Solar Power Savings
Posted: 2009-10-05
Besides the roof systems, there are cost-effective solar projects for getting your hot water, heating your pool and warming your home. Let’s take a look at four common installations.
Solar Financing Makes Alternative Energy Affordable
Posted: 2009-10-04
Not all homeowners can afford $20,000-60,000 for home solar power. Even those who have the money, or sufficient home equity, may not want to use their savings or leverage their credit to buy solar.
Solar Power Installation Breakdown
Posted: 2009-10-03
There is a great deal of misinformation circulating about the cost of installing a solar power system, specifically a roof-mounted photovoltaic (PV) one.
An Inexpensive PV Power Controller
Topic:
Photovoltaic Posted:2006-07-13
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We have run our solar panel with a battery we purchased from Wal-Mart and a microcontroller-based power controller
of our own design for five years, and decided it was time to upgrade. The circuitry of our controller was a bit
too much of a load for the application. For more information on the microcontroller based power controller, see
PV System on the Cheap. We looked at a bunch of different power controllers, but the one
that we decided on was the SPC2 available at CirKits Solar Kits.
The controller was more than enough for our 50 watt PV panel. Here is what the kit looked liked when unpacked:
Here is what the new power controller looks like assembled:
Assembly was fairly straightforward. The instructions were good. The board has plated through holes, thick pads,
and a nice solder mask. Don't purchase this if you haven't soldered before. If you have the skills, though, this
is a good option for a small solar power PV system. One nice thing is that the parts are very standard, so if you
need to repair this in the future it will be quite easy to get parts.