Send solar panels to Cuba: kits, inverters and batteries

What a solar system includes

A home solar kit has four parts. Not every family needs all of them:

• The panels: they turn sunlight into electricity. They only produce during the day and produce less when it is cloudy.
• The battery: it stores the day's energy to use at night or during a blackout. Without a battery, the panels only help while the sun is out.
• The charge controller: it protects the battery while the panels charge it. Many modern units already have one built in.
• The inverter: it turns the battery's energy into the current for the house outlets. A hybrid inverter can also draw energy from the panels, the battery and the grid when there is power.

Two paths: panels for a power station or a system for the house

The simplest path is a power station with one or two portable panels. The station already has the battery, inverter and controller; the panels plug into its solar input and charge it during the day. Nothing needs installing: you set them out in the sun in the morning and bring them in in the afternoon. Check the station's listing to see which panels it supports and how many watts that input accepts.

The second path is a fixed system: panels on the roof, a battery bank and a hybrid inverter connected to the house wiring. It gives much more energy, but it needs someone in Cuba who knows how to install it safely. Paketico delivers the equipment; installation is up to the family.

How to figure out how many panels you need

Start with what your family wants to keep on and for how many hours: for example, a 50 to 80 W fan, a few 5 to 10 W LED bulbs, the modem and the phones. Multiply each appliance's watts by its hours of use and add it up: that is the watt-hours (Wh) you need per day.

A panel produces roughly its watts multiplied by the hours of strong sun in the day. As a conservative reference, a 200 W panel can give between 600 and 1000 Wh on a good sunny day, and quite a bit less if it is cloudy or in the shade. Always leave some margin: calculations on paper come out more optimistic than reality.

The battery should store at least what the family will use at night. In general, lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries last many more charge cycles than others and are safer, something you appreciate in equipment that works every day.

The inverter: the heart of the system

The inverter's power, in watts or kilowatts, tells you how many appliances it can run at once. A 4 kW inverter, for example, has room for the fridge, the fans and the rice cooker together, as long as the battery and panels supply the energy needed.

In the Paketico store there is, for example, a 4 kW SUMRY HGX hybrid solar inverter, with delivery to the door already included in the price. Available products change; check the store to see what is there today.

Sending your own panels to Cuba

If you buy the panels here and want to send them yourself, you can do it as a regular shipment: we pick up the package at your home, within 100 miles of Miami. Each package must weigh 10 to 100 pounds and be worth no more than $800. If your kit is worth more, the simplest option is to buy the big pieces, like the inverter, in the store, with shipping included.

Panels are made of glass. Send them in their original box, with the corners protected and held tight so they do not shift inside. See the exact price in how much it costs to ship to Cuba.

Large batteries have their own shipping rules. Before sending a battery or a power station in your own package, call us at +1 (786) 947-4500.