home solar fun

I had been wanting to put some solar energy projects around the house for a while but was having trouble justifying dropping 10-20 grand on a system that was going to be obsolete in 10 years. Still functional, but the technology is still changing pretty fast.

The best thing I had seen was the EnPhase micro inverters designed to go onto each panel. This seemed like a great idea because it would be possible to add a few panels at a time. While I was waiting for these to become available, I had another idea.

Start small. I didn't say it was a profound idea. So I picked up an assortment of panels from 10 - 50 watts. The first one made lots of sense. In Florida we get lots of rain and I am constantly having to charge the battery on the boat's bilge pump. A 20 watt panel seemed to negate this to keep the deep cycle batteries topped off.

We have lots of chargeable gadgets around the house, droids, ipads, iphones, psp, ds, etc. All of these have car chargers. Hrm. A quick drill through the wall, deep cycle battery, car chargers and voila, on demand solar charging for gadgets. Ok, not huge cost savings, but it's fun to respond to 'do you like X gadget?' with "yes and it's solar charged also."

Next I started looking around the house and noticed all the wall warts converting AC line power to DC. Again perfect for solar or solar battery function. The challenge here is delivery. More later...

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