Adding solar power to your home does not have to be difficult, or expensive. By slowly adding in solar power to your home electrical system, you can slowly, and affordably convert your home to run from the power of the sun. Choosing appliances to convert first is a simple matter of figuring out which appliances you can benefit from having run on solar power.
1. Purchase a Watt -O- Meter
This little guy will tell you how much electricity each appliance or plug is using during the day, and can help you figure out what your power requirements are. 2-3 days to a week is a suggested time frame for your power usage survey per plug, so you can get an average usage over a few days time.
2. Purchase a solar array that is within your budget.
3. Purchase a Battery for Power Storage
The battery is the thing that will be supplying power to your appliance during the night when there is no sunlight. The battery (or battery bank) should be more than your daily Watt -O- Meter
value for amp hours.
4. Purchase a Sine Wave Converter (DC to AC Converter)
These can vary in price from cheap to expensive, but again, you should choose one that is within the Watt values you got from your Watt -O- Meter
.
5. Put it All Together
Mount the solar panels on your roof, balcony, or even in the backyard on the ground. Just make them stable and face them towards the South in Northern Hemisphere, & in the southern hemisphere, they should face North; with a tilt of 60% in the winter, and 30% in the summer for fixed installations. This page has some good suggestions for Optimum Orientation for Solar Panels.
6. Power it all Up
Connect the Solar Panel(s) to the Charge Controller and the Charge Controller to the Battery. Now connect the battery to the Inverter, and turn it on. If all is working fine, plug a small lamp into the Inverter, and turn it on. Your lamp should now be running on battery/solar power.
7. The Electrical Tie-In
From here, you can either re-route outlets, or whole circuits from your Electrical Panel Box to your Sine Wave Inverter, or you can run extension cords to the appropriate plugs (much more dangerous, but acceptable in short wire run situations.)
Check out how the Tales of a Vagabond Skoolie Bus Runs on Solar Power.
Complete with the small-scale solar layout described here.
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