Aaron Scholten's posts

Maybe private is not the correct term, but local rebates.  One good place to check would be with your power company.  Many of them do offer incentives.  With many of the power companies making promises to use XX amount of renewable energy by xxx year, more and more are starting to give rebates to get their numbers up to that goal.

There are also county rebates, municipalitys might do a rebate, and of course state and federal rebates as well.

Aaron

I would have to say that any +/- is going to be in amps and not necessarily volts.  A solar cell pretty much has a set voltage it produces, and the amps change depending on the size of the cell.  A 1x1 cell might make 1A at 0.5V for 1/2 watt  where a 2x2 cell might make 4A at 0.5V for 42 watts.  The point being, the voltage stays pretty much the same.

On your question though about 15%, probably not going to happen.  A lot of companies make oh say 185 Watt panels and 195 Watt panels.  both are essentially identical in physical dimensions and materials.  Now when its being tested, if the panel is putting out really good, it's going to get a 195 label on it, if it isn't putting out that much it's going to get a 185 label on it.  I can't see them intentionally giving out watts for free.

Aaron

It's hard to quantify payback or ROI for solar panels.  If you are just going by pure dollars it can take many many years, even with the incentives you get on your system.  But, if you factor in peace of mind then it can pay off quickly.

A few years ago Hurricane Francis made its way through my part of town.  Our power was out for 5 days.  Not me!!  I had solar and a wind generator that kept my lights on the entire time.  Strictly speaking ok I made maybe $1.27 worth of electricity with the panels.  But, the $400 dollars worth of meat in the freezer that didn't spoil, the food in the refrigerator that wasn't thrown away, and keeping the beer cold.... priceless.

I also need to mention I have battery back up as well to keep the power going during the night time when the sun wasn't shining.  My point being though, one has to look at investing in Alt Energy from more than just purely a dollar point of view.

Currently, it's nicer out and I don't have to use the A/C.  During about 6 hours of the day, i am entirely off grid, I am supplying all the power requirements for my house.  When a storm rolls through and the power goes out (happens a lot), im still running strong.\

If dollars is your main driving force then it is very hard to justify a solar system, but if reliability and emergency power feed into your requirements, then it pays off very quickly.

Aaron

If the panels are close to the same voltage then this is ok.  Your charge controller should handle the rest.  If the panels are not the same voltage, then I would not recommend it.  In other words don't put a 12 volt panel in parallel with a 18 or 24 volt panel, that is too much of a volt difference.  One thing to keep in mind though, if you are using MPPT, it will lose some efficiency as the panels will behave slightly differently and the MPPT will basically have to find a happy medium between the two to operate at.

Aaron

Hello there:

If you are running in series , ie a 24 / 48 volt system then no you will have big problems.  the lower capacity ones will discharge more than the higher cap ones and you will end up damaging them.

If you are running a 12 volt system and are running them in parallel, ... yes it can be done but as said before is not the best move.  Even if they were the same Ah rating, having 4 batteries in parallel tends to cause problems with charging properly.  You would end up doing more maintenance in the long run, isolating the to charge them up properly this way.

It can be done but won't be the best way to do things.
Take care
Aaron

Ok this is an odd question but Ill ask anyways.
I have an old Trace PS2512 inverter that recently took a lightning spike and ate the control board.

Problem is, all the 'new' boards, what few are to be found are the xantrex boards that have the sell to grid feature disabled.  Does anoyone know where I can get one of the older boards with the old rom that supports sell to grid.  Or know where I can get the rom's at possibly?  Or how I can put this programming back in it.   Yes yes I know the history behind it and about the UL listing, I work for a power company and know the ramifications of using the thing.

Trace was bought out by Xantrex, and a few years ago the engineers at Xantrex told me this would be no problem to just request one from them, but now that Xantrex has been bought out by Schneider electric, it seems all that stuff is lost.

I really hate to get rid of a good inverter just because of a stupid board that you can't find the parts for anymore.  One idea I was toying with is putting the rom's from the old board into a newer board, and praying the roms didnt take the hit either, but that still leaves me with trying to clone another set of them.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Aaron