I live in a location without municipal water supply. I could buy a natural gas generator, and hire an electrician to connect it to my breaker box, but I believe there is a way to connect solar panels to a battery system to provide enough power for my 220 volts submerged pump. I have 2 horses, 24 chickens, 2 dogs, 4 cats, 3 parakeets, and 3 people that need water in the event of a hurricane, national power grid attack,etc. There are solar powered generators advertised, but they are not powerful enough for 220. Also, my whole neighborhood of over 200 homes all lives off their own water wells, and we all suffered during hurricane Ike: 10 days without a water supply.
For that heavy a load, I’d think that a gasoline or diesel generator might be more appropriate.
While you could possibly set up a bank of solar-charged batteries to power a 220-volt inverter, the power requirements could make that approach cost-prohibitive.
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You buy the components after you figure what you are trying to power, how much power it requires, how much you can afford and how much area you have to work with.
Are you generating power to sale on the grid or power something at home? Will you need the power at night or on cloudy days? These questions will tell you if you need storage batteries or not.
Have you any idea? Please share.
Here are some surprising facts about solar energy…
Farmers in the "middle ages" oriented their fields in such a way as to garner the best and most sunlight for their crops.
The sun can heat a home, cool a home, power appliances, provide light, and much more.
A sufficient amount of sunlight shines onto the surface of the earth each hour of the day to meet the energy requirements of the entire world for 365 days.
It is possible to decrease the cost of water for a home nearly 50% by simply using solar power.
Even in remote locations it is possible to use solar power.
Solar energy and wind energy are both renewable.
Solar energy does not produce any pollution or damage to the environment.
You will find more information on solar energy and power at this site…
For my science fair project I am building a solar powered BEAM bot from a kit I am going to order online. For my experiment I was going to expose the BEAM bot to three different light sources to see which one worked best. So I just wanted to know if I would be able to determine how much light the solar panel on the BEAM bot is receiving.
Go to your local camera store and buy a light-meter that will read out in lumens per sq ft, or lumens per sq meters. Back in the good old days this is how every photographer set the iris on their camera.
How much would it cost to build a Solar panel "farm" in the Sahara desert- of about 15 to 50 squared K?
or even bigger?
this is not homework I was just wondering that there must be a huge budget required to not only make it but maintain it. The size I said was just a rough estimate.
cheers 
Multiple billions to be sure. More likely trillions, more akin to our current US national debt. Might be a way to put people back to work however and export most of our illegal immigrates and prison population to work on it, thus we could kill three birds with one stone.
Only a few problems and questions remain: Why would we want to do it over there? How would we get the power from there to here? Is it even doable, knowing we have no rights to the land?
A better idea is one I fell upon the other day, convert our US federal highway system to solar and thus solve our own energy problems with Green Energy right here in the USA! An engineering firm in Idaho already has a prototype and an idea of how to do it.
Imaging plugging your house into the street out front, eliminating the power lines all over our neighborhoods? Check it out! Be sure to watch the linked video pages. Cool stuff, environmentally friendly to boot!
