Solar panels

tmosley

tmosley

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Joined
Jan 9, 2008
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WalMart online is having a solar cell clearance sale here: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10727814

$300 buys you 60 watts of amorphous solar cells and ALL the equipment you need to hook them up except for the batteries! It'll only cost me about $10,000 to outfit my whole house for solar using this stuff!

Amorphous silicone is fairly low quality, and the panels are very large, but they last for at LEAST 10 years, where the average useful life is apparently something like 20 years. I think this is a great chance for people to stock up on some. I'm buying one set for now, to make sure I can get it to work, and that it works as advertised (I will be using it to run my well). If it does, then I will outfit the whole house.

I'll post pics in this thread as I get things set up.

Anyone have any experience with these types of solar cells?
 
If you purchase the individual cells and put the panels together yourself you could get the cost close to $1 per watt.
 
tmosley said:
WalMart online is having a solar cell clearance sale here: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10727814

$300 buys you 60 watts of amorphous solar cells and ALL the equipment you need to hook them up except for the batteries! It'll only cost me about $10,000 to outfit my whole house for solar using this stuff!

Amorphous silicone is fairly low quality, and the panels are very large, but they last for at LEAST 10 years, where the average useful life is apparently something like 20 years. I think this is a great chance for people to stock up on some. I'm buying one set for now, to make sure I can get it to work, and that it works as advertised (I will be using it to run my well). If it does, then I will outfit the whole house.

I'll post pics in this thread as I get things set up.

Anyone have any experience with these types of solar cells?
Click to expand...

If you go ahead and do this, would you consider documenting how you do it and share?

Sounds like a cool project, I'd love to read about it.
 
It's going to cost us about the same, but we're paying close to 500.00 a month for electricity. :mad:
 
Deborah K said:
It's going to cost us about the same, but we're paying close to 500.00 a month for electricity. :mad:
Click to expand...
Wow... I only pay around $80 a month. You must have something that uses a lot of electricity. Electric water heater and clothes dryer would cause a lot of that.
If you have either of those, changing over to gas would help a lot.
 
Elwar said:
If you purchase the individual cells and put the panels together yourself you could get the cost close to $1 per watt.
Click to expand...

Have you personally done this before? Can you post a "building solar panels for dummies" tutorial? I'm interested.
 
I've read up a lot on solar panels and I'm sure it's relatively simple once you've got it down-pat, but it's overwhelming/intimidating upfront when you have no experience in this sort of thing. Not to mention that it's a pretty expensive experiment.
 
Dr.3D said:
Wow... I only pay around $80 a month. You must have something that uses a lot of electricity. Electric water heater and clothes dryer would cause a lot of that.
If you have either of those, changing over to gas would help a lot.
Click to expand...

Everything is gas. But we have 2 fridges and a freezer and the house is big and has terrible insulation. New windows would help a lot. :(
 
Deborah K said:
Everything is gas. But we have 2 fridges and a freezer and the house is big and has terrible insulation. New windows would help a lot. :(
Click to expand...
You must have central air then. Perhaps shutting down the rooms you don't use very much would cut down on the bill?

Edit: I live in an 1880 farm house with 3000 square feet of living space and I only air condition the living room and dining room. Keeps my electricity bill down to around $80 - $90 in the summer.
 
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I'm currently trying to put together a wind turbine using a car alternator, spare parts, and some mail order parts. It ain't gonna look pretty but hopefully it works. But I'm really interested in your project as I'm thinking going solar as well. Let us know how it works out.
 
I had thought about that, but I wanted to get some experience with pre-fab stuff first. I also don't really have the time to be soldering solar panels...

Yes, I will be documenting the whole experience. I saw those on Amazon, but I was worried about the shipping, as there were many reports of broken panels. I want to start off with something easy, no returns or anything such as that, if possible.
 
Hamadeh said:
Our electricity bill last month was $700 and everything is on electricity and I'm in AZ and our air condition has been used non stop plus we had worked for the most part using the electricity for tools, those solar panels look like a pretty damn good deal.
Click to expand...

Especially in Arizona. Where I am, the ROI would be minimal.
 
Alawn said:
$10,000! That doesn't sound worth it at all.
Click to expand...

If you can take yourself off of the grid for $10,000 and you're paying $500 a month for electricity, it would take less than 2 years to get the return on your investment and then have free electricity from there on...

My electric bill was over $300 last month...I'll probably start putting a system together panel by panel.
 
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