ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area DIY grid connect solar panels...safe to use?

I Misspoke about Solyndra. I was referring to Akeena.

WEST is not an investment, it is a trade.

Gentlemen:

Politics aside please!!!

DIY solar panels may be 'on the truck' to a big box store near you.

I am not sure how the electrical inspector will even get involved in this DIY thing.
I do agree it sets up the likelihood that some pretty nasty wiring may take place but is it really going to be worse than Harry Homeowner walking out with a load center?

I can only shudder to imagine a HO solar install. I can only hope that the 'sources' for solar materials remains as it is, and not become another section of the 'big boxes'!

IMHO, the PV situation is getting to be problematic with a lot of 'no-experience' contractors jumping on the bandwagon.

They went belly-up on 8/31/2011, laid off their ENTIRE workforce and filed chapter 11.

I have had two projects using them, great idea, but sadly the process is extremely complicated and labor intensive for manufacture and being thin-film, they can't compete with traditional manufacturing processes.

It also produces noticeably less than traditional silicon modules, we have both on sister buildings in a building complex and while you can cram a significantly larger quantity on a flat rooftop it is producing the same of less than the traditional angled row spaced out array on the sister building, which has significantly fewer modules.

Still a great idea and the no anchorage method of mounting is a great installation timesaver, just the whole cost/watt problem.

The NEC was developed as a response to new perils introduced by the new technology of electricity. It never was intended to be a tool for furthering political discourse.

Safety? There are plenty of ways to address the issue. Yet, I refer to the introduction of the NEC, which states that one is presumed to already know the trade.

The trade. Not parlor-room debating, where you try to drag in and twist every imaginable thing to suit.

Keef, we try to give new members the benefit of the doubt - but every post of yours (so far) seems to want to discuss the politics of the issue, rather than the means.

This isn't the forum for that. We've discussed solar / wind / hamster wheels many times. Yes, it is true that many of the current electrical 'issues' seem to be driven from outside the trade, by folks with a political ax to grind.

I've been quite vocal in cricising these attempts to hijack the code-making process. Yet, that's not where your arguments lead. Instead, you praise one party and condemn another.

Hell, I might even agree with you - but this isn't the place for that sort of thing.

That 'solar' has been great on promises and short on delivery has been recognized here for a very long time. If you were to use this track record to draw attention to some proposed mandate, we would be interested. We are not interested, however, in hearing about how evil so-and-so is, or some great conspiracy.

Take the wormtongue back to Middle-Earth.

LOTR The PV Towers?

I ran some numbers to see what this thing can cost for me to get breakeven in ten years. Assuming that it's a square meter, and it's 20% efficient, that's 200W when the Sun is shining. The Sun provides about a kilowatt per square meter of light at the earth's distance. The Sun probably only usefully shines on it for say 5 hours a day, so I'm calling that a kilowatt/hour yield per day. Now, according to my electric bill I'm paying 17 cents a kilowatt hour. Ten years would be 3650 days, and at 17 cents a day, this thing better not cost more than $620 installed. And assuming it still works after ten years outdoors. Anyone who owns consumer electronics nowadays knows that that would be a risky bet...

Any electrolytic capacitors in the micro-inverters will fail long before modules solar cells for sure, they are the doom of most every inverter made today except for a few, most notably AE Solaron and PVPowered inverters, several others are coming around, but as a rule most inverters will fail because of this within 10-15 years and required upgrades or complete replacement.

It should be noted that in many parts of the world the rates are well above $0.40/kWH and several EU States are above $0.50/kWH so payback there would be considerably quicker.

Reno.... excuse me but the forum is called "General Discussion Area"
Does that mean we should only discuss general things like Volts, Amps, Inductance etc?

I have to go and feed my Oliphaunt.