I'm from Toledo, OH about 2 miles from the MI line. We are a foster family and have adopted 5 children. We just moved into a 5400+sq 2 story home. We have (3) 2.5-3 ton AC units to cool this huge house. We got the house cheap...$75k couldn't pass it up! Anyway...I was wondering how many solar panels it would take and of what wattage to power these Central Air Units and maybe the rest of the house. We have 3 people in our home......9 of which are children who leave the lights on and run hot water to beat the band. We have all brand new energy star appliances and front loader washer and dryer. Gas Range and Gas hot water tank. Was thinking of using metal window frames and buying solar cells and making my own panels. Just don't know how much to buy. We face south with no trees. Constant Sun. thanks for your help. An e-mail address to bounce questions off of would be helpful if you experienced. tx.
With your load, the largest system on the page I reference above would not power your entire house, if all the AC units are running. However, how often does that really happen? You need to look at your utility bill and find your actual amoutn of KW hours of electricity used in a year and you hav enot told us that. The base price of top system quoted here without incentives is over $70,000. As you can see, the lions share of incentives is the utility company followed by federal. I have no idea if your local utility company offers incentives or not. You would have to resolve that with them. However, the federal incentives are still there even if your state and local utility has none. However, the price to you goes way up without all of these incentives. And your idea of using windows to mount solar cells is totally impractical. Yes, I know there are web sites that advertize just that, but it is total BS. The first word of advice to anyone looking to do this sort of thing is to FIRST have a complete energy audit done and then do whatever they say to conserve as much energy as possible, thereby reducing your need for solar power. Only then should you look at using solar to cover part of your load. We are a foster family and have adopted 5 children< WOW! I would like to thank you for what you do.
Yes and no. solar panels are expensive and inefficient. therefore the power you generate will cost many times what the same power from a power plant would, and therefore you generally can only run a few low powered things at once. Secondly they don't generate electricity at night so you need some means of storing the power. tht means even more efficiency losses. They also only generate DC power, so you have to run the power through an inverter to make 0V AC. inverters are notoriously inefficient and expensive as well, so now you've thrown even more power away converting it. Bottom line, you're gonna pay far more than $600 a month for these things and you won't get nearly the amount of power you think. it is generally a waste of money to do this in almost all cases. The ROI is usually well over 20 years before you break even.
I'm inferring that your goal is to save money. You're on the right track with your energy star appliances - saving energy is far better than installing solar panels to cover energy that will be wasted. You may have an opportunity with solar hot water - you would need a large storage tank with 3 people, but that would be the best use of your roof in my opinion. Check with a professional installer, it may make financial sense. Although you could make your own heating panels, it's hard to make a solution as durable as commercial panels. And if freezing is an issue in your area, you would have to drain a homemade system in the winter. With an evacuated tube commercial system, you could keep running right through the winter. In the summer, instead of running those expensive air conditioners, could you just have a cool room in the basement? Anyone who wanted privacy could still go to their regular room and run fans. We have no A/C in our house, and manage, even on those 00+ days. Sounds like awnings or other window coverings might be a big help for you, at least until you can get some deciduous trees in to shade the house in summer. I would advise against making your own solar electric panels. They would not save money over the long term. And check panel prices - they have dropped 50% this year, according to a recent Newsweek article.
Basically, the answer to your question is forget it. Your approx 8 tons of AC will require about 28 KW of electricity just to run them. Add the rest of the house requirements and your talking a load of 50KW or more. Even if your state has a subsidy program, (and most of them are out of money now), it's a $200,000. system. Making your own panels would be a mistake. Reliability and survival are the key measures for a panel system and homemade panels are just not going to be reliable enough to survive the cold winters. In the end, it is always cheaper to buy good, conservatively rated commercial panels, especially in view of the fact that prices have been tumbling lately. Often, the mounting, interface and conversion costs are greater than the cost of the panels themselves. You might save some bucks by fabricating a mounting framework yourself and installing it, but such a system would not qualify for most state programs and.... you had better be an expert architect or engineer to put together something that will work well. The basic problem after all of this is that your maximum demand will be at night and the panels put out nothing at night. Better to forget about a 00% solution. You can install a modest 0 - 20KW system for perhaps $50,000 costs after rebates and subsidies and perhaps ... it might cover about /4 of your energy needs and might just, pay the investment back in 0 to 5 years. Get first rate equipment and professional installation, if you want the system to perform reliably. Solar voltaics make a lot of sense for Arizona and perhaps Florida. For anyone north of the Mason Dixon line however, fossil fuels are cheap, reliable and work far better.
