Has anyone successfully and at a reasonable cost, supplied electric to their home in DR using solar?
- Thread starter claiborne59
- Start date
solar panels
We're looking into the same thing right now - and also considering a windmill instead because our house is close to the ocean and there's always a good breeze. My brother-in-law has a 3 bedroom 'weekend' home up on a mountain in Ocoa where there is no electricity yet. [although I saw electrical poles being installed last fall, and now there's a transformer on one of them right near his - and our - property. We have 70 terajas next to him, another brother-in-law has over 1,000 across the road] He has solar panels on his roof that feed into a bunch of batteries, that connect to the inversor and the electric box. Works VERY well. We're all considering doing the same up there too.
agreed
i thought about the same thing, if the thieves figure out how much they are worth it could be ripe for their picking....i think it's a great idea to use solar and a windmill as a backup. i was suprised to see a windmill for the first time in DR when i drove to the beaches of Salinas in Bani. a hotel had 3 big windmills on its roof. If only more people could benefit from this source of energy....i wonder if the transformer and inversor for this kind of energy produced is expensive to set up? :ermm:
i thought about the same thing, if the thieves figure out how much they are worth it could be ripe for their picking....i think it's a great idea to use solar and a windmill as a backup. i was suprised to see a windmill for the first time in DR when i drove to the beaches of Salinas in Bani. a hotel had 3 big windmills on its roof. If only more people could benefit from this source of energy....i wonder if the transformer and inversor for this kind of energy produced is expensive to set up? :ermm:
They already know about it. Solar panels have been robbed in an university a few months ago. Santo Domingo or Santiago, I don't remember it was on the Listindiario.com
for the right $ you can go completely "off the grid". whether or not this is economically good for your wallet, cheaper. depends on a lot of factors. i think the best use of solar panels, at this moment, to save money, would be to use them to charge your batteries connected to your inversor. this way you don't need a large bunch of panels, expensive, and keep in mind that charging those batteries from the "grid" sucks a lot of juice.
If you search some of my posts a few years back, I tell about some of the history of photovoltaics in the DR. Richard Hansen took a few down there in 1984 and quite a bit has happened since. The focus has been on the rural population not connected to the grid, and invertors satisfy the connected. You can buy panels and components locally in a variety of locations and suppliers. Some have the capabilities to install and other just supply. Panels are even sold on Dykeman in Washington Heights. It is all a matter of $$$ (paying 10-20 years of electricity upfront, minus maintenance.) There are websites that help design the system depending on the need.
When you use photovoltaics and small wind turbines, EFFICIENCY must come first. Light bulbs, appliances, fans and refrigeration need to use DC or be very efficient if they are run through an invertor, otherwise the cost is prohibative.
Remote locations can present issues with theft. If there is a caretaker you can trust and does their job, the risk can be minimized. You have to worry more about theft of the batteries and invertor than people taking the panels off the roof. At least that was my experience.
When you use photovoltaics and small wind turbines, EFFICIENCY must come first. Light bulbs, appliances, fans and refrigeration need to use DC or be very efficient if they are run through an invertor, otherwise the cost is prohibative.
Remote locations can present issues with theft. If there is a caretaker you can trust and does their job, the risk can be minimized. You have to worry more about theft of the batteries and invertor than people taking the panels off the roof. At least that was my experience.
They could sell as much as 20% in the local market if I'm not wrong, paying tax as if they would imported wich is almost 0%.
Lots and lots of info on this subject in past DR1 posts. You can find it all using the search function. I'm pretty sure there is a solar energy store in Sosua.