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Re: Solar Energy



Axel Berger <Axel_Berger@ac3.maus.de> wrote:

>...A solar panel can be bought at about 10 DM/W, a Varta
>"Solar" lead acid battery is above 3 DM/Ah. This breaks down to 0.63
>DM/kWh for the panel (20 years at 800 nominal hours) and 1.22 DM/kWh
>for the battery (maximum charge throughput is 20 kAh at 600 cycles with
>40% depth for a 85 Ah unit) making the battery twice as expensive as
>the panel.

Yes, but if we feed the power back to the grid, we can use just a few
batteries. One local builder is designing very nice houses with 2 kW PV
arrays and only 8 batteries (the minimum number needed to make enough
current for the Trace inverter to work--he could probably use nicad D
cells :-) This gives a 3 day supply of electricity for the house, and makes
the utility more cooperative, since they get the message "we CAN do this
without you." In fact, one of the nice things about these houses is that
they do not need a temporary hookup for electrical service, while they 
are under construction. As soon as the shell is finished (in a day or two,
since these are modular houses), the carpenters and plumbers come in and
plug their power tools and radios into the wall sockets and go to work.

Nick