Solar panel

[DIDO.1 22,869]

Amazon.co.uk

WWW.AMAZON.CO.UK

 

 

 

[DIDO.1 22,869]

Looking at kits like this.... I'm still lost with it to be honest 

[Greyman 33,028]

1 minute ago, DIDO.1 said:

Looking at kits like this.... I'm still lost with it to be honest 

Basically the two panels will charge the battery’s and the white box will convert the voltage upto 240, it will have a 3 pin socket or some other form of outlet I n that you can either just plug your heater into or you can create a loop to run several sockets, the invertor mppt controller and all the other gubbings are built in the white box and as long as your heat source does not draw more than 2000 watts which is the size of the invertor you will be fine mate, you can also charge the battery’s with a normal charger if you have no sun

[DIDO.1 22,869]

I don't want to spend thousands as I'm only warming one small room... equally I don't want to buy something that isn't really going to warm the room enough or for long enough.

 

[Greyman 33,028]

Oil filled radiator would be good with that, invertors sometimes struggle with anything that takes a surge of power like those fan heaters   Or kettles etc it should have a continuous rating and a surge rating on the spec somewhere

[Greyman 33,028]

43 minutes ago, DIDO.1 said:

I don't want to spend thousands as I'm only warming one small room... equally I don't want to buy something that isn't really going to warm the room enough or for long enough.

 

With that amount of watts from your panels you could probably stick another ,3/4 battery’s on that system  a bit further along which would give you twice as much run time especially when there’s not as much sun about

[amadolabonte 9]

On 03/09/2022 at 12:51, DIDO.1 said:

We have a dormer bungalow and the upstairs bedrooms are freezing in winter and like an oven in winter. I'm trying to address it with insulation etc. One of the rooms isn't to bad because the chimney breast runs through it and that takes the edge off the cold in there. The other bedroom is the worst. Now I'm not over bothered because my son who sleeps in there is one sweaty kid. Honestly even in winter he just sleeps in boxer shorts, once he's in bed he's plenty warm enough. We have the logburner on downstairs, open all the doors and I reckon we will go through winter hardly needing the heating on..

.... I would just like some little heater in the colder bedroom to just take the edge off in the cold earlier in the day. I'm wondering if a small solar panel set up could be connected to a little storage type heater. When you Google it you get all sorts of calculations about how many panels it would take to run a heater along with the fact that it's not going to work if it isn't sunny. Now I understand all that but how does that actually work in practice. Has anyone actually tried it. I don't want to heat a room up to comfortable temps in the middle of winter....just stop the temp from hitting freezing cold before I get the logburner going in the late afternoon. 

I get it's not going to be really good at making heat in cloudy weather, but surely it would produce some, especially with a battery and some sort of storage heater, like setups used in off grid solar Hilo systems.

Any actual experience of using solar as a heater that could say if it would be worth doing or not?

Using solar panels to run a small bedroom heater in winter is generally not practical. Even a low-wattage heater draws more power than a few panels can supply, and you’d need a large battery to store enough energy for cloudy or early-morning use. For taking the edge off the cold, it’s usually more effective to use a small mains-powered heater or improve insulation and draft-proofing. Solar could supplement heating, but in practice it will provide very limited warmth in a typical bedroom during winter.

[leegreen 2,330]

Heating anything uses a lot of power. What you are thinking won't work and your money would be better spent elsewhere. Maybe invest in a back boiler for you woodburning stove and pipe a rad the the said room.

Have you got a Smart meter or and old spinny round jobby?

[leegreen 2,330]

On 03/09/2022 at 09:49, Greyman said:

Incorrect you can run an entire house if you have enough battery’s and a big enough invertor

Not for heating though. Just batteries cost £500+ per Kw. If you ran a "small" oil radiator, say 1500w, It would use £750+ worth of batteries, which are fully charged to run it for 1 hour. I know they don't stay on constantly, but it would give you an idea.

Heating using electric is the most expensive way of heating. We have no mains gas here, our heating is from wood, back boiler with rads included. We have a power shower, that's a 9Kw shower. A 1Kw battery fully charged would last 6.6 mins using that shower. A 3000w oil radiator, which is fairly standard, would last 20 mins using the same battery. 

We have a 10Kw solar system here and I haven't bought any batteries. Our Feed in tariff pays for the power we use in the evening and the winter. 

We shower in the daytime and have wood powered bath. The dishwasher, washing machine, hoover and any high powered units get used in the day time. This is the best use for our system.

Gas bottle for cooking hobs and electric oven.

[Greyman 33,028]

16 minutes ago, leegreen said:

Not for heating though. Just batteries cost £500+ per Kw. If you ran a "small" oil radiator, say 1500w, It would use £750+ worth of batteries, which are fully charged to run it for 1 hour. I know they don't stay on constantly, but it would give you an idea.

Heating using electric is the most expensive way of heating. We have no mains gas here, our heating is from wood, back boiler with rads included. We have a power shower, that's a 9Kw shower. A 1Kw battery fully charged would last 6.6 mins using that shower. A 3000w oil radiator, which is fairly standard, would last 20 mins using the same battery. 

We have a 10Kw solar system here and I haven't bought any batteries. Our Feed in tariff pays for the power we use in the evening and the winter. 

We shower in the daytime and have wood powered bath. The dishwasher, washing machine, hoover and any high powered units get used in the day time. This is the best use for our system.

Gas bottle for cooking hobs and electric oven.

You may as well be on a boat like me mate sounds very similar lol

[leegreen 2,330]

3 hours ago, Greyman said:

You may as well be on a boat like me mate sounds very similar lol

It's living off grid ish. We do have mains electric and a farm supply water, which is really good stuff.

I have a large shed, that contains a kitchen, large sitting room, a bathroom (toilet, shower, sink etc). On this building I have an equal sized decking area, which is undercover and is an extension of our living area. My bedroom is in the end of a barn that is about 5m away from the shed, the ensuite is a bucket. This barn has 21, 360w panels on one side of the roof and I also have 6 x 400w panels on top of two 20' containers. It amounts to a 10kw system. 

My wood store, holds about 10 cubic meters of chopped wood, which usually lasts the winter and a bit.  A 15kg Calor gas lasts about a year, using 2 hobs. We cook outside a lot. 

If I lived on a boat, Noah would've had to have built it  I love boats, but only have a work punt at the mo.