In the early days, 1950’s of air conditioning, contractors purchased a compressor, slab coils, a water pump, a redwood cooling tower and a mess of pipe and electrical components. The compressor was installed in the garage, the slab coils were fitted on top the furnace to form an A coil and the water tower and pump were installed in the alley.
Today all these components are packaged into units that can be installed in hours.
Solar manufacturers would be wise to build modules that are as close to plug and play as possible. Many residents motivated to get off the grid without economic justification would purchase a module to run the lights this year and another for the dishwasher and clothes washer next year.
The price of rooftop solar panels has fallen drastically, but for some homeowners, the upfront costs remain prohibitive. One way to move more modules would be to put smaller arrays on homes. If financial constraints are a consideration, why make us save for years to put dozens of panels on our home when you could put just one or two now?
Package a solar panel, micro inverter, storage battery with the hardware. Size the units to handle 400, 600, 800 or 1000 watts and match the system to a dedicated lighting circuit or appliance
Copyright 2009 Michael Glover
I think this is a great idea but have a few concerns/questions.
1. Couldn’t the installation costs be high relative to the overall system cost (e.g $300 to install a $1000 system)? Doing it yourself is one solution to this issue.
2. A modular system still needs to get the electricity back to the appliance (via the electrical panel). That wiring could get unsightly (and expensive) if the system and panel are not close. In a module system, you would need one circuit per circuit breaker. Thus after 5 modules are installed (over the years) you would have 5 circuits go into your panel. Or would you have a consolidation point at the solar panels and then break it back out at the electrical panel?
Or maybe I am missing the whole idea on exactly how this would wired.
By: Paul Vettoretti on September 2, 2009
at 8:17 pm
Just saw a video on a plug and play modular system. Are there more?
By: eneryglover on September 3, 2009
at 5:53 am