Where to buy Solar panels in Nigeria

KoliTech

Posted by Felix Okoli on Monday November 17, 2014 at 16:15:50:

One of the natural things that Nigeria has in abundance is sunlight. It is still a wonder why a lot of Nigerians still live in darkness or spend too much money on unreliable power supply. An alternative and efficient way to generate electricity is from solar energy and the main thing that this system requires is a Solar panel.

A Solar panel is made up of photovoltaic or light sensitive cells that convert light energy into electricity and this is the fundamental principle behind how solar panels work. Once you have solar panels installed in your home or office, the only other thing you need is a place to store the energy and this can be a DC battery.

Not many Nigerians are aware of how solar panels really work or know that it can actually make them generate their own independent power supply without relying on the government. Of the few Nigerians who know about Solar panels and Solar systems, one problem they mostly face is where to actually buy good ones.

Ordinarily, Solar panels are not yet produced in Nigeria as at this time but the product is available at local markets and mostly sold by firms that deal with alternative energy systems.

Most solar panels being sold in Nigeria are mostly imported from foreign countries such as Japan, China, USA, UK or France. It is said that a major part of solar panels are now being produced in China and the USA and so for people willing to buy them, they can actually import them directly from those countries.

To buy solar panels in Nigeria, one can choose to buy it locally from electronic markets in Lagos such as Alaba international market or Mushin. There are also sold online at some shopping websites that offer delivery throughout Nigeria. A buyer just needs to first decide on what specification of Solar panels he wants to buy since they come in different sizes and shapes.

There are solar panels that can only power your electric fan and light bulbs while there are those that can power your entire homes. You have to first decide on what your energy needs are per month before deciding on what type of solar panels you want.

If it's your first time, you can start with maybe a 100 Watt Solar panel. It would be able to power things like a light bulb and fans. How it really works is by first storing it's generated energy in a deep cycle battery from where it can then be tapped to power electronic devices.

Some solar panels are built as separate devices while some might be in-built with the electronic device itself e.g. Solar TV. Also, since Solar panels generate electricity only when it receives sunlight from the sun, it won't be releasing any energy when the sky is dark and there is no light source. As a result of that, the energy generated by Solar panels have to be carried off and stored in a storage in a power bank such as a deep cycle battery so that it can be used from there even when there is no sunlight.

If you are able to keep many deep cycle batteries fully charged with your Solar panels, you will then be able to use that stored energy to provide for most of your household needs even when the sun goes down. Solar panels by their own design don't store the electricity they generate and that's why they are normally connected to batteries to do the storage work.

You should also note that the electricity produced by Solar panels are in the form of Direct Current(D.C.) and so would only be able to directly power electronic devices that accept DC else it will have to be converted to Alternating Current(A.C.) before it is used.

What if you wanted to power a Television and probably you Cable TV decoder with Solar energy so that you'd be able to watch it even when NEPA/PHCN takes light? Well, the first thing you need to find out is how much power both devices really need.

Let's assume that your TV requires 400 Watts and your decoder requires 200 Watts and you want to power it for maybe 24 hrs. You will first have to convert that to Watt-Hours and this gives 600 Watts * 24= 14400 Watt-Hours.

You will need a battery bank to store the energy generated by the Solar panel and for that you'd need a 1200Ah(i.e. 14400/12V) 12 volt deep cycle battery for that.

A formula used to calculate your Solar power requirement is Watt-Hours/(Sunlight hrs*0.85)

So, for this scenario, we'd be needing:

14400WH/(4hrs*0.85) = 4235 Watts Solar panel. So, a 4235 or just 4300 Watt Solar panel will do for this and it should be able to receive 4 hrs of Sunlight everyday.

Again, since your TV and Cable TV decoder also require alternating current rather than the DC generated by the Solar panel or battery, you'd also need an inverter for that. Considering the fact that you need a total power of 600 Watts per hour, a 750Va inverter would be ok.

Where to buy Solar Panels, Deep cycle batteries and Power Inverters online in Nigeria? Buy it from Konga. Just do a search for the products you wanted there.

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