PREP Solar Panel Questions

[skoaldiak]

Was wondering what I would need for a solar panel setup if the grid went down. Was thinking about putting fans in the windows to help circulate air in the house and my wife wanted to know about power to a mini fridge also.

Looked up some panels and they said 12v. Are those the wrong kind or do I need a converter of some sort.

Thank you, come again.

More ideas welcome as well.

 

[SIRR1]

I am no expert but yes I think it's the 12v panels you need along with a battery to hold the charged power and a inverter to convert the DC power from the panel / battery to AC like you home uses.

Last night late on the Science channel I saw an add on home solar systems.

Their claim is to cut your power bill in half and to provide power to your home in an outage.

21homesolar.com or homesolar21.com something like that.

The commercial even said they finance the system and installation.

 

[rhughe13]

There are some experts on this board and lots of posts you can wade through. You will probably get some tough calls on what makes up a good starter system depending on how much you want to spend, ie $500 -$1,000. Even with that, running a mini fridge would be tough.

But even if you buy one 100 watt 12v solar panel, a charge controller, one or two deep cycle batteries and a 1000 watt inverter, you will have enough to start learning hands on. You could certainly run flourescents and some fans intermittently.

Plus you can always grow or use your existing equipment somewhere, even if it ends up in your shed or shop.