Here is a 100-Watt Solar Panel Kit ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882260013&cm_re=solar_power-_-82-260-013-_-Product ),
my MAIN QUESTION is, what does it mean to say that this is a 100 watt solar panel?
Does it mean that it can store 100 watts an hour/minute/second in a battery?
Can it store enough power into a battery to power a window A/C which requires 1900/1880 Watts to Condition Air?
a 100 watt solar panel will make 100 watts for every second that it has perfect angle and sunlight. On the average, there are only 5 hours of equivalent perfect sunlight per day. That means your 100 watt panel will make 500 watt-hours or .5 kw-hrs per day.
Your AC needs 1900 watts per hour and say it runs 24 hours per day, that means it needs 45,600 watt hours or 45.6 kw-hours. You would need 45.6/.5 91.2 of them panels to make it work. In the summer you might need 70 and in the winter 110 of them. Plus you’d need batteries, lots of batteries so that the panels would make energy when the sun shines and return it when the sun goes down you’d need to store 45.6 kw-hr of energy. Thats about 4000 amp hours at 12 volts Large batteries are about 100 amp hours, so you’d need 40 batteries.
July 27th, 2010 at 3:24 am
you would need 19 of them in PERFECT conditions to run that A/C
plus the panels run on a different voltage than the A/C so you need an inverter and a battery and and and……..
ain’t goin’ to happen
a short, non-technical and riddled with errors because apples do not equal oranges is:
The A/C is like draining a swimming pool at 1900 gallons a minute.
the solar panel is a hose putting 100 gallons a minute back in.
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July 27th, 2010 at 4:07 am
That 100 watt solar panel is producing 100 watts at 12 volts DC while your air conditioner is requiring 1900 watts at 120 volts AC power. To bridge the gap from DC to AC you need an inverter. This typically takes up about 10% of the power. So you will need about 1919 watts AC including the inverter.
1919 / 100 watts per panel would seem to require about 19 solar panels of this size. However your solar panels are going to be working all day long to charge batteries. It is the power stored in the batteries that would be used (through an inverter) to run your air conditioner. (Another 5% loss so now we need about 1930 watts) It would be possible to have more batteries and limit the hours of usage of your AC and make the system work.
Now we have to switch from issues of power to issues of energy. The amount of energy uses KWH (kilowatt hours) as a measure. One KWH is 1000 watts for 1 hour. So in one hour your air conditioner (and inverter) will use 1.919 KWH of electrical energy. In order to store 1.930 KWH of electricity your 100 watt solar panel will have to operate for 19.3 hours. As you might get only 5 good hours of sunlight a day this would be almost 4 days of a cloudless sky to run your air conditioner for 1 hour.
A more efficient way to power air conditioning from the sun is to use an absorption system that runs off of heat and use solar thermal panels that are from 60 to 80% efficient (compared to the 8 to 24% efficiency of photovoltaic panels) see absorption based refrigeration systems: http://www.energylatest.com/SOLAR-PANELS/Solar-Air-Conditioning.html
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July 27th, 2010 at 4:16 am
a 100 watt solar panel will make 100 watts for every second that it has perfect angle and sunlight. On the average, there are only 5 hours of equivalent perfect sunlight per day. That means your 100 watt panel will make 500 watt-hours or .5 kw-hrs per day.
Your AC needs 1900 watts per hour and say it runs 24 hours per day, that means it needs 45,600 watt hours or 45.6 kw-hours. You would need 45.6/.5 91.2 of them panels to make it work. In the summer you might need 70 and in the winter 110 of them. Plus you’d need batteries, lots of batteries so that the panels would make energy when the sun shines and return it when the sun goes down you’d need to store 45.6 kw-hr of energy. Thats about 4000 amp hours at 12 volts Large batteries are about 100 amp hours, so you’d need 40 batteries.
References :