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Question:

Questions about solar panels?

How much would it cost to make an average size house be able to depend on solar panels for all of its power?How many solar panels would you need and wear would you put them? Would the roof be large enough to support the panels needed?Do solar panels work well in higher latitudes like northern USA or southern Canada? Can you power your house for the whole year if you live in these environments? What kind of maintenance do solar panels require?

Answer:

In the US, the average electricity consumption for a house is 958 kwh per month which is 32 kwh per day for a 30 day month. Once you get to New York City, the number of hours of usable sunlight drops to four hours per day so using six hours a day as a guideline and the fact that inverters tend to be 65% efficient, you wind up requiring 8.205 kw of solar panels which at $5 a watt amounts to $4,205 not including the inverter. Your first task would be to reduce your energy use. Keep in mind that the effective cost of solar power in 2007 was 38 cents per kwh. Without government incentives, you wind up paying more for your electricity than had you just bought it from the grid.
there are maximum of variables that would make your equipment greater or much less of a good investment. I even have had a equipment for a pair years and that i'm very happy with them. I distinctly propose you get a no legal duty quote, any respected photograph voltaic installation business enterprise would be prepared to try this. I actually have a 2 tale homestead with a pool (pump is one in all my great potential purchasers) in sunny CA and characteristic great orientation, and no coloration on the section. I have been given a three.seventy 4 kw equipment (20 panels i think of) that fee $26K, I gained a $0K rebate from my application and a $2K fed tax credit (at the instant the tax credit on the comparable equipment is $7800) i became into projected to break inspite of my utilization in 7.2 years, it would desire to be faster in view that my city has raised expenses via 20% interior the previous 2 years. The equipment produces approximately ninety% of my summer season utilization and approximately 50% of my wintry climate utilization.
I can begin to point you in the right direction. It is a very complicated thing you are asking about. Solar panels produce direct current, in order to store that power for use at night, and on cloudy days, you need a lot of batteries. Those batteries store direct current. In order to use that direct current to power your refrigerator, you need to put it through a thing called an inverter. The inverter produces AC from DC. You may have seen one for sale to plug into the lighter in a car so you can use things that require AC in your car. The inverter looses power doing the conversion. Over time, you can purchase direct current appliances, and make the system more efficient. Years ago, a decision was made to go with AC because of transmission issues (you can move AC across a wire a long distance, and DC is more difficult to move). Many appliances convert AC to DC internally to do their work, but such appliances are expensive. Have I answered your question? Not really. You should understand your question better though.
There are several web sites you can search for and they will provide the answer on how big of a PV Solar Array you would need for your house. Several things need to be known, such as square footage of the home, how well the home is insulated, etc. The panels come in all sizes and wattage's depending upon application, so yes they should all fit on the roof. If you have a small roof get PV panels with higher wattage's. Yes, they will work in the northern latitudes but not as efficiently as near the equator. You might need more PV panels to make up the loss in power from the sun hitting at a lower angle. Generally, all you will need to do is periodically clean the glass covering of the PV Panels to get maximum sun light on the PV cells. In my region, near the 45 th parallel, a 600 square foot home with six inch insulated walls and R40 attic insulation can purchase a PV panel system for around $40,000. That includes the equipment to tie it into the power grid and the meter to measure how much you supply the grid during the day and how much you draw from the grid at night when the sun isn't shining. There are tax credits for retrofitting an existing home, but mostly it is new homes being built that are having the PV panel systems installed so the cost is added to the mortgage and the return on the investment is paid off over the life of the System (about 5 to 20 yrs.)

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