Electricity: Watt vs Amp

[jhale]

speaking of borrowing electricity.

cali-reef do you know anything off hand about solar panels?
would it pay at all to install them on my roof?
I know they are money, but does any one know how long they might need to opperate to pay for themselves.
It would be great if i could take part of my tank off the grid.

 

[cali_reef]

I looked into solar panels while living in LA a few years back, the state and city gave a rebate and tax credit for the installation, you can also sell your excess back (it will run the meter backwards if your home is not using 100% of the electricity produced) to the local municipality, City of Los Angeles. However, I would need a 20x20 panel to provide 50% of my peek requirement. The few thousand dollars for the installation and a large reflective panel on a single story shallow sloped roof were not attractive enough for me to switch. I calculated it would take 10 years for me to recover the $$ spend for the installation and the panels were only warranty for 3 years.

The current technology on the solar panels are not where it needs to be for cheap power generation, maybe when oil hits $75 and few more wars later our government will spend more money on alternative energy sources. I?ll get off the soap box now.

[ April 15, 2005, 01:46 PM: Message edited by: cali_reef ]

 

[cali_reef]

BTW,
Installing a solar panel to power your home is a noble thing to do in helping our environment, but not a practical one for most people.

 

[jhale]

no, that's good info, though i hope we won't need more wars to drive up the price of oil
I have the space on the roof, it's sloped, part faces north, part faces up, and part faces south. It's to bad they have not come down in price.

 

[bad coffee]

okay, for the record, W=V*A watts =Volts * amps.

Most household current(in the US) is 120V.

120V * 15 amps = 1800Watts you can run on a 15 amp breaker. Mulitply that by .8 (80%) and you get 1440 (Just like Jonathan said!)

On start up, some devices can pull a lot of power from a circut, and reduce the voltage. Think of the kitchen lights when you run the blender. It's a motor, and takes more 'juice' on startup than it does to run. So, if the blender is on the same circuit as the lights(and the circuit is pretty full) the lighs dim when you fire up the blender. Once the blender is running, the lights brighten up a little bit, then come back to full brighness when you turn the blender off.

Mostly, It will only affect the circuit it's on. If you've got old wiring, or you're close to the maximum amperage for your whole electrical panel, it will affect other circuits. But not likely in most modern homes.

BC

 

[House of Laughter]

Why do I feel like we are all saying the same thing, but differently?

Jim

 

[FRY]

basicly most of question answer are somewhat off in different direction from what was ask,15 amp branch circuit is used for general purpose lighting and convenience outlets on the same ciruit,20 amp circuit is for a dedicated outlet,a/c, washer machine ,appliance outlets,heater outlet,in NYC the smallest wire size you can use for branch wireing is #12 AWG,100 amps 208 volts single phase for home is adequate for a home ,if your lights are diming then you have a unbalance load ,loose wireing connection,or voltage comeing from service is below 90 percent of supply,in my home i have 100 amps service with a 24 circuit panel with 11 15 amp,5 20amp,2 20 amp 208,2 30 amp 208,1 40 amp 208,breakers when i take amparge reading it hardly goes over 50 amps couse you never use all equiepment at the same time,so you dont add the total ampargeof all the breakers in the panel by the way the power feeding your network to your house is 4280volts not 480 ,4280 feeds transformer and output is eather 480 or 208 depends on transformer, 480 is never brought into homes,

 

[cali_reef]

4000V is from powerplant to sub-stations, from there via street wires to the transformer is 480V. I thought the power coming in the house is two 110V legs you can "pair up" for 220V? where does 208 come in to this?

As for the explanation on the amount of C/B you can use on a 100Amp service panel is correct. You can put in as many it will fit, not amp restricted. I didn't know the NYC code for 12 AWG, good to know, I did know they require metal cased wires.

 

[FRY]

on your home you have 3 wire service comeing in a neutral and 2 hot legs 110 volt each phase a and phase b,voltage from phase a to b is 208 volts in NYC, in long island voltage from phase a to b is 220 to 240 volts depands what area your in NYC code you can only use BX cable,long island you can use romex cable