Good price on 260watt panels. (1 Viewer)

Sep 22, 2013
200
199
Halifax
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28,218
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Relay self-build
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Trainee MH owner
Only if you have a controller able to handle that voltage....:unsure:
 
Aug 6, 2013
11,941
16,527
Kendal, Cumbria
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27,352
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Le-Voyageur RX958 Pl
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since 1999
There are some really good deals around domestic PV panels at the moment. I bought a 250W around a year ago for £114. You do need a fair bit of roof to install one though.

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Feb 16, 2013
19,498
51,185
uttoxeter
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24,713
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ambulance conversion
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50 years
Looking for another panel , but are these made for houses , would they stand up to slight flexing, just asking maybe someone will know
 
Feb 16, 2013
19,498
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uttoxeter
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ambulance conversion
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50 years
Sorry cross posted the last two, as I thought :(

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Ivory55

Free Member
May 23, 2012
6,017
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North West Norfolk
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Since Feb 2012
With the solar electric roof thing being done away with I wondered if you fitted your own and run it to an emersion heater in the hot water tank at home would it still be viable thing to do.
 

BwB

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Apr 3, 2011
917
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Suffolk UK
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Looking for another panel , but are these made for houses , would they stand up to slight flexing, just asking maybe someone will know
Should think these will be ok on a motorhome. I've had two on mine for 5 years and they are still going strong.

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TerryL

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Mar 5, 2010
6,152
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With the solar electric roof thing being done away with I wondered if you fitted your own and run it to an emersion heater in the hot water tank at home would it still be viable thing to do.

Last year I re-arranged the way we heat water to use the solar panels to heat the water during the middle of the day i.e. when they produced maximum power. Seemed to be reasonably economical, although they were of course "topped up" by the normal electricity supply.
However last week I decided to experiment and went back to heating the water by gas - on all the time as we've got an ancient system that won't take a timer (although we're currently looking to change that). As we have an energy monitor it was quite easy to judge the effects and we found it was actually cheaper to run the water heating on gas.

Now to your question. Our panels (6) put out 1.4Kw maximum, as recorded the last few days and over about 2 hours mid-day. Our immersion heater is a 3Kw model so I would guess powering purely by solar panels would work, though not very well, but you would need to install at least 10 panels and frankly the cost just wouldn't be worth it. You'd never get your investment back.

As an aside, we were fortunate to get the panels installed before the Government reduced the Feed-In-Tariff and we've benefited ever since - our annual energy bill is less than £300 - so I've calculated we'll get our money back in 10-12 years. Only wish we'd gone for more panels but our advisor didn't think the extra cost was worthwhile at that time - can't just add panels now or we'd lose the FIT.
 

MisterB

LIFE MEMBER
Feb 25, 2018
5,750
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Adria 670 SLT
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enough to know i shouldnt touch things i know nothing about ....
4kw system on our roof at home. We are in the lower tariff though at around 22p. Still produces @ £900 per year though!

As for solar heating for water, you can get panels that are specific for water heating
 

Ivory55

Free Member
May 23, 2012
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I didn’t know if they did something like a 1kw emersion heater at the bottom of the tank, a bit like the old economy 7 when it had a bottom heater for at night.

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Aug 6, 2013
11,941
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Kendal, Cumbria
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since 1999
We're on the earlier subsidy/FIT and have been for over 10 years. We have the max panels allowed (16) and they're probably the best investment we've ever made. As well as the making money they have cut our power bill by around 30%. There are devices that sense when not all power is being used by the home they're attached to that will turn on an immersion or other appliance. At the moment though we're happy with what we're getting.
 
Apr 27, 2016
6,796
7,835
Manchester
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42,762
MH
A class Hymer
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Since the 80s
There are devices that sense when not all power is being used by the home they're attached to that will turn on an immersion or other appliance.
Another alternative, especially if you don't have a hot water tank but have a 'combi boiler' that heats the water on demand. A 'heat battery' uses solar electricity to heat a solid/liquid that melts at about 80 degrees C. It is very well insulated, so it loses heat very slowly - a small fraction over 24 hours.

The idea is, the cold water is piped through the heat battery, and then into the combi boiler. If the water is already hot enough, the thermostat senses this, and the boiler doesn't even switch on. If it's warm but not hot enough, the boiler switches on and heats it up just enough to make it the right temperature.

So basically it's cutting down the amount of gas needed for hot water. If there's no sun, the combi boiler functions as normal.
 

Minxy

LIFE MEMBER
Aug 22, 2007
32,488
66,003
E Yorks
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149
MH
Carthago Compactline
Exp
Since 1996, had Elddis/Swift/Rapido/Rimor/Chausson MHs. Autocruise/Globecar PVCs/Compactline i-138
Last year I re-arranged the way we heat water to use the solar panels to heat the water during the middle of the day i.e. when they produced maximum power. Seemed to be reasonably economical, although they were of course "topped up" by the normal electricity supply.
However last week I decided to experiment and went back to heating the water by gas - on all the time as we've got an ancient system that won't take a timer (although we're currently looking to change that). As we have an energy monitor it was quite easy to judge the effects and we found it was actually cheaper to run the water heating on gas.

Now to your question. Our panels (6) put out 1.4Kw maximum, as recorded the last few days and over about 2 hours mid-day. Our immersion heater is a 3Kw model so I would guess powering purely by solar panels would work, though not very well, but you would need to install at least 10 panels and frankly the cost just wouldn't be worth it. You'd never get your investment back.

As an aside, we were fortunate to get the panels installed before the Government reduced the Feed-In-Tariff and we've benefited ever since - our annual energy bill is less than £300 - so I've calculated we'll get our money back in 10-12 years. Only wish we'd gone for more panels but our advisor didn't think the extra cost was worthwhile at that time - can't just add panels now or we'd lose the FIT.
Could you not fit some extra panels just for your own use and leave the existing ones feeding into the FIT?

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TerryL

LIFE MEMBER
Mar 5, 2010
6,152
8,137
North East
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10,511
MH
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2009
Could you not fit some extra panels just for your own use and leave the existing ones feeding into the FIT?
Well I suppose it's possible but as the whole system is set up to feed into the electricity supply it would take a bit of trickery to keep additional panels separate and still get some benefit. It would also probably negate the terms and conditions that I have to confirm every time I claim FIT. Not worth it IMO but thanks for the thought.
 
Oct 30, 2016
1,435
2,826
Colchester
Funster No
45,854
MH
Le voyageur 8.5
Exp
On 3rd van so not a total newbie....
We have an immersun, which diverts excess solar to the emersion heater, but only feeds excess, wether it's 20w or 2kw, works brilliantly, for the whole summer the water tank is normally heated by late morning.
 

Campervan_man

Free Member
Jun 24, 2019
997
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Dethleffs Globebus
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2000
As a MOBILE Motorhome and Caravan Mobile Engineer based in Flintshire I fit 260W panels to Motorhomes and Caravans. They are Jetion or Jinko, sized 95CMS by 165CMS PLUS the white RV white plastic feet X 6. Unfortunately as I fitted an Avtex Snipe3 in the middle of My Dethleffs M'home roof I didn't have room to fit one on My own van, had to fit an 100W instead.

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