Lord Vader,

To the wisdom of your response, Bow I do. Yeeessss. GA

Regards,
Sapper

Get a copy of Solar Age Magazine for a start. The Solar Handbook and The Passive Solar Energy Book will explain a lot. Net Surf. It is too big a topic, with too many variables you will have to spec. out yourself, or hire a contractor to do it for you.

Some things to research; Location, elevation, site specifics, existing home requirements, solar window (plotting terrain w/ sunrise/set, obstructions), thermal storage systems, etc..

My home in the Catskills. A combination active solar, earth berm prototype. I'd make all walls verticle if I had to do it again. The photovoltaics over the greenhouse/bath run a 12vdc blower with the 12" thick floor as thermal mass. The biggest Marine battery I could lift, with a solar regulator/charger supplies some lighting as well.

Took me a while to figure this out, and even longer to optimize it. Started 1976. It just keeps gettin better!

Good luck!

Carl

CR4's Del the cat has done a DIY installation for water heating, which featured in a blog a little while ago.

The costs are as much or as little as the installer wishes to make it.

With interest rates so low at the moment, the economics of it give an attractive return on capital employed.

Check out the Centre for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth.

Another good reference is Homepower.com

But the reason you are being sent to a local provider is so much of the impacts are local, as well as the requirements of your local energy provider and your zoning authority.

They will help you by telling you the wind loads for your area rather than having you guess; they generally have acceptable means of installation defined that meet local rules rather than having to design it yourself; and if it is in your mind, they will have acceptable means to tie it to the grid - or to your house without tying to the grid so you don't kill anyone.

the estimates cost to install is currently 250 times your average monthly electrict bill.

If your local solar supplier blows you off (like mine did; business must be good) and you decide to go the DIY route make sure early on that you check with your local building department on the permitting cost. Here in Nortnern CA the local newspaper surveyed the area's various city and county building/planning departments on the permit costs for an average residential installation and found the cost range of permits was between $500 and $11,000. And in CA rural folks pretty well know that unless you are off grid the local electric company won't hook you up unless you are fully permitted and conforming.

Ed Weldon

Ed,

They give you $0.11/kw-hr in your area for power put back to the grid. But they charge you $0.40... Criminal.

Quoting Guest (comment#10 on 4/30) -- "They give you $0.11/kw-hr in your area for power put back to the grid. But they charge you $0.40... Criminal."

That's why some of us call PG&E "Pacific Graft and Extortion". In all fairness our California PUC is driven strongly by the organized and heavily endowed environmental movement who sadly are strong on ego and rhetoric and weak on logic.

Ed Weldon

.......which makes every kWh exported from home worth $0.55! So who's really ripping whom off?

Check out 2007 ASHRAE HVAC Applications Handbook, chapter 33 (Solar Energy Use); and 2008 ASHRAE HVAC Systems and Equipment, chapter 36 (Solar Energy Equipment).

Also check the 2006 International Mechanical Code, chapter 14.

The internet has lots of good websites. Use Google and find them.

GA Andy. I second your post. If the grid is available and can be hooked up inexpensively that is still a much cheaper and efficient way to push electrons around. Like you said, I would use Sol for heating bath water and the living space with radiant floor heating.

If living in a remote area, I would seriously consider using a fixed diesel generator for the times in which you need power, and you could use storage batteries and an inverter to supply the times of minimal loads. In this circumstance, I would also use the genset in co-gen mode to heat the domestic hot water and radiant floor heating as well. That's "free" heat when you need to generate electric power. The cooling jacket of the diesel engine is one source of heat and I have also seen where the exhaust is also cooled with a heat exchanger to further extract heat from the engine.

A small (one you can maintain without a derrick) wind turbine could be used to keep the storage batteries topped off if the wind blows. I've considered a number of these things when making plans for when (if ?) I retire and check out of the rat race.

You will be seriously P****D OFF if during the 20 odd year payback time, a cheap viable alternative comes up that you could have bought 10 times with your investment......

I think we can count on it anytime first adopters dive into new technology.

Unfortunately that sort of shifts it from very viable alternative to hobby

A simple guideline to get you started.

1. First Know what Location of your property you want it on.
2. Then when you Choose your surface Make measurements with-in the guidelines of you perimeter.
3. Than Build a small rack... than can accomodate Your Solar Panel's.
4. They should either be retrofitted with a shingle like 6" By 7" little rectangular square that can be post on the rack.
5. Note it depends how much avarage wattage is in your residential are to build these little rectangular pieces to accomodate the.

Note: I prefer to to just use a shingle attachment's on my roof and just travel a connection to my ceiling and down through my pantry and have a little monitoring system for my house.

Till than,

Good Tiding,

Hope this Healps.

As far as material coast i would say about a the size of a HD flat screen.

felixsemion

First you need to decide if you want solar electricity or solar hot air/water.

As others have posted the pay back time on solar electricity is in the 20 year range. Unless adding the solar panels will add the cost of the panels to the value of a house you are planning to sell soon it may not be a good idea. For solar heat, response number one is the correct answer. Get local help. You can definitely built it yourself but you should get good advice from a knowledgeable local source first. Passive solar design is not a simple subject. Active solar is even more nuanced.

The feds will pay 1/3 of a PV system and there are usually state rebates available... with these incentives payback is usually around 10 years... and then there is the idea of energy independence which often trumps $$$$$$$$$$$$$. If you have the money, go for it. With the way the feds are pumping out federal reserve notes they'll become worthless soon enough; long before your panels stop pushing electrons. Start with homepower.com.

We can provide you with full range solution on how to install solar power for private house use. Pls contact me at sales2.sfsolar@gmail.com. Or else, you may browse my company's website: sf-solar.com

Try starting in for anyone in the US,

http://www.irecusa.org/

They list all incentives and software resources.

for turnkey kits, most wholesalers have start up kits or try here-

http://www.affordable-solar.com/residential.solar.home.htm

If you need more info or suggestions, email me, no fee, just like the planet I live on.

Good Post EV1guy2004. It is true that solar is not yet competitive with some other forms of electrical energy generation. However, government rebates help offset the cost. In some areas the payback could be in five years or so for a utility interactive system (use the local utility for storage). Google: PVWatts and select version 1.0. This site will give you the derate factor for your area and for the tilt and azimuth of the array you are planning. In Oregon the rebates are based on this data, so I assume other states may do the same? Distributed energy makes sense. Imagine if the majority of American households installed solar of wind or both and also had an electric car. Lots of possibilities and little or no additional investment in transmission lines. Also terrorist proof. Germany is not a great location for solar, but they have embraced the technology and are moving ahead. Japan is as well. If the other two great industrial economies are investing in solar, maybe there is something to it and the US should make an effort to catch-up.

Photovoltaics (PV) are expensive today, unless you are talking about an "off grid" location where grid power isn't available, then it may be the only choice.

PV will provide independence from the economic and geopolitical turmoil that will probably be increasing in the future as oil supplies dwindle and demand increases. It is possible that a cataclysmic price increase in energy could occur at any time due to economic instability of financial institutions or terrorist acts, etc. When it does, PV will not be available at any price due to massive demand that will outstrip supply. Those without PV will live in the dark for awhile if that occurs.

That's a risk I am willing to accept. Lots of people built their own fallout shelters too.

That subject is not a topic for light conversation.If you would like information you can go to solarpower.com and look around or just use a Google search or wikipedia to get a start. You need to define your parameters before considering a solar electric (photovoltaic) system. Such things as your geographical area, power needs etc. There are a bazillion types of systems available from home-made to expensive commercial ones. Try the solar power magazines and look up the blogs & forums. There are bunches of them.

I installed a PV (photovoltaic) system at my brother's house. He lives off the grid and gets all of his power from a 9 panel 24 volt PV grid mounted on a 6" steel pole with a sun tracking mechanism. His inverter & charge controller is made by "Outback" systems and is top of the line, putting out 240v to a 200 amp panel in his house. He also has a wind generator and a propane generator as a backup power source. The house is near Bend Oregon and he gets a lot of sun and wind.

I installed all of the panels and controls over a Christmas weekend about 4 years ago and it has been producing power ever since. Here is a good tip. If you can, find a/some used electric forklift bateries to use as storage. They are usually 24 or 48 volts and you can pick them up for scrap lead prices. Many corporations change them out on a set maintenance schedule, after they are depreciated. They might not run an industrial forklift for a full shift but they work well as a batery source for a home made PV or wind system.

Good luck,

LuckyDog