Has anyone any experience of Solar Panels? I want a greenhouse/shed 50-60 feet away from the house and have been told that it will be very expensive to have electricity laid that far away from the house. Would a solar panel be a viable option? Would it be any cheaper and would it provide enough power for lighting, small amount of heating and occasional electric for kettle/radio?
Solar Panel vs standard electric supply for garden
- Thread starter Sadie
- Start date
Sponsored Links
B
breezer
the other thing is if they would be for a green house, where would you put them ? on the roof? (no use for the green house)
as a rule solar panels are not (yet) that good, and you would need load of them, also they only produce dc.
as a rule solar panels are not (yet) that good, and you would need load of them, also they only produce dc.
Sponsored Links
B
breezer
Damocles said:
could always have one of these
i was being serious, they are used on boats / caravans, cost nearly £1k though. and they also only produce dc, could have an inverter though.
edited to add
actually this one produces ac, but to use it without its regulator and rectifier would probably invalidate warranty
But some of the impurities might not be. If you are going to get a wind generator then overall best to get one of those that will generate AC and use it o power the house as well. Then you get one of those meters which also runs backward, so you can sell electricity to the rec.
For occasional lighting and a radio you can use a low voltage supply to your greenhouse. You can get away with almost anything that way. You should be able to find almost everything you need at a decent sized camping/caravan shop: 12 volt power supply, 12 volt fluorescent lights, the lot. You could even have a portable TV out there. Your heating will have to be gas or paraffin.
You can even eliminate the cable if you're prepared to lug a battery up and down the garden for charging - but I would rather pay for cable than batteries.
You can even eliminate the cable if you're prepared to lug a battery up and down the garden for charging - but I would rather pay for cable than batteries.
2
2scoops0406
Damocles said:
Which impurities ?
2C4H10 + 13O2 = 8C02 + 10H20
Butane Oxygen Carbon Dioxide Water.
God I hope I've balanced that right
It's been a long time.Except most gas powered greenhouse heaters apparently use propane ...... Doh!!!
B
Big_Spark
An Engineers view:
Solar Panels are great at what they do if used for the correct purpose. Contrary to the popular misconception, as has been eluded to in this thread by others, PVP's (Photo-Voltaic Panels) are very efficient compared to say 10 years ago. The Modern High density poly panels are great. I use one to power my laptop when out in the Sun during Spring/Summer and Autumn. Nice 20V output from a panel measuring 980x580mm, effective surface area of about 1.6sqm. The loading of this panel is good to about 4.2A in the best conditions, and averages about 3.4A in less than ideal conditions. (These outputs are at 20V DC)
The key to using PVP's is to know EXACTLY what loading you will place upon your installation and for what period of time. This is extremely crucial as the batteries you choose will have absolute sway over whether you achieve your goal or not.
There is no point choosing batteries whose charge density will not allow you full use of the equipment you intend to operate on the installation, further if you do not choose the panels that give an output capable of charging the batteries back to full in the time reasonably expected to be the "off" time, then again you will have a problem.
It is not as simple as buying a PVP, inverter, some old car batteries and wiring it all together.
There is also the cost to consider, high quality panels are not cheap, each panel, like the one I have, can cost from £400 to £2000 depending on it's quality and capabilities, on top of this there is the cost of the inverter, you would need a high quality one for this type of installation, so the cheap Halford thro-away would not do, so here again you are looking at around £2500 if you want one to supply enough power for heating and a kettle.
Then there is the batteries. High quality, High density batteries are not cheap, and the number you would need to produce the power you want would likely add another £1000 to £2000 to the price of your project.
Even if you bought Mid-range everything, you would be expected to part with about £3500 for the panels required, £1200 for the Inverter (5Kva), and some £1400 for the batteries.
Total ...... £6100
It would be a laudable aim to reduce electricity use for environmental reasons, but it is hardly economic to do so on this scale.
You would expect a PVP installation to repay it's costs in about 15 to 20 years at todays prices, but for what your proposing, with the occasional use at full power, you would likely be looking at somewhere in excess of 50 years for payback.
I would simply pay for an SWA installation to the green house, it would be cheaper, 100% reliable, no expensive maintenance costs for the inverter and batteries to consider, and it is a darn sight cheaper.
Solar Panels are great at what they do if used for the correct purpose. Contrary to the popular misconception, as has been eluded to in this thread by others, PVP's (Photo-Voltaic Panels) are very efficient compared to say 10 years ago. The Modern High density poly panels are great. I use one to power my laptop when out in the Sun during Spring/Summer and Autumn. Nice 20V output from a panel measuring 980x580mm, effective surface area of about 1.6sqm. The loading of this panel is good to about 4.2A in the best conditions, and averages about 3.4A in less than ideal conditions. (These outputs are at 20V DC)
The key to using PVP's is to know EXACTLY what loading you will place upon your installation and for what period of time. This is extremely crucial as the batteries you choose will have absolute sway over whether you achieve your goal or not.
There is no point choosing batteries whose charge density will not allow you full use of the equipment you intend to operate on the installation, further if you do not choose the panels that give an output capable of charging the batteries back to full in the time reasonably expected to be the "off" time, then again you will have a problem.
It is not as simple as buying a PVP, inverter, some old car batteries and wiring it all together.
There is also the cost to consider, high quality panels are not cheap, each panel, like the one I have, can cost from £400 to £2000 depending on it's quality and capabilities, on top of this there is the cost of the inverter, you would need a high quality one for this type of installation, so the cheap Halford thro-away would not do, so here again you are looking at around £2500 if you want one to supply enough power for heating and a kettle.
Then there is the batteries. High quality, High density batteries are not cheap, and the number you would need to produce the power you want would likely add another £1000 to £2000 to the price of your project.
Even if you bought Mid-range everything, you would be expected to part with about £3500 for the panels required, £1200 for the Inverter (5Kva), and some £1400 for the batteries.
Total ...... £6100
It would be a laudable aim to reduce electricity use for environmental reasons, but it is hardly economic to do so on this scale.
You would expect a PVP installation to repay it's costs in about 15 to 20 years at todays prices, but for what your proposing, with the occasional use at full power, you would likely be looking at somewhere in excess of 50 years for payback.
I would simply pay for an SWA installation to the green house, it would be cheaper, 100% reliable, no expensive maintenance costs for the inverter and batteries to consider, and it is a darn sight cheaper.
B
Big_Spark
Damocles said:
On a domestic scale it is not economically feasible to do.
Most Wind turbines do not produce electricity at anything like that used in domestic premises, and to make things worse, you cannot simply plug into your local REC's service and connect a generator of any type to it to sell them power, all you would get would be a large phase to phase explosion if the two are not PERFECTLY in phase.
It is unfair I know, but the laws of physics are what they are, more's the pity.
If you had a group of private houses in a Rural setting that clubbed together to buy a Large 11Kv Turbine and the associated kit, then it would be practical and economical to sell electricity back to the local grid, however this is hardly a DIY project.
Was that meant to be 11kV or 11KW? anyway, that was the sort of thing I had in mind. Great garden feature.
Paraffin and as I understand it bottled gas heaters can be very good at killing potted plants. I don't know why exactly, but they do. Do plants suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning?
Paraffin and as I understand it bottled gas heaters can be very good at killing potted plants. I don't know why exactly, but they do. Do plants suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning?
2
2scoops0406
A lot of geenhouse heaters are parafin fuelled, if properly adjusted / ventilated they will not produce any carbon monoxide. In a greenhouse situation, any CO would probably disperse quite quickly, and CO as opposed to CO2 is lighter than air, mind you I wouldn't wish to put this to the test!!
But going back to the original post, I'd imagine that providing some suitable outside electrics would be your best and cheapest bet.
But going back to the original post, I'd imagine that providing some suitable outside electrics would be your best and cheapest bet.
Reminds me of exactly that happening with an installation many years back, the setup was two hefty rotary UPS rigs with 3' x 9" steel flywheels (hate to think what they weighed) they spun at thousands of RPMFWL_Engineer said:
and took approx 20-30 minutes to build up to speed before they could be brought online.
Because of the sensitive nature of what these machines were feeding a program of weekly testing of operation was brought in and it was up to the maintenance guys myself and others to comply with this test so the first ever test was scheduled and the Technical manager for the area came down on site to supervise and conduct the test.
UPS1 was online and supplying the sensitive equipment and UPS2 the backup was going to be the takeover in an experimental 'what if' situation
The main coupling busbar from these two machines was located in the sensitive area feeding distribution boards there.
This busbar being fed by two breakers one for each supply from the UPS's
Two control cabinets one for each machine were located in a different part of the building namely the plant room.
So communication was by walkie-talkie these cabinets housed all the speed sensing and phase alignment etc and each machine could talk to each other and take over if the other was out of it's set parameters.
according to drawings there were sensors on each leg of supply to the common busbar, so with both machines up to speed and one taking the load the test was put into procedure.
Part of the test was to see that the sensors were performing ok and local switching indeed worked with one ups only being allowed to take over when the other was happy it was within it's own parameters and spec.
when the test was now looking at the two breakers and the common busbar thwe idea was to switch on the remaining off breaker and watch the two cabinets talk and agree when the other shopuld take over.
Only trouble was, the sensors were included on the drawings but for an unknown reason had been omitted from the actual install.
The breaker was made with the belief that as described before one ups would allow the other to take on the supply and then both would be online together sharing the load.
Bang what actually happened was that UPS2 completely out of phase with UPS1 tried to stop it stone dead in it's tracks now with inertia the way it is, trying to stop an extremely fast spinning and extremely heavy flywheel from spinning suggests that the energy needs to go somewhere and boy did it! UPS1 was practically ripped out of it's concrete foundations and the funny bit was the manager was leaning on it at the time boy did he go white as a sheet! and because UPS1 was now out of it's operating parameters it decides it must shut down and promptly disconnects itself from supplying the sensitive area.
Wouldn't have been too bad if UPS2 because of it's efforts in trying to stop UPS1 hadn't itself also fallen outside it's parameters and it too promptly disconnected it's output leaving the computers in the sensitive area to all crash and trash the Hard Disks( the old computer suite tyes multi platter no parking jobbies) at around £30,000 each plus all the sensitive data on them that took ages to put on. all in all a costly exercise to which the final bill rolled in at £500,000
Luckily we couldn't be held to blame for the oversight but i've always wondered if the commisioning engineers may have copped the blame?
DIYnot Local
Staff member
If you need to find a tradesperson to get your job done, please try our local search below, or if you are doing it yourself you can find suppliers local to you.
Select the supplier or trade you require, enter your location to begin your search.
Are you a trade or supplier? You can create your listing free at DIYnot Local
Sponsored Links
