Quote:
Originally Posted by Blueblaze
You need about 3500 watts minimum to do what you want to do. That's a roof full of solar cells. A 60-cell array puts out about 300 watts and is about 5 by 3 ft. So you need a dozen of those.
Then (assuming the sun shines during the hurricane and the hurricane doesn't remove your roof full of solar cells), you need somewhere to store the energy, to get you through the night. A 100 amp-hour lead-acid deep-cycle battery costs about $300. You'll need 35 of them to run your stuff for an hour, or 280 to get you through the night. I guess you can park your car in the driveway.
It might be simpler to just buy a gas generator. You can get a 10,500 watt generator that runs on gas, propane, or natural gas for about $2500.
By the way, scale up the math to discover why you can't run a country on solar power, either. You'd need a solar array bigger than the entire state of Texas.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbb
Finally someone who gets it. You could cover your house with solar cells and would basically power a toaster. The fact is there are just not that many photons per square meter to generate power.
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Y'all need to hit the books more and then revise your computations.
A 3,500W generator *
will* run three refrigerators, one freezer, a couple of incandescent bulbs, a wifi router, a gateway modem, a DVR box, and a television simultaneously. Been there, done that, still have the extension cords to prove it.
As others have posted, a refrigerator requires about 350W
when it is running. When it is not running the solar cells could charge a battery for use overnight.