Saturday, May 16, 2009
congress sweeps delhi.......
hey guys i suppose al of u were supporting congress....... if yes then rejoice coz the upa gov is bak n wid wat great scorecard !!! yuppee m really happy...... thou a sardar rules our country..... but thank god atleast ironically he possesses a superman's brain h e h e....... lets c how things shape up in the coming years under the umbrella of cong's again ...... congratulations to them !!!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Solar Panel - Part III
Hey guys, I am back. This time I'll talk a little bit about batteries and electrical circuits and will try to keep it short and simple. I've decided that instead of boring you with the basics of physics I am gonna provide you guys with the links of the websites that will fulfill your thirst for knowledge, however, if anyone doesn't understand anything, they are more than welcome to drop me an email/comment.
Circuits in series adds the potential difference across each component with the current remaining the same while circuits in parallel have same potential difference with different current across each component. Click here for more details.
To learn some basics about deep cycle batteries, you can visit here.
Let's start building a 60-watt solar panel. First things first, considering someone like me, who had no components. The components required to build a solar panel are:
1. Solar cells
2. Rosin flux pen/liquid
3. Tabbing wire
4. Bus wire
5. Plywood
6. Plexi-glass
7. Diode/charge controller
8. EVA Sheets/UV Guard
I bought most of the stuff from ebay. However, you can also try Amazon or other places/hardware stores.
I bought a bunch of 1.75-watt solar cells - 0.5 volts and 3.6 Amp per cell. Since I was doing it for the first time, I bought 50 of those because I knew I'll break a few of them while soldering or tabbing. These cells are very delicate, a little pressure and they crack. The cells I bought were 3-inch x 6-inch in area.
The top and bottom of these solar cells are the negative and positive side respectively. We'll talk more about these when we start tabbing and interconnecting the cells. Till then, have a good one!
Circuits in series adds the potential difference across each component with the current remaining the same while circuits in parallel have same potential difference with different current across each component. Click here for more details.
To learn some basics about deep cycle batteries, you can visit here.
Let's start building a 60-watt solar panel. First things first, considering someone like me, who had no components. The components required to build a solar panel are:
1. Solar cells
2. Rosin flux pen/liquid
3. Tabbing wire
4. Bus wire
5. Plywood
6. Plexi-glass
7. Diode/charge controller
8. EVA Sheets/UV Guard
I bought most of the stuff from ebay. However, you can also try Amazon or other places/hardware stores.
I bought a bunch of 1.75-watt solar cells - 0.5 volts and 3.6 Amp per cell. Since I was doing it for the first time, I bought 50 of those because I knew I'll break a few of them while soldering or tabbing. These cells are very delicate, a little pressure and they crack. The cells I bought were 3-inch x 6-inch in area.
The top and bottom of these solar cells are the negative and positive side respectively. We'll talk more about these when we start tabbing and interconnecting the cells. Till then, have a good one!
Solar Panels
Sorry guys...the third article in building solar panels will be online tomorrow...I have been busy with my work lately..ciao!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
bak wid a bang !!!
hey all of u there... m bk but after a long gap...n my apologies fr that.... actually i lost the blogging spirit mid way.... i suppose may b coz my lif was jus dragging thru an extremely boring phase... rather unproductive...to be frank he he... with so much happening around the world i was simply sitting wid my same old thesis ... very monotonous trust me.. but now wid my new Research Assistant profile m rokin once again!!! its rightly said that 'its better to b busy wid smthng worthwhile than to sit on smthng hopeless' ... god i really feel the job offer was perfect in time to bless me wid dis happening lif... 'Think Tanks' r a very cool option to work wid specially wen u wrkin in ur expertise area he he... i mean Southeast Asia in particular..the other day v had an amazing seminar where our very own foreign secretary Mr Shiv Shankar Menon talked about how India is surrounded by neighbours in crisis situations currently .. its really sad to see nations like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the very recent Nepal undergng such a major national breakdown. It is certainly a crucial phase for india as well to decide between a flexible containment of its enemies or a selective engagement with its friends in the neighbourhood. I mean being a student of international relations, i can really understand the significant strings attached to the foreign policy of the country presently. To top it all, the peaceful yet dangerous rise of China is another issue of great concern. He actually stated that the ministry of external affairs requires some very qualified set if IR specialists to influence and provide useful suggestions in the policy making task in india. it is a bad time for our country to be placed amidst such disturbed parts of the globe... Even India-Southeast Asia relations were jeopardized by the 'Red Shirts' protesting in Thailand resulting in the cancellation of the ASEAN summit...... as an aftermath the long awaited India ASEAN FTA(free trade agreement) , India's first multilateral engagement ever, is postponed indefinitely.... v can say its just not one of the best time period for nations around the world, with the 'swine flu' acting as an icing on the cake ha ha ha ......lets wait n watch the end result of all this 'Sturm und Drang (state of disturbance and disorder).... and yes if u all wanna knw anythng more about all these issues jus let me knw ... ill provide u wid da links... or jus go to ipcs.org he he ... dont u guys feel even god should give the world a break ..... he should understand we r still fighting the recession he he he n not yet ready for any more troubles ....??? wat say .... catch u later ...
Solar Panels-Part II
We will talk about some basics in this blog before we begin to put together our own solar panel system. A good article that explains the working of a solar cell can be read here. The solar energy absorbed by our solar cells then requires a storage, i.e. a rechargeable battery. Finally, we would need an inverter to convert direct current (DC) supplied by the battery to alternating current (AC) for majority of our household appliances.
I have started with building a stand-alone system for two reasons: Affordability and portability. We can move a stand-alone system from room to room as per our necessity, keep it in our vehicles, or take it with us while camping, boating, etc. It is also easier to understand the workings/components of a stand-alone system.
Let us take a couple of example and see how we can save some money:
How much does it cost to make our dinner? The menu includes slow roasted chicken and some fried greens. Suppose the chicken is roasted for an hour and the greens are fried for 15 minutes. The oven and the hot plate operates continuously at 1500-watt and 1200-watt respectively.
Power, P, (watts) = Current, I (Ampere) x Voltage, V (Volt)
Energy, E = Power, P x Time, t = 1.5 kW x 1 hr + 1.2 kW x 15/60 hr = 1.8 kWh
Suppose your electricity company charges you 10 cents/kWh
Therefore, the cost of making dinner = $0.1/kWh x 1.8 kWh = $ 0.18
Suppose you do the same for a year, therefore, the cost of making the same dinner for a year would be = $ 0.18 x 365 days = $65.70
So, if you use your battery and inverter to make dinner and then charge your battery through the solar panel, that'll save you $65.70 per year of electricity cost.
Think about how much you can save with a high capacity battery, inverter and solar panel. Of course, professionally built solar panels don't come cheap and that is the reason why one should sit down and make a reasonable estimation of their electricity consumption and evaluate how much time it may take to break even the investment in a solar panel system. It is also advisable to optimize the electricity usage with proper insulation, use of "energy star" appliances, and temperature regulation.
Now, let us calculate (roughly) the area of solar panels required for a house in Harrisburg, PA that consumes 1200 kWh per month or 40 kWh/day. We'll neglect the tilt requirement in this case. The cost of electricity is assumed to be 10 cents/kWh. Assume one solar cell in your panel has a peak power of 2 watts and is 0.125 square feet in area. Therefore, power per unit area = 16 watts/ft^2 or 172 watts/m^2 or 0.172 kW/m^2.
Assume that the average sun hours per day is 4 hours, therefore
Energy/day = 0.172 kW/m^2 x 4 hrs/day = 0.688 kWh/m^2/day
Required energy per day = 40 kWh/day
We'll multiply this by a factor of 1.2 to compensate for losses in energy in the battery and wires.
Therefore, required energy per day = 40 kWh/day x 1.2 = 48 kWh/day
Hence, the area of solar panel required (for the specified solar cells) = (48 kWh/day)/(0.688 kWh/m^2/day) = 69.8 m^2 or 751.3 ft^2.
Based on our example, we can infer that it requires a pretty huge panel or number of panels to go off the grid completely and a lot of us cannot afford to invest so heavily despite of tax breaks. What a lot of us can do though is to go off the grid partially and that's exactly why I am writing this blog so as to enable all of you to be able to build a stand-alone solar power system.
I would appreciate everybody's inputs. Please do correct me where I may have erred. We'll learn some basics of electrical circuits and battery capacity before starting to build a panel. Till then, have a nice day absorbing all this information. You can also visit some of the following websites for further reading...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar.html
http://www.nrel.gov/solar/
http://www.pvwatts.org/
I have started with building a stand-alone system for two reasons: Affordability and portability. We can move a stand-alone system from room to room as per our necessity, keep it in our vehicles, or take it with us while camping, boating, etc. It is also easier to understand the workings/components of a stand-alone system.
Let us take a couple of example and see how we can save some money:
How much does it cost to make our dinner? The menu includes slow roasted chicken and some fried greens. Suppose the chicken is roasted for an hour and the greens are fried for 15 minutes. The oven and the hot plate operates continuously at 1500-watt and 1200-watt respectively.
Power, P, (watts) = Current, I (Ampere) x Voltage, V (Volt)
Energy, E = Power, P x Time, t = 1.5 kW x 1 hr + 1.2 kW x 15/60 hr = 1.8 kWh
Suppose your electricity company charges you 10 cents/kWh
Therefore, the cost of making dinner = $0.1/kWh x 1.8 kWh = $ 0.18
Suppose you do the same for a year, therefore, the cost of making the same dinner for a year would be = $ 0.18 x 365 days = $65.70
So, if you use your battery and inverter to make dinner and then charge your battery through the solar panel, that'll save you $65.70 per year of electricity cost.
Think about how much you can save with a high capacity battery, inverter and solar panel. Of course, professionally built solar panels don't come cheap and that is the reason why one should sit down and make a reasonable estimation of their electricity consumption and evaluate how much time it may take to break even the investment in a solar panel system. It is also advisable to optimize the electricity usage with proper insulation, use of "energy star" appliances, and temperature regulation.
Now, let us calculate (roughly) the area of solar panels required for a house in Harrisburg, PA that consumes 1200 kWh per month or 40 kWh/day. We'll neglect the tilt requirement in this case. The cost of electricity is assumed to be 10 cents/kWh. Assume one solar cell in your panel has a peak power of 2 watts and is 0.125 square feet in area. Therefore, power per unit area = 16 watts/ft^2 or 172 watts/m^2 or 0.172 kW/m^2.
Assume that the average sun hours per day is 4 hours, therefore
Energy/day = 0.172 kW/m^2 x 4 hrs/day = 0.688 kWh/m^2/day
Required energy per day = 40 kWh/day
We'll multiply this by a factor of 1.2 to compensate for losses in energy in the battery and wires.
Therefore, required energy per day = 40 kWh/day x 1.2 = 48 kWh/day
Hence, the area of solar panel required (for the specified solar cells) = (48 kWh/day)/(0.688 kWh/m^2/day) = 69.8 m^2 or 751.3 ft^2.
Based on our example, we can infer that it requires a pretty huge panel or number of panels to go off the grid completely and a lot of us cannot afford to invest so heavily despite of tax breaks. What a lot of us can do though is to go off the grid partially and that's exactly why I am writing this blog so as to enable all of you to be able to build a stand-alone solar power system.
I would appreciate everybody's inputs. Please do correct me where I may have erred. We'll learn some basics of electrical circuits and battery capacity before starting to build a panel. Till then, have a nice day absorbing all this information. You can also visit some of the following websites for further reading...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar.html
http://www.nrel.gov/solar/
http://www.pvwatts.org/
Monday, May 4, 2009
Solar Panels-Part I
After having gone through numerous websites and articles, I thought everybody should be able to build a solar panel by themselves. A lot of these websites are making money by imparting the information which, in my opinion, should be free.
Before writing this blog, I built a solar panel myself. I had never soldered or even used a saw before and believe me, if I could do it, anyone else can as well.
Before the answer to how should we build it, we should ask ourselves, why should we build it?
The answer is simple. It'll save us energy and depending on its utility, money as well.
How much does it cost to build a solar panel? The answer varies from person to person depending on what tools and components they already own. However, for all practical purposes, lets say we have someone who has no components but some tools. It'll cost him around $300 to build a 60-watt solar panel stand-alone system (comprising of a 1500-watt inverter, 35 ah deep cycle battery, and a 60-watt solar panel). The cost goes up with a greater capacity battery and inverter. For all the people who already have an inverter and a battery, your investment would be minimal.
I'll start with some basics of physics. We need to understand the basics of electrical circuits, battery capacity, an example showing how one can save some money before starting to build a solar panel.
The next blog will deal with these issues. For now, you can see my first home built solar panel - a little amateurish and needs some more cosmetic changes, but it works!
Before writing this blog, I built a solar panel myself. I had never soldered or even used a saw before and believe me, if I could do it, anyone else can as well.
Before the answer to how should we build it, we should ask ourselves, why should we build it?
The answer is simple. It'll save us energy and depending on its utility, money as well.
How much does it cost to build a solar panel? The answer varies from person to person depending on what tools and components they already own. However, for all practical purposes, lets say we have someone who has no components but some tools. It'll cost him around $300 to build a 60-watt solar panel stand-alone system (comprising of a 1500-watt inverter, 35 ah deep cycle battery, and a 60-watt solar panel). The cost goes up with a greater capacity battery and inverter. For all the people who already have an inverter and a battery, your investment would be minimal.
I'll start with some basics of physics. We need to understand the basics of electrical circuits, battery capacity, an example showing how one can save some money before starting to build a solar panel.
The next blog will deal with these issues. For now, you can see my first home built solar panel - a little amateurish and needs some more cosmetic changes, but it works!
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