel cost and how much electricity, in dollars, did it save/produce? thanks.
I have a "350W" panel that typically generates about 4A (basically 100W). It's actually looks about the same size as yours, so I assume the Chinese retailers inflate the power to sell them.
What would I need to make a solar power system to power my 3.5kw pool heater
How much would this panel "out out" if the waste heat was extracted for use?
This is an area the PV Panel industry needs to invest R&D time and money into.
Hi everyone, expert or close to expert advice wanted. A 38’ Dutchmen trailer powering stove, electric, heater in the winter, t.v, lights and miscellaneous gadgets. What should I buy for the whole set up?
Thanks.
I have a Biolite 100w solar panel, and after almost 6 hrs today in full sun (georgia) I only gained 20% before the base charger over heated and quit charging (biolite 600). I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Input was never more than 40 Watts. Started with 21% battery. Ended with 47%
Seems like you should be asking Biolite what is wrong with your Biolite 600.
@bobhilder1469 I've tried. All week. Over a dozen emails. "Someone will get back with me" No phone number.
I did learn a good bit from your video. Thank you.
@@barbshubert9667 I'm sorry to hear that Biolite is not being supportive. FYI, I'm not the creator of this video. I just watched it and commented on it.
It also depends on your latitude. Take it down to the equator and you'll get more power. Take it to say 80 deg north or south you will get less power.
Very nice video and very clear. Thanks for making the video. 😊
How do you find the watts on your cellphone? What app
❤❤ REQUEST: Hi , please 🙏 do a video with night time experience. Using LED lights to power the solar and results over a week. Also include which gadgets can be powered. 🎉🎉🎉 Thanks 🙏🙏🙏
nice vlog straight forward unlike other videos 12 mins or more do the same hahaha.. save my time.. thank you new subscriber from Philippines mabuhay! mamatay!
Doesn't mamatay mean death?
I aim panels toward morning sun and toward evening sun. Result: Longer charges instead of strongest charges. The night battery has a shorter no charge time. The battery is the weak link. Also, do not connect lead batteries in parallel. Sooner or later they get into a voltage fight. Don't force everything to run off a pure sine wave inverter. Use 12 volt appliances. Keep your 12 volt chest freezers in ECO mode for longest appliance life. Success in a solar world.
Great video man 👍🐸🚴♂️☕️
so 431 wh per day? what does that compare to an avenger home usage?
How much more power would be generated if the panel was turned to track the sun during the day? That's what I do with the one that keeps my camper battery topped off.
This can actually be a tricky question: Do you manually adjust it ever so often or do you use an automated system? If the system is automated, the draw to run the system must be included and measure the net output for the difference to have any practical applications.
I been playing with a renogy solar system I built with 2 renogy x100 watt panels in series and a renogy 20 amp rover elite mppt controller and been seeing 140-150 watts.
Southern Manitoba, Canada.
500 Watts a day , saving under 15 pence a day , (my electricity company is 28 pence per KWh )
What is the price of the equipment
Sure would like to see how well your panel works on Jan1 in Alaska???
hi! how did you conect with your phone? tnx for the answer!
Awesome video and commentary, thank you
You're welcome!
Great video. Cloudy days really kills the watts! 😳
The day to day. Amiability is the real issue. On low days what takes over? And if it’s wind and the wind isn’t blowing 😳
That’s why we need a mix.
Can you store that energy in a battery if you want to use in other days?
where did u get all this info -- an app explain
Foldable Dokio 100watt panel max uptill now 63Watt per hour
what software and solar pannel are you using?
i have a theory to increase solar pannel effeciency and i have no idea how to set it up
At about $100 for the solar panel, and 14 cents per KWH in Georgia, not count all the hardware, setup cost and maintenance pluse no winter season, your payback time would be over 4.5 years
What a remarkable Test.
3:15 Isn’t 4.31 kWh = 4310Wh? K = Kilo = 1000. 4.31 x 1000 = 4310.
Anyway, I got 6 of Renology 100W, connected in a way of 2-in-series x3. On a sunny day, the system generates maximally 493W at an instant. I did not actually calculate total daily input, as the power input fluctuates due to sun light intensity. Here I am in South Carolina, just FYI. Forgot to mention: one of the 3 pairs was laid only about 20-degree, while the other two pairs were about 30 degrees.
We stored the energy in Bluetti ac200max and output to transfer switch, connecting to our breaker switch.
Yeah 4.31 kWh = 4310 Wh, and I tested the panel for 10 days so that is 431 Wh per day.
Awesome, sounds like a powerful setup you got there. How do you like the Bluetti? Been thinking about trying out some solar generators
How much does a 1Kg dumbbell weights? lets find out
Bravo! Subscribed. Please more content around this topic! Thanks
Nice video, Good work.
I’ve got 4-320 watt and 3-315 watt panels charging 6-6volt AGM 460 batteries and when I have full sun my batteries are fully charged in 2.5 hours. Winter here with less sun it takes much longer.
Great content mate! Keep going! Already subscribed
Thank you! 😊
Would you have the hourly data, wondering if solar tracing would make a big enough difference to pay for the motors etc?
Never. Billions of panels all around the world are mounted fixed.
Think only how massive any tilting mechanism would be needed to withstand a storm. And now imagine you install 50 panels on your home and want to tilt each one...
Dove hai comprato il pannello fotovoltaico quello del video? Di che marca si chiama il pannello fotovoltaico?