Power Small Appliances with Solar Power

By SHANNON BELL
Special to The Desert Independent

January 15, 2010

While solar panel systems to power your entire home are large and very expensive, a small solar panel system can power many of your appliances and reduce your electric bill. Powering your entire home can be an investment of tens of thousands of dollars – an investment that will take more than twenty years, in most cases, to pay for itself. By contrast, a small solar panel that powers one or two appliances costs only a few hundred dollars and pays for itself in four or five years.

What You'll Need

Small, do-it-yourself solar panel projects can cost between $400 and $800. Part of the cost is the panel itself (anywhere from $200 if you make it yourself to $400 if you purchase a commercial panel), but then there's the other equipment you need – the battery your panel will power, the charge controller, and the inverter.

• Battery: The easiest way to find batteries is to buy a few 6-volt golf cart batteries and link them together. You can pick up a battery like this at Sam's Club for about $50 - $60 each.

• Charge Controller: Charge controllers regulate the charge coming from your battery. The better your charge controller, the more efficient your small solar system will be. Expect to pay about $40 for a decent charge controller.

• Inverter: Unless you have DC appliances, you'll need an inverter to convert the power you generate and store in your battery from DC to AC. An inverter will cost $40 - $70.

How Much Power You Can Make?

A 32 watt panel will generate approximately 1 kWh of power per week. What can you do with that 1 kWh of power? Here are some suggestions:

• Run a 20-inch TV for 20 hours

• Run a laptop computer for 40 hours

• Run a portable stereo for 100 hours

• Run an electric fan for 30 hours

How much you can get out of a small solar panel system also depends upon which appliances you're using, and how. For example, a dishwasher only uses 5 kWh per month (so you can run a dishwasher about once per week on the 32 watt panel described above) – if you let the dishes air-dry. If you use the drying cycle, your dishwasher will use 35 kWh per month. Some things that might surprise you is that your electric blanket, which keeps you warm and cozy all winter, uses almost as much electricity in a month as your dishwasher WITH the dry cycle turned on.

Link together a few small solar panels to create an 85 – 120 watt system. You'll be surprised how much use you can get out of them; you can reduce your monthly electric bill by as much as 10%.

About the Author

Shannon Bell writes for residentialsolarpanels.org a non commercial blog focused on her Photovoltaic experiences to help people understand how and why they should save energy starting from solar power. She writes on http://www.residentialsolarpanels.org solar panels for residential use to help people learn how to consume less energy from the scratch and then apply those experience to the next level.