Something very news-worthy has happened in the past 6 months. There is a glut of PV panels manufactured and now the price has come down as retailers try to shed their inventory. I could at this moment go on the internet and find a 100 Watt PV panel listed for $50. So naturally I sprung for 3 new panels and put them on my roof.
As you scale up your home brew rooftop PV installation, there are problems to look out for. First of all, wires and connectors will get hot. But then the grid inverter itself will get hot.
One thing to look out for is loose and frayed connectors. If the electrical contact surface area is small and a lot more current is pushed through that contact, it will heat up more than the rest of the wire. So essentially beef up your wires and connectors as you scale up your system.
Let's talk money. So the three new panels were a little over $180 and the first panel was $100. So $300 in and then another $200 for the grid inverter brings us to a total of $500 DIY rooftop solar installation. Now we could talk ROI which is something like 5 years, but that's a bit boring for a normal person's income.
Far more exciting is what doors 400 Watts (in the middle of the day) of electricity opens. Easily, this powers computers and laptops and TVs... but that's a 1st world problem and not very interesting. I've been looking into heated flooring and heated blankets and you can easily find a 100 Watt system like that.
What this means is to heat a room overnight, a 400 Watt system would easily charge a 1 kWh battery pack and that would heat a room for 10 hours overnight and have energy to spare to heat during the day. Presently I am working on a battery pack made from surplus cells costing $50 for a kWh and more to come on that.
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