Does anyone own any and would you recommend them? right now i only own solar stake lights and i use them during the summer in my yard. But during the winter i take them out because they don't charge well. I live in toronto canada where it snows a lot during the winter, would it even be worth it to buy solar panels? Would they get covered with snow if the were mounted on my roof and get ruined? I plan on buying some when i purchase my own home.Any info would be appreciated:)
I okorder ... to size a system for your home. There is a link on the page to a world solar insolation map so you know how many sun hours you have per day on an avg. Should not take you more then a half hour to get a good idea of what it will cost you and which package system should work. Good luck on going green and don't let the Oil and Nuke people bring you down. They are just looseing money when you make your own power and their nuke power plant goes off line and not replaced. Some one above said solar cost more.. That is not true. I don't know about other countries but here the cost of living is about 3.5% per year so it is compounded each year. Then there is the rise in fuel cost which is 6.5% per year which will increase. But think about it you are buying 30 years of electric for 34000 dollars. If your electric bill was at current prices 00 dollars a month you would pay 36,000 dollars in 30 years. Now add in the 3.5% cost of living compounded each year for 30 years and the fuel increses . You will pay the public utilie 00,000 in that time frame
You may have to put a snow roof over the wind generator to keep it working. A solar hot water system might be hard investment where you are but it could work if it's designed right. Check out the solar companies in your area for ideas.
Toronto would not be higth on my list of solar panel worthy locales. They are a bit pricey and are only cost effective in climates and locations with lots of direct sunlight. But if you could safely say you get direct light on your rood nearly every day, they could work. Wind turbines are getting better... especially omnidirectional dome type turbines. But again they are a bit costly, and work best if you believe you get direct wind for at least half the day. If your roof is reasonably flat and structurally sound, a solar hot water generator can be quite cost effective. Essentially it is a panel of corrugated metal under two thin transparencies of plastic. Water is pumped up to it and as it runs along the corrugation, the trapped heat under the plastic heats it up nicely. They are cheap to buy and easy to build and install, and will completely remove the need for a dedicated hot water heating system. Once again, it really depends on the precise location and construction of your house. Do a search for solar heat in your area. If it is cost effective, someone will be offering...
The best sort of solar panel for $ to energy is the hot water type that use a vacuum tube system to heat your water. This saves you money on heating water and is relatively cheap to install compared to other things like wind or PV solar. I'm not too sure about where you live (I'm in the westcountry of the UK where wind energy IS viable... but usually it isn't). The best sort of Photo voltaic solar panel (that makes electricity)is still expensive yet very reliable as they only need photons to fall on them not neccessarily full sunshine and they are improving all the time. It depends on the pitch of your roof as to whether snow settles on them. One can have a system that sells power back to the national grid and then you buy what you need with a discount for what you produce. Obviously if you can afford enough panels one could even make a profit. Or you can go self-sufficient, but then you need batteries and an inverter to convert your 2 volt battery output back to 20 volts or whatever you use (it's 240 volts in the UK). Then it's a matter of how efficient your batteries are in amp hours. Dry mainainence free deep cycle batteries are best for this job and quite expensive still. Wind generators are only really practical if you can mount them high enough from the ground to where there is more constant wind. As I said that depends where you live and the prevailing winds. The very small ones are basically useless except for emergency lighting or something, so one needs a fairly large turbine to produce enough power for a modern home so planning restrictions should be considered when going down this road. For now, solar power is definitely the way to go, even as far North on this planet as Canada and the UK. Good luck. Once you have the system it's basically FREE energy!
