Rumplestiltskin
New Member
Before I follow Alice down the rabbit-hole...
I live in a mfr'd home with little opportunity to upgrade insulation so that's not an option. This post/question only concerns winter heating, not summer cooling. I have a propane furnace and have found I'm able to reduce its use in the winter (propane use is expensive!) by dropping the temp to 55 and using an electric space heater in our bedroom on the "low" (750W) setting. It cycles on and off through the night and keeps the room comfortable, maybe at 68F. We have an additional small bedroom that's rarely used so another, smaller electric space heater on the low setting (maybe 375W?) should handle that.
What I'd love to do if if's not too expensive is to install some PV panels and a battery. Daytime use would be minimal because we get plenty of sun during the day which heats up the house so the propane furnace is only used for a few hours in the morning to warm up the house and rarely during the night to maintain the 55F in the rest of the home (meaning "other than the 2 bedrooms").
If my math skills haven't degraded too far, here's what I've calc'd (but please do correct me where I've err'd):
750W+375W=1125W to run the two heaters.
1125W x 5 hours per 8 hour period (cycling on/off over the night) = 5625Wh or 5.63kWh. Let's call it 6.0kWh. (I may be overestimating the actual use but better than underestimating it.) As this is nighttime use, I'd need a battery. But what size? I'm seeing "AmpHour" ratings and they're mostly 12V output.
Sedona has a little over 6 hours of useful daylight (according to online charts I've found); so I'd need enough PV panels to produce 1000W over each of the six available hours. That seems to be about four -but- what I've seen are 12V panels...so do I actually need 40 panels to juice up a large enough (??Ah?) battery?
I've been making the assumption that a 12V space heater (like for a car?) would be totally inadequate for my needs.
I'll appreciate if someone might put me out of my misery here. Thank you.
I live in a mfr'd home with little opportunity to upgrade insulation so that's not an option. This post/question only concerns winter heating, not summer cooling. I have a propane furnace and have found I'm able to reduce its use in the winter (propane use is expensive!) by dropping the temp to 55 and using an electric space heater in our bedroom on the "low" (750W) setting. It cycles on and off through the night and keeps the room comfortable, maybe at 68F. We have an additional small bedroom that's rarely used so another, smaller electric space heater on the low setting (maybe 375W?) should handle that.
What I'd love to do if if's not too expensive is to install some PV panels and a battery. Daytime use would be minimal because we get plenty of sun during the day which heats up the house so the propane furnace is only used for a few hours in the morning to warm up the house and rarely during the night to maintain the 55F in the rest of the home (meaning "other than the 2 bedrooms").
If my math skills haven't degraded too far, here's what I've calc'd (but please do correct me where I've err'd):
750W+375W=1125W to run the two heaters.
1125W x 5 hours per 8 hour period (cycling on/off over the night) = 5625Wh or 5.63kWh. Let's call it 6.0kWh. (I may be overestimating the actual use but better than underestimating it.) As this is nighttime use, I'd need a battery. But what size? I'm seeing "AmpHour" ratings and they're mostly 12V output.
Sedona has a little over 6 hours of useful daylight (according to online charts I've found); so I'd need enough PV panels to produce 1000W over each of the six available hours. That seems to be about four -but- what I've seen are 12V panels...so do I actually need 40 panels to juice up a large enough (??Ah?) battery?
I've been making the assumption that a 12V space heater (like for a car?) would be totally inadequate for my needs.
I'll appreciate if someone might put me out of my misery here. Thank you.
)
