Solar Power System?
I am planning to build a renewable energy source using solar panels and couple of controllers. So here is our plan: Estimated Maximum Power Consumption: 5000Wh/5kWh per day Solar Panels: 6 x (240W, 36.3V, 8.3 A) Battery Bank: 12V x 16 200Ah deep cycle battery connected in parallel (12*4 + 12*4) a total voltage of 48V MPPT Controller with 48V input 5kW 48VDC input - 220VAC output, 25 A maximum current INVERTER Is there anything that can i add or change? Or is there anything wrong in the system? thanks.. Improvements are welcome
What improvements have been done today in field of Solar Cell Technology?
Bottom line, not much. It depends on your definition of “improvements”. The only “improvement” that really counts is “efficiency”. Most roof tops are at best 20%. The ones that you can afford are about 10% efficient.Here are the top five best solar panel manufacturers ranked based on the highest efficiency solar panel they have to offer:SunPower (22.2%)Panasonic (21.6%)LG (21.1%)Hanwha Q CELLS (19.6%)Solaria (19.4%)[from the internet}.If solar panels were at 50% verses cost, they would be everywhere. Presently, they are extremely overpriced, have poor lifetimes, and, in general, fail or don’t produce the electrical energy that they say.By the way, if you wanted to install panels from the 5 above manufactures, you will go broke.Second problem, you must either sell the electricity back to the power companies or store it yourself. In both cases, the cost skyrockets and the efficiency goes down [simply because of conversion controllers].Sorry to bring clouds over an answer that should shine….
Cost of a solar panel kit for one room?
Generally, if a house has grid electricity, it makes no sense to install standalone solar. That includes an addition that is unwired. It's cheaper and less trouble to simply run another circuit from the main house. The killer is the batteries and associated weekly maintenance of them. If your house is situated in a good area, grid-tied solar might make sense. That type uses no batteries, and instead works seamlessly alongside grid power. If the solar doesn't have enough for your needs at any given instant, the grid makes up the rest. Were you to install this type of system, it would apply to the whole house in general, not any specific room. You can see kits for this sort of thing at costco.com, wind-sun.com, partsonsale.com, sunelec.com, and many other places. A common installation size would be 4 kW, and that would run about $8000, before federal and possibly state incentives. If a pro installs it, add a few thousand of labor.
Solar panel, Home office and Tax write off?
The solar panels are a capital improvement. You can deduct 15% of the depreciable portion of the property as part of the home office deduction. You'd have to depreciate the solar on the same 39 year straight line schedule as the house itself. (The land value is never depreciated so you'll have to break that out separately.) Since this is business use of real estate, the depreciation is over 39 years, not the 27.5 years for residential rental real estate. That crunches out to a whopping $38 deduction per year for the depreciation on the solar panels. ($10,000 x .15) / 39 = $38.46 which rounds down to $38. If you're in a 25% tax bracket, that will save you a whopping $10 in taxes. Keep in mind that when you sell the home, the depreciation allowed or allowable will be subject to recapture. That is taxable income subject to a maximum tax rate of 28% even if you can exclude the gain on the sale under Section 121. For that reason you might wish to consider the safe harbor deduction new for tax year 2013. You may deduct a flat $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet for a maximum deduction of $1,500. That won't trigger the depreciation recapture (for the years that you use it, you can switch off year for year if you wish) and may reduce the likelihood of an audit as well.