Installing Solar Power panels during a zombie apocalypse.

Decent article on it here:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/rene...er/solar-panels-for-your-home-zm0z11zphe.aspx

Remember if they want power during the night (when I presume they'd want it most) they need batteries.

I don't know anything about solar power, but I'd just like to say that I would read the hell out of a zombie apocalypse story set in Townsville.

It'd be quite like old times.

Solar panels last between 10-20 years, and lose efficiency with each year of use. So depending on when your downfall happens and where you get the panels from, they will either be very inefficient or not usable.

Batteries also do not last long. But I'm unsure how long discharged batteries will last. Perhaps 5-10 years if kept well.

Meg, since it's set in the future, would it be possible for the Shopping Centre to already have solar panels in place? (Just in case it's something that hadn't occurred to you.)

mccardey said:

Meg, since it's set in the future, would it be possible for the Shopping Centre to already have solar panels in place? (Just in case it's something that hadn't occurred to you.)

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I'd expect them to be all solared up, but a quick look at Google maps tells me that both Castletown and Stockland are completely devoid of panels. But Stockland Shellharbour has a 1.2MW solar array, so it would be perfectly plausible to have panels in place.

Some notes.

We live off-grid and have a wind turbine, and a bank of traction batteries (the kind used in forklifts). We also have a wind turbine controller, two inverters, a diesel generator and a backup LPG generator for when the wind doesn't blow, all sorts of switches and monitors, and dump-loads for when the wind blows too hard for too long and the turbine generates too much power.

It's a really complex setup that few electricians are happy to tackle. It requires very specialist knowledge to work on.

Our off-grid neighbours don't have a wind turbine but they do have PV panels. Again, you need PV controllers and inverters to make the system work like mains power.

Physically fixing panels to the roof isn't too hard: you need some sort of frame or brackets to bolt to the structure of the roof, which you then fit the PV panels onto. Houses in the UK have roofs made from timber frames, with rows of overlapping tiles--concrete or slate, usually--nailed on. You remove some of the tiles, bolt on the frame, fix the panels on, then put back the surrounding tiles and seal everything so it's water-tight. (Don't forget to run cables into the building first...) Shopping malls have roofs which are a very different construction and they might not be strong enough to support the weight of a large array. You can mount them on the ground, which would be easier and safer--working on a roof is not easy when dealing with heavy PV panels.

Batteries: ours last for about eight years, but that's when they're in use. If they aren't used at all, and so aren't subject to much cycling, they should be ok for a while and you can renovate them to some extent by topping them up and so on.

Fuel: petrol goes off quite quickly so make sure your people are using diesel generators!

You say they'll be using "huge" generators: they'll gobble up fuel like you wouldn't believe, and would produce large amounts of power and therefore be very wasteful. You could consider having them use smaller generators, the kinds that builders use, to run a few things, perhaps.

PV arrays which are grid-connected will include switches which prevent them from providing any power when the power grid is switched off. So if your team takes a complete system out of a house and then moves it to a new location and puts it in there, they'll have to know enough to override this part of the system--because otherwise the system will look for that power connection, find there isn't one, and refuse to produce any power.

I hope some of that is a help.

Further to old Hack - emphasise a point about the power output. Solar PV is DC. So ones used by caravans and boats for example are fine, because all of the appliances are designed to run off DC. For UK household appliances, you need AC, so you need a transformer. There is some power loss in the conversion.
You will also find with household level solar PV that you might not have enough welly for running power tools. Remembering someone's account about living off grid with PV and a turbine and a battery bank, and how he had a generator for running power tools.

Why a shopping centre BTW? Strikes me as large, hard to defend with all those windows and hard to keep warm.

Bolero said:

Further to old Hack - emphasise a point about the power output. Solar PV is DC. So ones used by caravans and boats for example are fine, because all of the appliances are designed to run off DC. For UK household appliances, you need AC, so you need a transformer. There is some power loss in the conversion.

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That's what our inverters do.

You will also find with household level solar PV that you might not have enough welly for running power tools. Remembering someone's account about living off grid with PV and a turbine and a battery bank, and how he had a generator for running power tools.

Why a shopping centre BTW? Strikes me as large, hard to defend with all those windows and hard to keep warm.

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He probably needed the gen-set because his PV set-up wasn't high-powered enough to run the tools, not because it was a PV setup.

Our wind turbine is a 6kW one, and we have plenty of power for power tools. Just as well, as we have a small woodworking workshop here.

There's a show called "The Colony," where they took a group of real people, volunteers, and dumped them in the middle of nowhere after a pretend apocalypse, and told them to try and rebuild civilization. There were two seasons, one set in an abandoned part of Los Angeles, and one set in post-Katrina New Orleans. In one, they created a wind turbine on the roof of their apartment building, using scrap metal and car parts. It worked surprisingly well. In another, they boiled a truck-full of rotting pig corpses and used the processed fat to create bio-fuel, which they used like diesel to run their generator, a tractor, lights, and some self-defense mechanisms. They created some very ingenious items, rigging whatever junk they could find into water filters, security systems, and even an air-boat, which they used to explore the bayou in New Orleans. I would definitely check it out, if you're writing anything post-apocalyptic.

Gotta agree with Old Hack. Solar panels are really simple, it's the electronics to save the electricity and convert it to a usable format that are complicated.

That said, it's a mall. A dozen years from now. The perfect site for existing solar arrays. And a perfect place to have a bookstore with manuals on installing solar arrays as well as a box store selling batteries, electrical supplies and equipment for alternative power.

Then again, it's a zombie apocalypse. So, make up whatever you need, it's already pretty well beyond reality.

Jeff

WeaselFire said:

Gotta agree with Old Hack. Solar panels are really simple, it's the electronics to save the electricity and convert it to a usable format that are complicated.

That said, it's a mall. A dozen years from now. The perfect site for existing solar arrays. And a perfect place to have a bookstore with manuals on installing solar arrays as well as a box store selling batteries, electrical supplies and equipment for alternative power.

Then again, it's a zombie apocalypse. So, make up whatever you need, it's already pretty well beyond reality.

Jeff

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Bookshops in the UK don't often sell books about installing solar arrays. There's just not enough market for them. Unless things change significantly in the run-up to the apocalypse I'm not sure they would suddenly start carrying them.