What Can You Run On A Single Solar Panel?

How are you guys doing, Scott, with everyday home repairs? Now

solar

energy is becoming more and more common in my state of Illinois. There are a ton of incentives at both the federal and state level and our utility company also does

what

's called net metering, so this makes it quite attractive to have

solar

panel

s on your home and basically pay for that investment with the savings you make. you get every month on your energy bill, but for most of us homeowners, we don't really have a baseline, we see all these rectangular

panel

s on roofs. or maybe even those large solar farm installations, but

what

could a panel like the one behind me, which is a 100 watt panel that measures 37 inches by 27 inches, what can it actually power in terms of normal devices in home?

So what do I want to do? is to do a little test, we're actually going to show you what 100 watts produces in terms of power because of course 100 watts is, under standard test conditions, the perfect scenario and you're not going to get it that often in your home. We'll talk about how many hours of actual output we would get during the day and then compare it to common devices. Can I charge a phone from a panel like this? Can I charge my laptop or maybe I have an enclosed trailer? whether I like to go off road and have my four wheelers or snowmobiles maybe it's a tool trailer for me and I want to load up some power tools and do it all from solar panels and a solar generator installed on the trailer , so let's jump into this, but let's see how many watts we get out of this 100 watt panel in the middle of the day, so I have out of my driveway, I have an Eco flow Delta Pro, this is an extremely capable solar generator or station of portable power, it is not necessary to have one of this capacity, but it contains basically everything you need, we have solar panels.

It has a charge controller that can control the charge that goes into the battery, so you have all the 3.7 kilowatt hour batteries and then you also have the inverter, so you can disconnect the AC power from the energy storage of DC on batteries. The connection is super easy. You'll look for a solar panel even in the 100 watt range that has what are called mc4 connectors which are super. Easy to use, just connect the positive and negative and then there is some rhyme or reason for the angle you are setting up your panel so you can take your iPhone or Samsung.

Remember that you have a measurement app that usually has a bubble. level so from horizontal you'll want to measure it for me it's 17 degrees in summer now in winter technically my optimal angle is 47 degrees so it's substantially different and if I had to pick a year round it would be around 30 or 31 degrees would be a good compromise, now just know that the angle can affect the type of power you're actually going to get from your panel. Now for me it is very different because in winter the sun is much lower in the southern sky. Why are you adjusting that angle so that the sun is perpendicular to the plane of your solar panel?

That's the thought process. There will be many links in the description. A link is where you can enter your zip code and it will give you. those angles that you would be working with for your solar panel and another link will show you this exact panel from Amazon and then that ecoflow Delta Pro for your reference if you're looking to build your own system so it's a little bit later. Between 3pm and 30pm we have full sun on the panel, so let's take a look at how much power we receive from the panel. Okay, the input here is at the top and now we're getting 74 watts from the panel. that's not so bad, we're already a little past the day's peak sunshine, so it would be a little higher around noon to 1 p.m. m. and until 2 p.m. m., assuming we have full sun, remember that we cannot have shade. the panel the panel can't be dirty all of those things are going to start seriously affecting the power output watts of the panel so I have the iPhone 13 Pro Max here that I need to charge you have a few options so we have our adapter. here, this adapter will provide the USBC output we need, but it is actually more efficient not to use the adapter and go directly to the USBC, which will ensure that you get DC power and are not converting. from DC to AC and back to DC which can actually be inefficient so once you plug it in it will start charging.

Sometimes it takes a while to stabilize and some phones, depending on how new they are, will have fast charging, so I'll start. To expand and how much power it can consume, we are taking 24 watts to charge this iPhone 13. So from a power perspective, that panel provides almost three times what we need to charge this iPhone, let's test a laptop and then we'll talk about the difference between power and energy, so now that I have a big old MacBook Pro again, I'll use the USBC if I can to make it more efficient than using the adapter, we'll plug it in and one thing.

It should be noted that the panel actually went out and is no longer producing because the voltage when some clouds appeared dropped below the minimum voltage on this portable power station, which is 11 volts, so until the sun returns it will not connect and here in a little bit, I'll let you know what are the ways to avoid that and even when it's cloudy to make sure that you're getting information so that it looks like the MacBook is drawing 32 watts here, so we have a little bit of variability, but It looks like we are taking power to charge the MacBook between 27 and 30 watts and then our solar comes back online so again we can easily handle charging these devices but let's talk about battery capacity and in general . looking at power consumption rather than just power, so power is something to consider, obviously, also all the specs of your solar panel or panels and your storage device or your batteries, like eco flow, everything that you need to consider, but when you're actually designing the overall system, whether it's a DIY system or if you're doing something similar in your home, for a professionally installed system you want to make sure the panels you're sizing will fit your needs now and in the future you will really have to look at your energy production and consumption, so the energy coming in maybe you have some batteries if it's an off-grid system or if it's an on-grid system, maybe you have some batteries because you may not have what is called net metering in your area.

I have net metering, it's one to one net metering so it wouldn't have batteries, the grid itself basically serves as batteries and then it turns off the power, what are we actually using? In this case, with that panel we are producing about 75 watts, I think. That's a fair assessment of those 100 watts, can it produce more for sure? But 75 watts is a good number now in my area. 4.6 hours on average throughout the year is the number of hours of sunshine we receive per day again below the video in the description. one link that will show you in your area will be a map of the United States and it will show you how many hours of sunshine you will have in your area, for me it's a lot more hours in the summer and less. hours in the winter, so this is an average throughout the year, so if I take that 75 multiplied by that 4.6 I'll get 345 watt hours, how much power production energy would I put into the green flow that I said before? 3.7 kilowatt hours, that was wrong, it's actually 3.6 or 3600 watt hours, so that will be the capacity that we are going to fill if we are bringing in energy or depleting it if we are taking out energy or more energy. than what we are incorporating now, this is a lot to take in so there are more resources, guess where below the video, we are starting another YouTube channel and website and also a Facebook group under the sun every day, so you will see a link for the facebook group which is just an open discussion you can ask your questions there and other experienced homeowners some of our everyday solar consultants and I will be there just to help you along the way and then if you want to someone, One on one consulting.

Those solar consultants can contact you by phone. You will see a link in the description and they will discuss your needs. They typically focus on walking you through your home's needs and matching solar panels for your area. and then get you a reliable installer in that area to install the properly designed system that they will guide you through, so if it's like drinking from a fire hose, you can use both resources to help you, but what about the power out The house is fine, so we tried a few things: An iPhone 13 that has a 17 watt hour battery, so if we wanted to fill that battery completely, we would need 17 watt hours in the power consumption column. iMac Pro battery that is much larger, 16 inches. iMac Pro is a big boy and now has 100 watt hours.

If we look at what we produce during the day, we could charge the phone and laptop without any problem, but let's look at other energy consumers that we might want to use. Depending on what we're setting up, if I wanted to go ahead and run an 18 volt Makita battery, it would be a 5 amp hour battery, which is the largest one I use, it'll be 90 watt hours if I wanted to run three. of the 60 watt equivalent LED bulbs, now it's going to be 9 watts per bulb multiplied by three bulbs, 27 watts and then multiply that by 12 hours, which will give us 324 watt hours to run three bulbs for 12 hours, maybe it's on. in a workplace, you want to have a coffee maker, just know anything with a heating element, a coffee maker, if you're actually brewing the coffee maker and heating it up for an hour, that's going to be 1050 watt hours or right now a kilowatt hour. if you make a

single

cup Keurig that's only going to draw 68 watt hours and you actually just measure it into my coffee maker, then that's a much more efficient way to do it when you start managing your own energy consumption and production, you start to be a lot more conscious.

Of these things, the hair dryers on the stove, if it's electric, the clothes dryer, those are big energy guzzlers because of the heating elements that you're going to have to heat up, but basically you can start to balance this equation correctly. So if you wanted to make your iPhone now that it's 17, then we'll also make our MacBook, that's 100 fine and we also want to run those lights at 324. That's going to be 441 watt hours, so something would have to give in terms of a system that can sustain itself over time that's where I start to consider my battery what happens if I have a cloudy day what happens if my power is very low how long or how many days can I go ahead and meet that demand so these are things that you What we need to consider when designing the system or more practically, let's add a few more panels, determine our wiring on this side so that the entire system meets our needs and we have several days of capacity again considering this is a shutdown . grid setup I'm interested to hear from you guys what projects you're considering is something you're doing what products you're using what your overall setup is and some of these solar panels you can actually use you can get some deals for smokers like 4 used panels from 400 watts, if you're just setting up an off-grid shed that might be perfect for your setup, then really all of our setups are going to be different, it all comes down to doing those calculations, what are you going to try? setup power, are you just making lights and maybe charging some devices?

One or two of these solar panels could do it for you and you also need to know the specifications of your solar generator and then also your panels and specifically in our case. when it got cloudy, the voltage on one panel dropped below the ecoflow delta pro's minimum voltage, so you would need to have multiple panels connected in what is now called series if you don't know how to connect your series or parallel or combine those two. in series Palo means watch this video right here and I'll walk you through the entire process with a few different examples so you can apply it to your own project, so thank you for joining me in this video and we'll see you in the next one take care