Solar Power Cost is just one of the reasons why solar power is catching on slowly. It’s a convenient, quiet and clean power source but it’s not the cheapest option available. When factoring the solar power cost you need to take into account the cost of the panels, the cost of converting the power into usable AC power, and the cost of storing the power or returning it to the grid.
It’s tough to call what the people at MYSOLARBACKUP do ethical. In fact I’d call it a ripoff and I’m surprised to see their spots on GBTV where Glenn Beck often makes stands on how he only chooses sponsors that provide value to his listeners. In this case it’s a sponsor with an “F” rating. Here are a few things the people at MYSOLARBACKUP are doing to push their ripoff solar panels:
Most of the energy you consume is done in the home or by transportation. So how much power does your house use? There’s a meter for that! And every home on the grid has one. The energy usage is measured in kilowatt hours. Chances are you already know that as you pay for every single one of those kilowatt hours! So have you ever been curious where each one of those kilowatt hours comes from? Read the rest of this entry »
The cheap answer for how much power a laptop uses is, “It depends on the laptop”. In general you can expect a laptop to use quite a bit less energy than a desktop. The processors in laptops are clocked down to use less energy to ensure longer battery life.
The Kill-A-Watt meter isn’t just great for finding what devices in your house use the most energy, it’s also great for making ice cream! How, you ask? Well it’s always a pain to take the top off and check to see how the icecream is doing. With this meter you can know exactly how close your homemade icecream is to done. Read the rest of this entry »
Awhile back I asked myself, “How much power does an iPad use? What uses the most power on it?”. I hooked a What’s Up meter and ran some tests to see:
It’s important that you educate yourself about solar backup’s before you spend money on a solar backup system. Many people have called My Solar Backup a Scam. A solar backup system is pretty simple. It is comprised of a Panel (charger) Batteries (storage) and an inverter to take the 12 or 24 volt DC energy that’s stored and turn it into 120V AC that you typically use in your home. The cost of these three components is not very high. Read the rest of this entry »
Being a solar enthusiast or general electronic nerd, I was intrigued by the ads for solar backups. Specifically the solar backup system from “Solutions from Science” drew my interest. I thought it was a nice clean system but was very surprised when I got to the price. A scam is probably a pretty strong word, but it’s probably enough to just say that they’re taking advantage of people with the prices for the solar backups they offer.
| Item | Price | Shipping | |
| 90 Watt Solar Panel | $260 | $30 | Buy |
| Personal Hand Truck | $30 | $8 | Buy |
| 1800 Inverter | $260 | $0 | Buy |
| Charge Controller | $17 | $0 | Buy |
| Panel Extension Cord | $21 | $8 | Buy |
| Battery | $100 | $0 | Buy |
| Total | $688 | $46 |
*All Prices rounded up as on 1/19/2012
The purpose of this post is to illustrate how a homemade solar backup compares with the cost of the flagship “solution from science” solar backup from MySolarBackup. The cost for that system is $1,797.00 plus “only” $150.00 Here’s the rough price list for MY SOLAR BACKUP that has the same specs: Read the rest of this entry »
You can pay a lot of money for lighting under your cabinets or above your cabinets. If you’re not looking to spend a lot of money and you’re looking for the BEST LED Cabinet Lighting for your money this is what you’ll need to get:
First, you’ll need some LED light strips. These aren’t the most efficient LED’s on the market but they’re the cheapest and most convenient we’ve found for cabinet lighting.
LEDs operate on direct current, these specifically operate on 12V DC- the same as your automobile. If you remove the 12V power port from this power supply you’ll have a perfect power supply for your cabinet lighting system.
You may want to adjust the brightness of your cabinet lighting system, especially if you can do it for around $5. You can do it with this dimmer.
Adding the lights are easy. The LED strips have adhesive on one side that allow them to easily stick to your cabinets. One side of the lights has raw wires that can easily attach to your power supply. The other end has an adapter that easily fits onto most plugin 12v power supplies. You may want shorter strips and you can do that by cutting the lights wherever there are 2 solder tabs. When you attach the lights to your cabinet you’ll want to put put them closer to the front of the cabinet, unlike the photo below.
With the lights closer to the front of the cabinet you’ll be sure that they won’t be visible from a lower line of sight, like when people are sitting down.
For the last few weeks I’ve been driving an electric scooter to work. I’ve got a small solar system that creates 100 watt hours of energy each day. Since my commute isn’t very long (about 3 miles) I figured I’d see if I could commute to & from work with just solar energy pushing me. The result? With the help of the watt’s up meter I was able to see exactly how much energy would be required: Read the rest of this entry »