Even though I’m not one of those “go green – save the earth” types, this link pretty much explains what motivated me to explore building a first solar panel. Based upon what was learned depending on solar panels for our electric needs would be economically impractical.

Next time you’re looking at one of those “google ads” implying you can get free electricity by building a $200 solar panel to power your house and sell electricity back to the electric company keep the following in mind: Some things you can believe while some should be taken with a grain of salt, others with a block and still others with the entire salt mine. Just as there is no free lunch there likewise is no free electricity.

From what I’ve seen “going green” is about getting the green from my pocket more than exercising conscientious stewardship over the environment. The last electric bill I saw represented 33 days during the last part of November and first part of December 2009. Some of the coldest weather of the year was during that time and we use electric heat. Per day average was 77.5 KWH. Some days exceeded that and others were less but for the sake of this let’s stick with 77.5 KWH/day. A solar array with 23 panels, each producing 144 watts 24 hours/day would yield 79.488 KWH/day. Of course that would require sunlight around the clock so let’s figure winter time 5 hours light per day at 144 watts/hr and we’ll need 108 panels to get 77.76 KWH/day. Of course that is assuming sufficient light for panels to produce the full 144 watts 5 hours each day. Nice concept but not necessarily realistic. Figuring each panel costs about $250 to build 108 panels comes to $27000.

Solar panels sometimes function 20 years or longer. Commercial panels often carry a 10 year guarantee. Assuming 10 years with $27000 initial cost would come to $225/month just for the panels. Every year beyond that would be bonus bucks. Then again we need to add costs for array structure(s) to mount panels, battery bank(s) that probably won’t last 10 years, charge controller(s), power inverter(s) and various and sundry wires and connectors, not to mention efficiency losses. Then there is personal time and effort researching, designing, building and organizing everything. Yep, it all adds up.

Economics may not be the reason for building a solar electric system but there are a couple good reasons that encourage me to keep building. Aside from temporary outages due to storms, floods, earthquakes and other natural causes let us not discount the possibilities of terrorist actions, governmental intrusion or even total economic collapse. No, I’m not predicting anything but don’t discount the possibilities. In all of these circumstances I prefer to have a source of electricity that requires no commercially produced fuel. Gasoline, diesel, LP and natural gas could be too expensive or difficult (perhaps even impossible) to obtain.

Because sitting in the dark wishing I had prepared sounds highly undesirable, the next phase begins.