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Old 02-10-2010, 01:31 PM   #8
Wysart
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 7
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Solar power for battery charging is relatively inexpensive - it gets costly rapidly as soon as you want to use solar to power anything directly - I have run three 75 watt panels and kept up with usual 12 volt power use, but using any kind of inverter makes that set up pointless. The high cost of solar panel systems kicks in when you wish to run inverters on the supply from the panels - you need many panels, much better than my rather puny 75 watt versions - any combination to get to over 1000 watts would be sufficient to run a medium inverter, and all the 12 volt gear you have. To fully utilize the sun's power, you need to aim the array at it, so either a tilt up, at the least, to an orbital system would be needed - all of these cost a fortune, so ten to twelve grand is possible very easily - more if you need more power. I know of a remote house, in Idaho, that uses three thousand watts of solar power, to run the house, and it cost nearly seventy thousand to install.
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