Solar Power System 4 Deka batteries 2 Kyocera panels + Battery Enclosure + charge controller + . Cost $4000+ Start Price USD 995.00 Current Price USD 995.00 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price USD 1,495.00 Reserve Price - Start Time Friday, November 21, 2008 End Time Monday, December 01, 2008 Location Kingwood, TX 77339 See more about 'Solar Power System 4 Deka batteries 2 Kyocera panels ' Description All items feature an UNCONDITIONAL GUARANTEE OF SATISFACTION. You may return it in original condition for any reason up to three days after you receive it, and get a full refund of the bid amount.(Sorry, we cannot be responsible for shipping costs in either direction, shipping damage, or for damage caused by misuse.) Solar power starter package. Ideal for starting small by taking one room off grid and working your way up from there. Includes solar panels, batteries, charge controller, storage box and cables. Just add an inverter and you're ready to go (you will have to determine whether you want to mount the panels on your roof or in a frame in the backyard). Also, could be used towards a stand alone solar power system, or grid intertie with battery backup. Or the batteries could even be used for converting a car to an Electric Vehicle (EV). All components are new, however please note that the batteries were purchased in March, 2008 and have been occasionally connected to a Xantrex charger for charging, although they have not been connected to a system. Also, there is some minor weathering of the battery enclosures as they have been stored under a carport. The solar panels are still in the original manufacturers boxes. The charge controller has been installed in the battery box. Of course, normally it would be enormously expensive to set up a solar powered system and the solar panels and batteries are the highest cost component. But if you’re smart enough to shop eBay, then here’s your chance to save over $2,000 off the new cost (Package cost w/tax is $4,132.50 new). Package includes (click on highlighted terms for product links): 4 Deka 8G27 batteries. Rated at 99 AH each, so total battery bank is approximately 400 AmpHours (or approximately 5000 watts - 5KW). Cost $318.95 each 2 Kyocera KC80 solar panels. 80 watts each. New cost $486 each. 1 OkSolar Top-opening battery enclosure. Cost $1,369 1 ASC load control alarm. Cost $87.75 1 sets of: 8 battery cables, 2 battery enclosure cables and load control cables. Cost $100. The great thing about these batteries is that they are sealed gel batteries so you don’t have to worry about having to constantly check the water level. Some background: I’ve been reading Home Power since issue #11 and set up my first solar powered system (three panels, Edison Nickel Iron batteries, etc) in 1989 (I no longer have that system, so don’t bother to email about it). I was planning on moving to California in three years and setting up a new system once we built a house out there. However, with our power outages due to Hurricane Ike and the continuing electricity rate hikes, I recently made the plunge to set up a new system. Unfortunately, it now turns out that we will be moving this spring with the additional setback of possibly being in an apartment for some time. So with this turn of events I will be selling this equipment rather than installing it or trying to move and store it. This equipment has just been sitting and needs to be put to use making energy! Besides the batteries (I have 48 altogether), I also have a 2KW array of Kyocera solar panels, a GoPower inverter and Xantrex battery chargers that I’ll be putting up in future auctions. I welcome prebuy inspections. Just email to arrange a time. If you’re not in the Houston area, 5 million other people are so you probably have a friend, relative or coworker who can come by for you. Due to bad checks, we only accept Paypal or cash. Thanks for looking and good luck. High bidder must make contact within two days and payment must be received within seven days. No shipping, local pick up only.More info below the pictures. Some people have asked if i'm an installer.I'm not an installer. There are people in town that are installers, but they do large systems and charge $10-15K just for installation, equipment is extra. If you have no experience with solar power and want to know more, here is some information to get you started. A simple way to get started and to get your feet wet in RE (renewable energy) is to take one room off the grid. Basically, you'll run one room off of solar power and you'll continue to run the rest of the house off of Centerpoint (or whoever your electrical provider is). So, what are the steps to do this? Well, first you'll want to mount your solar panels. They can be mounted on a house roof, on a pole mount, etc. For a pole mount, use a post hole digger and dig a hole in a sunny area. You'll place a steel pipe (about 3" diameter or so. Most people use steel pipe, although this could be a 4x4 or other material) in the hole and set it in concrete. Next, a frame work (commercial or homemade) will hold the panels in place. For optimal solar gain in the Houston area, the panels will be aimed towards 175 degrees at about a 30 degree tilt. You can get even more solar gain if you make the rack adjustable, so that you can change the tilt from summer to winter. Or for even more gain (and much more complexity) you can even make the racks so that you can change the angle throughout the day to follow the sun. For most people this is too much work and expense. Also, there is nothing wrong with mounting panels directly on a carport so that they are facing straight up. While you may get a little less sun, you'll offset that by having a simpler installation. Once you've determined your solar panel location, you'll run 12 volt DC wiring from the panels to a charge controller. The charge controller controls the incoming voltage and current coming from the panels and prevents the batteries from overcharging (which would damage the batteries). Next, from the charge controller another set of wires goes to the batteries to feed them the charge. The batteries are also wired together (in this case in parallel to keep the voltage at 12VDC). Also note that the charge controller and the batteries need to be placed in a dry environment. Additionally the location should be close to the panels and inverter to reduce the length of wiring runs between components. Finally, from the batteries a final set of wires goes to an inverter. The inverter converts the 12 volts DC from the batteries to 110 volts AC. From the inverter, you have three options: run an extension cord to the room you want to take off-grid and hook everything into that extension cord. Have an electrician remove the circuit breaker (from your main panel) that goes to the room you want to take off-grid and tap the inverter directly into the circuit for that room. Run electrical wiring from the inverter to your attic. Determine which wire comes from the main panel and provides power to the room you want to take off-grid. Turn off the circuit breaker. Cut the wire so that it is no longer connected to the main panel. Now tap the wire from your inverter directly into the wire powering your room. Another common question is how much power will solar power provide? There are many variables, but for the starter system we are discussing (4 Deka batteries, 2 Kyocera panels, etc) here is some information. There are 2 panels that are 80 watts each, so that means they create 160 watts per hour under full sun conditions. Full sun comes from around 11am to 3pm. Partial sun comes in the morning before that period and in the afternoon after that period. Plan on about 4 hours of full sun and about 6 hours of partial sun. This gives you about 1200 watts per day (a little more in the summer, a little less in the winter). So basically you are earning 120 watts per day. The next factor is storage of the watts you just earned. You could potentially have a single battery or a very large battery bank. The key criterium though will be depth of discharge (DoD). If you have a 5KW battery bank (as in the package I have for sale), then the total wattage available is 5000 watts. For the longest possible battery life, you want to minimize the DoD. Most people recommend a DoD of no more than 10-30%. So if you use a DoD of 20%, that means you can use up to 1000 watts (20% of 5000). This will provide you with a longer battery life span. But, if you use a high DoD (like 90%) then your battery life span will be dramatically shortened. So the larger battery bank you are able to obtain, the lower DoD you will end up using and the longer the batteries will last. Another factor is Gel cel vs. flooded lead acid batteries (The Dekas in this package are gel cel). Gel cel batteries are sealed batteries that do not need maintenance. Flooded lead acid batteries have caps which must be removed so that you can add distilled water to on a regular basis. The advantage to gel cels is there is dramatically less maintanence and there is no dangerous hydrogen off gassing. The advantage to flooded lead acid batteries is that they are less expensive and they have slightly more amperage. Another factor is the size of your load. It is much cheaper to reduce your electrical usage on the front end than it is to pile on more and more expensive batteries and panels on the back end. You can check the data plate on the back of every appliance in your room and the wattage of your light bulbs to determine how many watts your items use. Then you need to multiply that by the number of hours per day that the items are turned on to figure out how many watts in total the room uses. So if you have a TV that uses 30 watts and you have it on for three hours per day, then it uses 90 watts total. If the room uses more than the watts you create, then you have to reduce the load (cut down number of hours in use, get more efficient light bulbs, run some items off household grid power, etc). If the room uses less wattage than you create, then you can run an extension cord to something else (or you can just have excess power for rainy days, etc). Some people ask if the entire package that i have (48 batteries and 26 panels) is enough to power an entire house. That depends on how big your house is and how much power you consume. If you have a typical large Texas house with single pane windows, leaky doors, a freezer in the hot garage, a swimming pool, kids who leave the lights on, incandescent bulbs that are adding more heat than light, a giant old central AC, unshaded windows, etc, then there is little chance that you'll be able to run off solar without spending $100,000 for equipment. As an example, my house is 3100 sq ft w/ a swimming pool. We have a refrigerator and a separate freezer (but they're both in the kitchen). 90% of all bulbs are CFLs, all windows are shaded and I've done a lot of work as far as insulation. For a large house like this, we had been running 2800KWH per month in the summer and 1800KWH per month in the winter. That works out to about 60KWH per day in the winter and 95KWH per day in the summer. My electrical bill was running about $300/month in the summer and $150/month in the winter. But my house is by far the most efficient in my neighborhood. I talk to a lot of other people who have similar sized or smaller homes and no pool and their bill is $600/month. That's an enormous amount of KW hours. Recently, to cut the load even more, in September we started shutting off the central AC at night and just using a bedroom window AC instead. This made a dramatic difference and my most recent summer bill dropped to $100. This was 22.7 KW per day. Okay, so if you have 26 panels and each one is generating 600 watts per day, you'll generate 15.6 KWH per day. As you can see, at this point I'm close to the break even point. Without a pool (and its two pumps) we'd be at the break even point on electricity generation. The solar panels are still new in the box. The batteries are all marked March, 2008. I was told they were purchased then and have not been used (as far as being connected to a system), however, I have connected them to a battery charge to top them up. They have been connected together with the proper wiring and installed in the enclosures. I was also told the charge controllers are new in that they have not been used, but have only been connected so that they will be ready to go. The person I bought everything from had planned to power a restaurant with this equipment. He calculated his electrical usage at 15KW per day, which is what the entire system will cover. As you can probably imagine, how in the world could a retail business like a restaurant only consume 15KW per day. Well, after he purchased everything, he discovered he had dropped a zero in his calculations and his actual usage was 150KW per day. So he would have had to get ten times as much equipment - $500,000 in all! At that point he realizes he couldn't accomplish his goal and he sold his equipment to me. Thanks, mike 281-358-3773 Place a Bid!