Top 7 Mistakes Newbies Make Going Solar - Avoid These For Effective Power Harvesting From The Sun

what's up youtube this is LDS Reliance today I want to talk about the top seven mistakes that people make when they go solar these are in no particular order and they apply to on grid grid tied or off grid number one is confusing daylight hours with Sun hours a Sun hour is a specific unit of measurement that we use in solar to define the period of time in the day when we're gonna get the most out of our solar panels so when it's summertime we all think oh the day is super long we've got 12 hours of daylight everything's gonna be great our solar panels are gonna be working awesome however even in the the middle of summer in July the Sun may rise at 6 a.m. and set at 9 p.m. but you're only getting 7 Sun hours in the middle of that day where your solar panel is working anywhere close to its maximum capacity so the rest of the day the Sun will still shine the solar panel will still work but it will function at a very very very reduced rate number two is under estimating your power consumption and the various devices that you have in your house we all have a bunch of different devices in our homes but not very many of us know how much they're consuming so how are we supposed to know what this stuff consumes well there's a couple different ways number one you can get a device that will measure the electricity consumed over time and you can do some math or most appliances and electronic devices in your home will come with information from the manufacturer that gives you an estimate of especially appliances as you see here there's an Energy Guide and it tells you an estimate of how much this device is going to consume pay special attention to air conditioners heaters blow dryers microwaves stoves refrigerators and so forth if you at least get a grasp on those big devices you'll have a pretty good idea of what you're gonna consume number three is not decreasing your usage first this one is a no-brainer if you do a little math and I know we're all scared of a little math so let's do an easy math problem first the average solar panel costs about $1 per watt to replace an incandescent light bulb a 6 watt light bulb with a 10 watt LED light bulb is gonna cost you $5 that's going to net a savings of 50 watts that's going to result in a $50 savings in solar panels you don't have to buy now because you made that energy save saving step there are lots of other ways that you can save on your usage before installing solar and it's a big deal you're talking thousands of dollars on a whole home system just by making some careful upgrades first before you do so number four is having unreasonable or unrealistic expectations however you got interested in solar whether you're wanting to go green or you want to save money you need to know the limitations of what you're getting into so it's very tempting to go out to Harbor Freight or to Amazon or whatever and find a a solar panel kit and and you it's it's affordable it's a hundred hundred fifty bucks 300 bucks whatever it is and your thing you have great visions of doing lots of stuff with this system I get these questions in Mike in the comments all the time I want to power my refrigerator with this solar panel okay well let's think about this for a second you've got a hundred watt kit that you bought but you have a 600 watt refrigerator how is that going to work your solar panel would have to work six times longer than your refrigerator and your refrigerator runs 24 hours a day it's just not a realistic expectation and that's just one example I'd recommend that you start small something like a light and then you can scale up later once you figure out what the realistic the limitations and the the production of your system is going to be in the real world number five is bad solar panel installation this is not giving enough thought to how you're going to mount the solar panel and all of the considerations that go into that there are lots of things to consider when mounting your solar panel I'll just talk about a couple real quickly number one it has to face south if you live in the northern hemisphere it needs to face south the another one is that the angle that you mount the solar panel needs to be equal to the latitude of where you live roughly speaking if you can't move it to track the Sun it needs to be approximately the angle of latitude another one and this is not very well-known is that solar panels are designed to run cool they don't like heat so that's counterintuitive because they operate in the Sun but enough solar panels optimal range is about 77 degrees Fahrenheit and so if you get if you don't leave enough air gap behind the solar panel or you put it in an area that's going to see excessive heat it will never reach its rated efficiencies number six is taking a deal that's too good to be true usually this is going to be with the grid-tied system the least systems that people are selling door-to-door now but it can also apply to off-grid as well we've all heard the phrases if it's too good to be true it probably is and there's no such thing as a free lunch so when someone comes to your door and is telling you a solar panel system completely free to you that's going to completely eliminate your electric bill or decrease it to almost nothing there's going to be some drawbacks to that that you need to look into I'm not going to get into all of that that's not the point of this video but you need to look into the finer print and the drawbacks of what you're getting into another scenario is that you do a lot of research you do some shopping and you find a pallet of solar panels for 30 cents a watt well chances are that's probably going to be B grade cells or or something and typically those are just cosmetic but they can very much affect the performance of your solar panels so know what you're buying get some pictures beforehand get some guarantees or whatever before you buy something like that and finally number seven is buying before defining your load and this is one that I made myself so I know what I'm talking about here this is what this is is buying a solar panel system before having any clue what you want to do with it that's a little like buying a house without knowing who's gonna live there and what your needs are you may get a smoking deal on that one bedroom townhome that's amazing but then you'd promised your brother's family that he can come live with you and he's got four kids that gonna work a lot of this stuff just comes down to patience know what you're doing do the research cover all the angles ask people who have done this before so that you know and then decide what your wants are out of the system before you go out and and buy something don't be like me I did that luckily it all worked out in the end and I was able to recover from that but some people may not so that concludes our list hopefully you learned a few things maybe I worn a few people before they make a mistake it'll all be worth it if that if that's the case so as always thanks for watching guys

Channel: LDSreliance

Views: 3,466,704

Rating: 4.6866112 out of 5

Keywords: solar, solar mistakes, solar mistake, solar energy, solar powered, beginner solar mistakes, solar mistakes to avoid, climate, sun, mistake, mistakes, top mistakes, top mistake, newbie, rookie, beginner, amateur, ignorant, waste, effective, ineffective, solar scam, avoid these mistakes, avoid, grid tied, off grid, solar panel system, solar panel, pv, photovoltaics, energy, power, electric, beginner mistakes, what i wish i knew, mistakes to avoid, how to avoid mistakes, avoid solar mistakes

Id: wHOulpxI4Us

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2017