I'm thinking of getting a solar panel for my house to help cut back on power use (I live in New Mexico). What sort of appliances can I run on a watt solar panel? Is it worth it to get a single watt panel or is it more efficient to get a multi-watt panel?
watt is a very small amount of electricity. The typical household uses several million watt hours per year. watt would be enough to trickle charge a battery to run an LED nightlight. I believe the little self contained walk lights that I have put out have a 0.35 watt Ni-Cad battery. That could be recharged by a watt solar panel.
You can run a lot of things. If you set the system to charge batteries when you are not using anything, they will charge effectively. You can use the system for lighting, LED lighting direct from the battery power is most effient since LEDs are low voltage devices with a very long life span. I replaced a 2 tube flourescent trough with four 5Watt PowerLEDs for example, While I have it on 20VAC at the moment, I can move it to 2 VDC power with ease, and had set it up to run initially on 2 volt sources. There are also many 2 volt appliances as well. You can even convert some of those all in one stereo systems to operate on 2 volts by eliminating the power supply. You will actually use less power by doing so. You will not be able to blow the shingles off the roof unless you add a Class D amplifier to the output, but for most listening, the output is adequate. Some small TV's these days can be run from 2 volt sources, if not directly, then with a buckboost inverter for a laptop. The small TVs only draw about 30 to 45 Watts. Skip the idea of using an inverter, they are not efficient at small loads, and represent additional load on the system. So with a little bit of planning, you can run a lot from that 60 Watt system. You can at least take some bite out of the electric bill for mundane lighting. You can also use them to keep power up on a battery system for lighting in a remote barn. The uses are only limited by your imagination and creativity.
New Mexico is a good area for solar. Unfortunately, solar electric panels generally don't save money over grid electricity until the installed system is large - like, 000 watts or more, 4000 watts being a common size. This costs many thousands of dollars up front, which hopefully are paid back over the years in electricity savings. There are a couple other things to look into, though. The first is conservation and efficiency. If you can shade and insulate your house so that the air conditioner doesn't run so much, that can pay for itself in a year. Also, NM is an excellent place for a solar water heater. Call a solar installer to see how much it would cost. That would pay back in a few years, with a much smaller investment than solar electric.
If it's sunny and you have 500 of them, you can almost power a hair dryer... Look at the WATTS.... 40 of those panels can power one crappy light...
