Hi, would anybody have any ideas for solar power for our hurricanes here in south Florida? Our power was out just under a month during Wilma. We were wondering if we could make a solar generator? Maybe for lights & refrigerator and/or small freezer?

We live in a developement where we own however we cannot put anything on the roof. Community laws! Any Ideas? Thanks so much!

Judy

hi
there is a law on the books that state no one can stop you using renewable energy not even a development.
no matter how bad they think it looks you can fight it and win.
don,t know were the link is right now but will try to find and post it

here it is http://www.dsireusa.org/library/include ... &RE=1&EE=0

From a cost perpective, you would be better off with a battery inverter system with a small 3kw low noise inverter generator to charge batteries. The advantage here is to load the generator to 85%-95% to charge the batteries. You get the most kwh per gallon of gas this way. Roughly you will use half the gas then backup generator alone.

First things first is you would need a good 600 ah battery bank to get your super small fridge through the night and use small 8 watt or at most 13 watt CF light bulbs. You would need to build or have built a 600 watt solar aray that will fold in the middle with a couple of weels mounted on one end or both so you could move it to safety till after the storm. Put your batteries in a moble box with the inverter and charge control mounted on the outside and just unplug or plug it back in as you needed it. You would need to keep a good charge on the batteries at all times. But why not use the power even while you are not having a blackout.

Just depends on what you want.

in florida as in the case of hurricane power outages i'm quite sure you guys know the power can take a long time to be restored as geminisix6 indicated a month for him. understand that generators that run on gasoline are nearly useless in that circumstance as you will need to refill that tank. storing it won't work as it doesn't store well and the gas stations need the power to run their pumps too. no power, no gas. the other types of generators could use propane or lng. this may improve your odds of having a fuel source, but it can still be knocked out of commission.
pvs are viable if they don't get damaged or fly off. as for wind power, well i don't think it'll survive for sure. no method is foolproof during those bouts with mother nature. highest odds would be to have some pvs stored with some protections as well as on the roof that can be covered or secured during a hurricane with a controller, inverter, and batteries situated to give them the highest survival chances. even an extra controller and inverter within a waterproof container that is built strong enough to have something hit it hard and let the controller survive would be good. the batteries will be a bit tougher and i recommend sealed batteries to avoid contamination into the batteries, but physical protections for them won't be easy as these must be charging occasionally. so some kind of enclosure that will be strong yet open enough for access and some cooling is needed. there may not be a way to stop water from shorting out between the battery posts. if you or somebody else has an idea or a way to stop the water shorting those posts it may be a good idea to share that. first thing i'd say is keep it higher, but there's no guarantee the water won't go higher or come through the roof.
this is a big order, but with some ingenuity you may have something that'll allow some power to survive with. if it's the case of no refrigerator or large sections of house gone it may be redundant to stay there as even your efforts may be for not with nothing to power. i know of too many that went through andrew and this kind of hurricane will make your efforts worthless. most won't be that bad so good luck.

I agree with RCinFLA. I put a friend on a 1500w inverter, 2kw Honda inverter generator and three 100 A/Hr batteries. We think he will have to run the generator 2 or 3 hours twice a day for a fridge, lights and to charge his laptop. He is a work at home computer programer and lost 8 days work due to Wilma. A couple pv panels will be added later to reduce generator run time.

I have a 1kw grid tie system with four 100 AHr batteries and ran a 25 cu ft fridge and some lights, even the clothes washer during the day. Had to run my 2kw Honda about two hours each morning to bring up the batteries till the sun hit the panels about 10:00 AM. This let us make coffee and use the electric skillet. Gas useage was about 1/2 gallon per day.

I don't think you can run a freezer and a fridge off a small pv system without a generator but the gen could be small and the inverter ones slow down as the batteries charge up.

Get started now!