“Living Off Grid Newsletter” support@living-off-grid.com
by Andrew Oke
Hello,
Todays tip can literally save you $10,000 if you have the time and patience to complete it.
Today I’m going to show you how you can find free solar panels. They are in good working condition and over half of the panels on our house are free.
This tip comes from our book “Building and Installing Solar Panels” which can be found here:
http://www.living-off-grid.com/solar/solar-panel-easy-installation-guide
The excerpt follows below:
Find Free Solar Panels
Solar Panels are expensive! At $800usd for a 170 watt panel it would take over $10,000 to power the normal off grid home with solar energy. That is a lot of money for our family, a lot of money for any family in fact…
We had it in the back of our heads that there must be a source of inexpensive (preferably free) solar panels. We just had to find out where that source was?
In our search for sources of free or inexpensive solar panels we have found two sources of free solar panels! And one source of very, very inexpensive solar panels.
Free Solar Panels Found
Finding our first source of free solar panels happened quite by accident… a car accident that is. Here’ s how it went.
We were driving down the 401 highway (one of Canada’s largest divided highways). Our family was going to visit the folks where we grew up.
Driving west just before dark we noticed up ahead the dreaded ‘trail of brake lights’, indicating a traffic jam. Traffic slowed down to a crawl.
Twenty minutes, forty minutes, fifty minutes, bumper to bumper until we finally got to the scene of the crash that had caused the traffic jam. Police and tow trucks were still on the scene.
That’s right, and the light went on in my head. Here was our source of free solar panels. I asked Jane to quickly write down the name and phone number of the company written down on the sign. It was obviously a rental company.
On Monday morning we called them up to inquire about the solar panels.
The company receptionist said that ‘Yes, the signs get hit all the time, and yes, we could probably have the cracked solar panels after the insurance company looked at them.”
It turns out that this company installs 5- 65 watt solar panels on each unit.
After getting the company approval we toted away 13 slightly damaged solar panels.
The workman that we talked to at the equipment yard said that “because the panels are mounted on the top of the mobile signs, they rarely take a direct hit, and are frequently only cracked or shattered.” He didn’t know if they still worked.
After getting the panels home we wanted to know just that. Do they still work? We put them in full sunlight at noon and measured the current to see if they still produced power.
Only two of the units were ruined beyond fixing. The remaining eleven panels produced about 20 to 24 watts of power apiece in full sunshine.
That meant we had over 200 watts of solar panels, about $1000 worth for the cost of going to get them!
That is about as close to free solar panels as you will ever find. Just find out the name of the company who rent signs to the highway maintenance company and give them a call.
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Wow, it seems that if you look hard enough you can save money everywhere. We still have one more source of free solar panels and one source of low cost solar panels left which I’ll go over in future newsletters.
Again, that tip was from our book “Building and Installing Solar Panels” which can be found here:
http://www.living-off-grid.com/solar/solar-panel-easy-installation-guide
Andrew
- 5 Book Deal
