Our system cost well under £800 including some high quality tilting solar mounts and extra large solar panels (425 Watts each).
We did do a lot of planning and research when building this system and we will still be taking advice and measuring the performance (and reporting back our findings), but so far things are working very well and we are now disconnected from the expensive marina power.
You can see our parts list of items here, but this excludes some basic tools, like a good electric drill and a M8 tap set.
In the parts list I have included the suppliers details and in the articles listed below we explain the choices we made and why and also list any alternative suppliers and parts you may wish to consider.
For us a low profile system was essential as we are near one of the lowest bridges on the network where the Droitwich Canal goes under the M5 motorway. Using a tilting system we hoped to be able to harvest the most power when needed while maintaining a low profile.
As you can see our plank and rear hatch are probably higher than the panels when lowered.
Over the next few months we will try to tilt the panels and record how much more power we can get during a normal day, but currently our first tests showed a 2-3 fold increase in power during the start and end of the day with the panels tilted towards the sun.
Below is a list of the articles we wrote during the development of our installation:-
Planning for Solar Panels – Part 1
Planning for Solar Panels Part 2 – Panel Mounting Options
Planning for Solar Panels Part 3 – Types of Panels
Planning for Solar Panels Part 4 – MPPT vs PWM solar controllers
Planning for Solar Panels part 5 – Cable sizes, lengths and resistance.
Planning for Solar Panels part 6 – Panels in Serial or Parallel
Planning for Solar Panels part 7 – Buying the cable and Circuit breakers
Planning for Solar Panels part 8 – Buying Solar Panels and Mountings
Planning for Solar Panels part 9 – Wiring
Planning for Solar Panels part 10 – Drilling, Tapping and Fitting
Please read our Safety Disclaimer