/g/'s thoughts on solar panels? Anyone work around/with

>>58360846
>Is it a worthwhile investment?
It can be but you need to live in a very, very sunny area, get a massive government subsidy, or be in a place with very high electricity costs, or some combination of these three.

Protectionist governments trying to protect domestic panel manufacturers by slapping tariffs on cheap chinese panels doesn't help.

>>58361156
>very very sunny area
This meme needs to die.

>>58361756
will they generate power if you live in a place where its cloudy all the time? Yes. Will they generate enough of it to make it a good investment? Probably not.

I'm implicitly assuming you're going to the trouble of solar panels because you want to save money on electricity, not because you're willing to spend money on green do-gooding.

>>58360846
>Is it a worthwhile investment?
If you don't want to be part of the centralized power grid...

>>58361756
It's true, though, if you don't have heavy government subsidies.
Where I live, even with energy being on the expensive side, and with some subsidies, due to the amount of sunlight, by the time you start seeing returns, you need to replace the panels.

>tfw born too aryan to live in energy-anarchism

Solar panels degrade over time, by the 10 year mark they generally no longer produce any power due to the sun damaging the cells. If you're able to get a large government subsidiary i.e 40% or more and you pay more than 25c for electricity then yes solar power is worthwhile but you need to cover your roof for it to be worthwhile to the point where your electricity bill significantly changes.

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>>58360846
i use a 150w panel and a 100ah battery up at my camp from march to november. runs lights, laptop, stereo, fan

>>58361864
>>58361864
Most modern panels have 25 year 80% efficiency rating. So unless you're throwing rocks and hammers at these panels they will work fine.

>>58361840
Very very sunny and very cloudy are very very different.

Solar panels work all season as long as sun is there. There are sites out here that calculate average annual sunlight. There are no place on earth where it's cloudy for more than few percentage of the time.

>>58362099
>Most modern panels have 25 year 80% efficiency rating.
Huh
Surely you mean that it will lose only up to 20% efficiency in 25 years, not that it has 80% actual efficiency.

>>58362011
Looks comfy as fuck anon.

OP if you are serious about getting solar panels you should talk to people who have actually used them or people who sell them. You mat get bad info around here because many people on 4chan consider solar useless on principle, even though it can be a practical purchase.

>>58362129
Same thing.

If original panel is rated at 20% then in 25 years it would be at 16%. 20% loss, 80% efficiency.

Ive seen panels for 29 cents per watt.

>>58362376
No you retard. When you are talking about solar panel efficiency that means its capability to convert sunlight into electricity. If you say
>25 year 80% efficiency rating
it sounds like it has, you know, 80% efficiency

Which is utter bullshit because the best solar panels that are not mass produced and exist solely for research still get less than 50%.

>>58362381
So I need $200 just to power up my PC assuming I can get the best deal?

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I helped push through creation of this at my college campus. Roughly 10kw ~ 1 US home. This project would have been amazing had we done it one budget. It has hooks for people to hang hammocks, and outlets to charge laptops/phones. And of course since it is on campus, there is wifi in the area. However, it was way over budget because of red tape in the construction and connection to our grid. This structure will pay for itself in about 50 years.

>>58362847
50 years seems a long time, how long would it have been without the red tape?
neat project anyway

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>>58362011
to elaborate on this a little:
crammed the battery, fuses, wiring, connectors into a marine battery box

charge controller is a used sunsaver 20a. 10a would've been enough and there are better controllers available these days, but the price was the absolute best at the time.

inverter is a suresine 300a. i saved up for this fucker while using some off the shelf piece of shit from canadian tire. it's pure sine wave (cleaner power for loads that are sensitive to that sort of thing), weather-sealed, NO FAN SPINNING 18" FROM MY EAR AT NIGHT

battery is a ct rebranded deep cycle. very important is that it's sealed, so as to not off-gas hydrogen

some advice to save power on small systems like this; run as much as you can directly off DC. favour stuff that wants 12v. for anything that wants odd voltages like 5/6/7.5/9, use a voltage converter instead of the supplied ac adapter

>>58362880
What happened is that we needed clearance to go underneath a state road to connect to our grid since we didn't use any sort of battery storage. Getting this clearance was impossible. So we rerouted farther up (much too far). Remove those costs and it would have paid for itself in 12 years. Panels are warrantied for 25 years.

If you are a civilian and thus capable of the tax credits this would have been a much better idea.

I live in a state where they pay you to install solar, feels good man.