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GWtech t1_ixybpoi wrote

If you have never experienced having some solar panels with an inverter and a small inexpensive battery like a $30 10 amp hour lithium iron phosphate battery then you really can't understand the dramatic gains that have happened in solar panels lately. Suddenly you have an immense amount of power being put out by something that's just sitting there in the sunshine that's not even very big. We're talking about power that can kill you coming out of an inverter. We're talking about power that can make a Big Arc of electricity. Two or three Solar panels today can make whopping amounts of power and not even in bright sunshine. They'll make power even in cloudy skies.

This is radically changed boat ownership because boat owners no longer need to run gasoline generators or their engines to operate their equipment and because they now have an abundance of electrical power they can run things like air conditioners and ice makers and refrigerators and other things and water makers and water purifiers endlessly without returning to port for gasoline for a generator.

It's also changed life for boondockers and rvs.

There used to be an endless quest for free energy on the internet 20 years ago. The primary driver of that I believe was people wanted to get off the money sucking tit of utility companies in governments in general. Well solar panels are that free energy. It's much more understandable than the old free energy quests that used to proliferate but the results are the same. You spend $300 $400 on solar panels and you can have 10 to 15 amps of 12 volt power continually at your fingertips as long as the sun is shining.

This is a big deal.

what many people who don't have exposure to solar panel systems like this don't realize is although they may sit in their house and their house is constantly draining a thousand or more watts all the time with even a little bit of planning that same house can drain no power unless an individual device is actually turned on and used at that moment. Since boats and RVs are set up with systems that are not left on unlike houses. It quickly becomes obvious to boat owners and RV owners that are very small amount of power on tap for short periods of time is really what it takes to provide living quarters for someone. And specially if you're living quarters are well insulated you don't even need much for heating and air conditioning. Some of the window air conditioning units that are now being put into boats and RVs that you can buy for $150 at Home Depot are so efficient that they might only use 3 amps of power and that's plenty to be run by very small solar panel systems in the middle of the day when you most need that air conditioning.

The fabled free energy is here.

Edit:

After reading some of the other comments here I see so many of the old tropes being marched out again. Things like Central utilities need big battery packs and solar power isn't reliable and all these other things which are all true but they missed the point.

The big difference today is you can buy 100 watt solar panels right off Amazon for $89. Those consumer level panels are approximately 20% efficient today instead of 10% efficient like they were five or 10 years ago.

That 20% is enough to mean that you only need to buy three or four of those to run a window air conditioner or to run any other single device for shorts periods of time through a small $100 inverter.

What this means is you can run everything you need to live off of that solar power and small battery setup. Boat owners and RV owners know this but even homeowners can make this work by simply setting up a few solar panels with a very small battery like a 10 amp hour battery that really acts more like a capacitor and an inexpensive inverter and running an extension cord through a window and running a window air conditioning unit In the heat of the day to knock a huge amount off of their utility bill in the summer. They can run 90% of the things they need to run like a computer their phones and other things off of that same solar power setup. The only thing they can't run is an electric heater that's running constantly all night. You can even get around that somewhat though by using your solar panels to heat a large thing of water during the day and having that water radiate its heat all night long when the solar panel isn't available. That alone will cut your room heating cost quite a bit. It's just a modern variation on filling a hot water bottle up before you go to bed and stick it again in the bed with you. That water will radiate heat for a long time. Or the old boy scout trick when camping of putting in a rock into your fire while the fire is burning and then when you're ready to go to bed taking the rock out of the fire and wrapping it in a blanket and putting it in your sleeping bag with you. It makes the heat available earlier available to you all night.

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myne t1_ixynt4w wrote

Interesting. It makes me wonder if some boats will move to at least partially electric motors. Keep the diesel for when it's needed.

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BasvanS t1_ixzgp1j wrote

Batteries are still expensive, heavy, and motors are energy intensive. While you could replace ballast in sailboats for batteries because you use the engine maneuvering and going in and out of harbors, if you’re only using it a few weeks/weekends a year, I’m not sure it’s worth the transition. I’d stay with diesels for propulsion.

But having on board electricity taken care of by one or two solar panel will make life so much more comfortable on board.

(I’m big on advocating EV driving and home energy management systems, but I just don’t see boats as low hanging fruit right now. However, if you want to, there’s no one stopping you.)

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GWtech t1_iy97db1 wrote

But here's what you're missing. You don't need a lot of batteries anymore. When you can buy thousands of watts of solar panels for dirt cheap and you don't need to worry about storing a lot of that electricity and batteries. You can get yourself one 100 amp hour lithium iron phosphate battery for $300 and that thing will last you longer than your life. Literally. Those 100 amp hours will be plenty to run anything except a massive electric heater all night. And with daytime solar panels you won't be draining the battery at all you'll be stuffing it full of electricity while you're using all of your appliances inside. So since solar panels have gotten so cheap it's better to just buy a lot more solar panels and you just don't need to have many batteries anymore. That's the big change.

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BasvanS t1_iy9b8w6 wrote

We’re talking propulsion here. I agree on the rest, but boats can’t self-rely on solar for propulsion, except for sailboats perhaps.

For the rest indeed it’s a no brainer.

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GWtech t1_iy973pm wrote

Go to any sailboat Marina and you'll find huge numbers of owners are pulling out their diesels and installing electric motors and or many are buying torquedo electric outboards to use when navigating into and out of marina.

The big catamaran makers are switching to solar covering their roof area with panels which gives them enough to navigate purely by solar without draining the batteries and still even charge the battery so they can continue to operate overnight. I actually expect catamarans to get rid of sails pretty much completely and go pure solar as for most latitudes the solar is a guarantee much more than the wind.

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thruster_fuel69 t1_ixz2y0f wrote

When can I buy one? I'm about to install a roof worth of solar but this stuff could probably just use 1 or 2 panels. Worth waiting vs electrical savings now??

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GWtech t1_iy98f1d wrote

Well I bought panels off of ebay. They're also some places you can buy used panels. But at $89 for 100 Watts on Amazon delivered it's hard to beat it. A pulse with modulated inverter which is not the best but will work with most things will be about 100 bucks for 1,000 W maybe 200 bucks for 2000 watts.

If you shift your appliances to use less Watts for example buy a 700 watt microwave oven instead of trying to get a 2000 watt microwave on and then it'll take 4 minutes instead of 2 minutes to reheat your food but you won't have to buy a more expensive inverter or thicker wires.

I think solar panels are so cheap now that it's worth getting one or two and beginning to offset your energy costs immediately. I mean if you can run a 3 amp 110 volt air conditioner in your window off of a couple of solar panels for a few hours in the middle of the day I would imagine that that's going to save you so much on your energy bill these days in Europe in America that that alone is a good reason to do it. Not to mention the fact that a lot of places in Europe are going to experience some brownouts and things so if you can run an electric heater for a few hours in the day and use that to heat up a pile of sand or some rocks then that can emit heat all night when the sun's gone down and you might have heat when no one else does in freezing europe.

Don't forget that the primary use of electricity is for heating and air conditioning in most houses. And you can skip batteries completely if you just run some resistance wire under a pile of sand and a large 55 gallon metal barrel sitting in the middle of your floor and you heat that all day when the sun is out and when the Sun goes down that will radiate that heat all night. You can also heat hot water and put it in hot water bottles in your bed. Etc etc. It's rather easy to store heat to radiate at night. Air conditioning is a little tougher but you can run an ice maker on your solar panels during the day and again blow air over that ice or put it in a plastic bag in your bed to keep you cooler if it's very hot at night. I literally bought an ice maker that can run off an inverter and runs off a 300 watt solar panel system I have and I stuck a beer or two right inside the little ice maker instead of buying a refrigerator.

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thruster_fuel69 t1_iy99434 wrote

I 100% agree!! My other home is already fully solar and saving $600/month peak.

My quandary always is that I'm specialized in things not electrical, so I'm at the whim of the market and their prices. That said, I'm going to do what it takes to save another $600/month 😆

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