Thursday, December 22, 2011

"So It Goes" gets an early Holidaze present...

Crooks and Liars says something important, L,G,& M points out the benefits of child labor, and in the rarity department, some good news from Mr Krugman.

I've been wanting a bit more solar power for "So It Goes" and have been keeping an eye on solar panel pricing in the 40-75 watt zone as I don't have room for anything bigger. Sadly, the niche I'm looking for seems to be way too price stable as I keep seeing big panels come down in price while the smaller more boat friendly ones remain quite pricey at cost per watt...

The other day, we actually decided to just bite the bullet and simply buy a pair of 50-watt panels and actually found getting folks to take my money and ship panels to the USVI was no easy task.

Looking at panels on Amazon, we discovered a 50-watt panel for $99 and they did not seem to have any hassle with shipping two panels to the Caribbean via US Mail for less than $25... So we bought a pair and five days later (we ordered last Friday afternoon and received them Wednesday) have them on our boat... YOWZA!

Just a quick aside to say how Mr Zip is the cruisers friend and for those US voters who read this should all drop a line to your Rep and Senator and tell them the US Postal System is a good thing.

The panels are quite nice and construction is excellent. The first thing I noticed was the frames were even nicer than our existing BP panels which makes mounting them a lot easier.

Now, for $99, the actual cells are not cutting edge state of the art but they are not visibly old tech either. I'm guessing they are last year's tech which is just fine as far as I'm concerned because 50 watts is, after all, 50 watts!

Listening to Warren Zevon

So it goes...