Put your portable AMSAT Field Day Solar panels to work!
If you have spare solar panels, put them on the air!
I finally connected the extra solar panels on my junk hauling Van not only for the very rare (1%) use in providing power at Ham Field events, but more importantly for capturing the extra 500W (99% of the time) into my house.
http://aprs.org/Energy/solar/boat/VanPanels509xX.jpg
Once you have a Solar NET-METER account, then every solar panel you have lying around can contribute to your daily energy needs. This includes panels on my van (shown), or on an RV if you have one. In the photo above, you can see my 6’ cube Ham radio Comm shelter (trailer) overgrown with vines, but it is operational and ready to go. The other panel you see is going on its roof. See shelter photo on: http://aprs.org/FD-Prius-Power.html
This way, you can justify buying large panels for these other vehicles because now they are contributing 100% 0f the time, not just the 1% of the time you might be using the actual vehicle.
Large 250W panels are now under $200 from sunelec.com (sales)
Connect them to a 500W or so Chinese grid-tie inverter (under $150 on Ebay). But again, this only works if you have a net meter account OR if you generate less power than the absolute minimum that your house draws at ANY TIME during the day. If your meter goes backwards (without a net meter) it will still count UPWARDS and you will pay the utility for the excess you gave them.
The economics of solar comes from net metering and 24/7/365 production. If you have to store your energy in a battery, the battery costs will be 2/3rds of your investment.
Just using solar panels to trickle charge backup batteries has no economic value. The solar panels are producing nothing when the batteries are full. And you are wasting your solar investment. But hooked to grid tie, you get full retail value for every watt you produce.
Thus, my recommendation (if you haven’t gone solar already) is to contract for the SMALLEST Solar system you can get estimates for. When they are done, you are official, permitted, inspected and certified and have a net meter. From then on, ANY extra solar you feed to your grid-tie gets retail value to you 24/7/365.
Solar is here to stay and amortized, costs less than half the utility. See
http://aprs.org/solar-now.html
Its perfect for Ham Radio support.
Bob, WB4APR
Somewhat unrelated to amsat-bb, but I will add my two cents.
Quoting Robert Bruninga who wrote on Tue 2016-08-23 at 12:38:
Connect them to a 500W or so Chinese grid-tie inverter (under $150 on Ebay).
From what I hear from other amateurs in the Netherlands it's a real problem
to find inverters that don't mess up the HF bands. Electronic inverters cause noise signals which the long wires to the panels will put on the air.
But again, this only works if you have a net meter account
In the Netherlands the 'old' electric meters are Ferraris meters which just run backwards when more power is returned.
New meters are 'smart' (electronic) meters which count delivered and returned power separately. The good thing (compared to the US) is that Dutch smart meters only use licensed GPRS or CDMA frequencies to communicate with the electricity company, not powerline communications or amateur frequencies.
At the moment in the Netherlands the power returned can be crossed away against power used from the grid and the excess returned will get payment at feed-in tariff.
In my own situation we do not have a lot of roof space for solar panels, but a solar panel is high on the wishlist for tent camping trips since this makes our choice of campings easier while still charging phones / radio battery.
Koos
participants (2)
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Koos van den Hout -
Robert Bruninga