How long will it take a solar-powered home to lose electricity?.?
Question by HV85: How long will it take a solar-powered home to lose electricity?.?
As you know, in the Mid-Atlantic area had a massive power outage. I wad curious, since I have in my community running on sunlight. How long, on average, if at all, will it take?
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2 Responses to How long will it take a solar-powered home to lose electricity?.?
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Depends on consumption.
Ho Ha
January 30, 2013 at 5:13 pm
Deceptively complex question.
No power generation during new moon, and rather tiny on other moon phases at nite.
Daytime varies with cloud-cover, more clouds = less power. This is why desert areas are preferred… maximum sunshine time per year. For example Toledo, Ohio is very sunlight poor, while Las Vegas, Nevada is sunlight-rich.
Consider also the area required just to power one home using 12V DC converted to 110V AC… it practically takes up the entire roof (because the AC Current must also be high; about 100 Amps, so a typical house needs 110V AC and 100 Amps or about 11,000 Watts of electric power). So actually its more efficient to have as many homes as possible go INDIVIDUAL solar, rather than waste A LOT of land trying to solar-power a town.
Considering all the Watts needed (energy), one has to store it for night time or low-production periods. So that means… batteries, rechargible ones, and many of them.
The short answer is when the storage batteries go dead. But worse, there will be times when one can’t use all the things needed, like lights, TV’s, ‘Puter, Fridge, Stove, etc. Before the batteries go dead, be ready to compromise.
Paul in CT
January 30, 2013 at 6:02 pm