Energizar

My introductory course to solar panel stuff has now finished.

It was really interesting, and a few things became really clear:

• I would need some professionals to do any installation we might do in our house, because a) there are lots of rules and regulations, and permissions required, which I don't know anything about, and b) the voltages and currents involved are potentially dangerous, and so having someone who knows what they're doing involved seems advisable!
• With the handkerchief-sized space we have available, there's no way I can get away without an expensive MTTP regulator.
• They recommend running all appliances at 220V AC, to keep things simple.  But if I follow their method for calculating what's required, to run our house (without heating or cooling) we'd need a wopping 36 panels! And 30 batteries!
• That's ridiculous!
• This is never going to work!
• But it might be because the consumption reported on the adapters isn't the real consumption, so I really need to measure it!
• As previously noted, if I go the AC/DC route, and run computers, internet, and anything that charges via USB on lower DC voltages, the number of panels drops to 14, and the number of batteries, 12 (for three days of battery-only power). That's still more than I have space for, realistically, but I might be able to fudge something to work if need be.
• Far more likely to be actually workable is the power-cut-emergency-supply idea, which would power only the fridge and the water pump, and maybe lights.  That comes to 8 panels and 8 batteries, and doesn't involve breaking my electricity supplier's terms of service.  But I need a special tablero installation, and presumably actually two, because the building's water pump runs on a separate circuit to our fridge!
• Thi$ i$ going to be really expen$ive.

The number of panels comes out higher than my previous calculations mainly because:

• their regulator, battery, and inverter efficiency figures are lower than what I was assuming,
• I had forgotten that battery inefficiency strikes twice - once when energy from the sun is stored, and again when energy is used to boil the kettle,
• I hadn't thought about how, if you have a cloudy day, you need to charge the batteries more in the following sunny days, to get the batteries fully charged again, and
• they include various extra margins just in case.

...although their method doesn't involve taking account of loss because of the shadows of surrounding tall buildings - but I've built that into my calculations.

Anyway, it all feels a bit discouraging, but I'm going to press on with measuring more accurately our actual consumption; maybe it's not as much as the power adapters make it out to be, and it should help discover some effective ways to at least use less electricity.