Solar

Solar has to do with the sun.

There are numerous ways to collect energy from the sun.

Solar Electric

No one does solar to beat the power company. Usually the reason someone puts in solar power is because they cannot get power in a particular place that needs some low voltage or they want some power that is renewable and reliable when there is nothing coming from the power company.

There is so much hype out there it is hard to tell what is the best deal. What would be nice is to find the best deals that makes the most sense for a particular need without having to become an electrical engineer or test two products we can't afford to find out we should have bought the third product we did not know about.

One System

The two technical things we discovered is solar is a low voltage and high current application where large gauge wire is needed. The other do not undercharge your batteries. Battery manufactures will tell you at least 14.7-14.8V is required to charge a 12V battery.

There is a solar guy, Bob, who actually made a full time business out of fixing the messes created byother installers using poor practices and bad component choices.

In addition to fixing our wiring problem he identified our charge controller as the principle problem in our system He's actually done the kind of experimentation and research to figure out what the reliable, cost effective components one should use. That was 6 years ago and we're still using the same RV setup with the batteries we had to replace going strong.

One system that seemed to work plus solar wiring diagram:

PCs	Description	Price
1pc	MorningStar SI-300-115V -UL SureSine 300W Inverter, 115V, 60Hz	$251
1pc	Morningstar TS-45 TriStar 45 Amp Charge Controller 12-48V PWM	$150
4pc	Windynation 100 Watt Polycrystalline 12V Solar Panel	$524
4pc	Trojan T-105 6V 225Ah Flooded Lead Acid GC2 Deep Cycle Battery	$600
1pc	Bogart Engineering Trimetric TM-2030-RV Battery Monitor System	$155
1pc	Bogart Engineering Deltec 500 amp, 50 millivolt current shunt	$27
1pc	Square D Pull-Out Disconnect Switch 60A Not Fusible - UFP222R	$26
Total		$1733

Some Basics

So much