On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 12:52:19 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 08:48:26 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"William Bagwell" wrote in message
$39.99 supposedly marked down from $79.99. No coupons... Need to
look at one of
those panels next time I'm in there. Have been dreaming of solar
since we built
our house twenty years ago. Roof faces as close to true south as I
could get it
and the pitch angle matches our latitude....

They'd put out "45W" into a 17V battery or intelligent switchmode
charger. The current is about the same for a 12V battery but of
course
the wattage is lower. The charger in the kit simply connects the
panel
to the battery as long as the battery voltage is below 14.4V.

My HF panel kit was good for 2.8A when new, now it rarely reaches
2.0A.

How old are those, Jim?

February 2011.

That's not a long time to drop 28%. Are they kept clean and
unscratched, and test days identical? What do you think accounts for
the loss? Mine are glass-covered but would expect resins (found on
the smaller mobile solar chargers) to do a bit of yellowing. Do yours
still look new?


My panels can't produce $0.02 worth
of grid electricity per day.

No, they're not for powering the grid. g A several KW/H system
is
better for doing that.

Grid-rate electricity, $0.15 per KWH. They do better vs generator-rate
electricity which I roughly estimate as $0.50 to $1.00 per KWH, highly
dependent on % of full load and the remaining life of the genny.

Yeah, emergency power isn't as cheap as grid, that's for sure. I had
my electricity back on within about 5 hours last time, but my
neighbors right across the street were down for over 4 days. They
lost $400 worth of food in their freezer and about $100 in the fridge.
I took thermoses of hot water to them several times a day for the
duration. One more reason NOT to have an additional freezer. I need
to do a 24-hr test of my fridge. The quick test gave me 135W while
running. I have it set for 40F which keeps the freezer at 0F. IN an
emergency, I'd probably have to dial it back unless I had a genset
running. It might take all the juice the panels produced, leaving
none for lights.

I saw a YouTube of the HF $119 genny. He said "they're not that
loud", but later in the flick, you could distinctly hear the roar of
the damned thing in the background with the doors and windows shut.
I wouldn't own one, except for very-short-term use in emergencies.
My questions a Are cheap gensets reliable enough to depend on when
stored for years at a time? and Can I find replacement parts to
rebuild them when they do go bad?

--
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt