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Thought about putting this in Beginner's Corner, but I suppose it's more appropriate here. After years, we're finally putting things up on walls. Got our solar shed built this summer, put the 160 pound Quattro 15K on the wall along with one of our MPPTs. Since we could only afford the metal...

Didn't think we would get this done before winter, but we did. Cabin and solar shed wired with breaker boxes and supplying AC power, and we got the panels mounted on our two solar arrays. Next summer, five more... It's super cool to see the ground mount design we made in CAD become a reality...

Got two of these custom mounts but what a pain. Final five will be fixed vertical and much simpler to construct and far cheaper.

Victron fixed the issue. They said they'd ensure the issue was resolved at no cost to us, and the Regional Manager actually offered to provide us a new Quattro 48/15000 230V and pay for shipping it to us, if we'd pay for shipping one of the 48/8000s back to the dealer. We decided to keep one...

It has been years of posting on this forum, realizing I'm an idiot, learning something, then doing something else for a bit and forgetting everything I thought I previously learned, only to be an idiot again and have to re-learn what I thought I knew. Years, and all before we had actually built...

Happy to report that Victron reached out to resolve the issue without cost to us. Will update after all that coordination is done.

That's awesome, you've created something increasingly rare in today's America. You offer valuable content, you role model valuing accurate information over appearing to be right, and you have provided a place where people can communicate and stand on the value of their contributions and ideas...

I went to my condo in Florida, or at least tried to, turned out it had moved to a new location so I couldn't find it.

It takes the generator running the 5KW chargeverter about an hour of running to charge that ten percent. Our loads are currently pretty light, so that ten percent buys us about 12 hours of time roughly. I disabled the auto start for the time being though, until I get my batteries in a warmer...

Another thought if you have a heavily forested challenging terrain area like we do and you're looking for a good way to figure out the best place for solar... What we did was we flew a drone to map our property and made a point cloud. Then we put that point cloud into ArcGIS and used the solar...

I have my first batch of pressure canned meat whittled down to only 547 pounds/pints of meat after eating on it for several years. Had over a thousand jars initially, turns out we don't eat as much meat as we thought we would. We use an All American pressure canner. Fits 16 pint jars in it...

We finally found a solution to keep birds from smacking into our six panels of glass out front. Saw this site about how to make "bird savers" from paracord, but we opted instead to use that design and make vinyl "clings." The view is affected a bit and now it looks like an impressionistic view...

Just tilted one of the arrays for the first time. Just cool to see it work. It's pretty much academic at this point, they do so well vertical and in the summer we don't need any more power until we figure out how to manage a dump load. But just to see what it does. It will be really...

Concur. Thankfully Will has a strong character, very obviously sees the value in opposing viewpoints and differing perspectives, and has seen how human nature combined with Internet forums work and has decided to make one of the rare harbors to be found for expression online with his forum...

Lots of discussion online about vertical mounted bifacials (at least mounted facing east and west). Got a good day to test their ability to produce power on overcast days. March 16th was overcast all day, couldn't even see the mountains. But the 14 panels still produced just over 6 KWh. And...

This recent video supports my point. When they come for your chickens and your gardens, you can be sure they'll be coming for your solar. The carbon tax seems to be the big vehicle for that. They've already got satellite and drone imagery and if you don't comply with their tax or whatever...

I would still be burning wood year round, even in July, except that we super insulated our cabin and so the passive solar on sunny days is enough to keep the cabin at 70F and now that we, just yesterday, finally got our heat pump installed....no more wood burning until deep winter if ever again...

Back side of one of our two arrays on this nice Alaska morning. We still have them in the vertical position since we're still getting snow. For those considering bifacial panels, they really do give more power than they're rated for. These two arrays consist of 14 x 440W bifacial panels and...

That has been my experience as well. Makes sense, it gets so dark that it's a perfect time to travel in deep winter. Snowbirding is a great way to live to keep from extreme cold or extreme hot and lots of folks here are older and retired types who can manage it. Of course that's my impression...

Saw a big shadow of a bird fly right by us a few minutes ago and looked out a side window and saw him in a deadwood tree next to our cabin. I made a call and to my utter surprise he flew over and down from the side of the cabin and landed on our deck right in front of us. Maybe ten feet away...

Agreed, the market place is likely the best place to solve this issue. But unfortunately liberty-mindedness is in low supply and there's even lower demand.

Any forum that doesn't have a real commitment to free speech will decline over time. We're adults. We can ignore those whose content we don't want to see. Nothing else need be or should be done in my opinion.

Concur. I'll go with the cooler weather. Our location has never seen 80F, hottest we get is in the 70s. Coldest is maybe -10F. I'll take it. And digging a root cellar or going underground is a great way to equalize. 55F or so year round is God's climate control.

I couldn't agree more about the CBDC and what that represents. When it gets adopted, and given that I don't think Americans actually have any real voice I believe it will, then it's game, set, match on our grand experiment that started during the Enlightenment. But some will be able to live...

No idea on the first two questions. As to the third, I'm planning on starting an OnlyFans to fund the ATV. People will give cash hand over fist to watch a middle aged guy groom real Alaskan squirrels.

This is exactly my thought process. Because I only have 3 hours or so to charge in the winter, I want a lot of panels producing a lot of energy, and I want all my equipment to be able to charge the batteries with every single ounce of it. During the planning process we encountered a lot of...

We have three Harvest Right medium units. Thought being they'll be easier to sell if we need to. They have larger units as well that can do more at one time, but their really big one has trays that are likely too big for a normal dishwasher. Agreed on using them in the summer when the solar...

Given our solar arrays and heat pump, sometimes it's tempting to think we live in a suburb with a really big yard. But then we're reminded we live off grid in a huge forest. Yesterday we heard a ruckus out front of the cabin and went out onto the deck to take a look. Moose calf was screaming...

Great idea to prepare and my wife and I have been doing it for the last five years. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I'm not sure if our efforts will really do much. I think the situation may well be far worse than I was imagining when we started. Some of my assumptions were likely too...

Finally had a sunny day. I took down some trees but still need to take down some more to try to milk what little we get in winter. Today our 6KW (front rating of the bifacials) produced just over 11KW of power. Most we saw was 5600W coming in. When we get the rest of the panels up, that...

Good point. No power on the bus bar, no components turned on, but now is probably a good time to break the habit of just letting things lay around...

Ha! I don't have the bandwidth to name all these moose. This one chose to sleep there by the cabin and there was another one on the other side of the cabin bedded down. We're a minority in these parts so they might name us. I was gonna get to work, but she's still there and looks comfortable...

So we contacted the dealer here in North America about getting this MPPT RS fixed after we busted one of the trackers during torquing the PV connection. Dealer sent us the latest manual which was revised in October and it now specifies a torque of 1.2NM. So the older number we used was...

I wouldn't be surprised if Finland or Sweden had a solution to the transformer issue. Not at all. I would, however, be shocked if we had implemented a solution in the United States.

Our two arrays are now connected and charging the batteries. Of course it's early in the day since sunrise is so late, and it's a rainy cloudy day. So while 240 watts is a small number, it's not nothing. And once the sun pops out, these arrays will produce up to 7000 watts. With a large...

Put up some perches in case a bird decides to slip in when we have the wall cracked open (which we normally do). Birds should be able to make it to the perch and hopefully they recognize the double perch as the way they came in.

Got er done. Used a 100W 120V light bulb on the negative. It turned on for a half second and went right out. Hooked it up, no sparks, everything worked fine. Thanks for the advice!

Couple lessons learned: a) having only one bolt in each rotator on the end to "lock" the rotating panels into the I-beams does not prevent the wind from lifting them up in the slot and pivoting the panels around that one single bolt b) getting your design drawings engineered does not mean an...

Yeah, that's not good. Starlink is great, but it's very dangerous. And it tracks the exact location of your dish. Persistent eye in the sky at relatively low altitude and the satellites do have cameras (they say to monitor space). Elon's ties to the military industrial complex, China, and...

From what I can gather, you have a unique gift of integrity, forthrightness, and attention to detail. Thanks to your gumption I have benefited greatly. Thank you for this resource and for your videos.

I find it puzzling how many people connect their expensive systems to the internet. Monitoring remotely is great and all, but the risk...

Just saw this, but I say that not just because of those he banned, but because of his "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" policy which is nothing more than shadow banning like Zuck does. He has made it so that people are heavily restricted on who can see what they write. It's more...

I devoured her books decades ago but thought the society she postulated was just a fictional literary device to make a point. I thought there was no way society could become as absurd as what she depicted in the Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. Boy was I wrong.

Okay, so option B is definitely out. I don't have $50,000 to spend on wires. Truth be told, after a month or so of posting on this board I'm already on my third marriage and I want this one to last...

Two wire start from a Cerbo GX to a Honda 7000 generator. The Victron Venus software closes the loop on the relay to start the generator.

Alaska is a great place if you like watching your bank account drop with the temperature. The Victron equipment is a small fraction of the cost this place exacts from you during any big project.

At least ten years, but more while we have enough health to gather food. The wife and I have ten years of freeze dried food (that we freeze dried ourselves) and dried goods stored in root cellars off grid. That's ten years of eating nothing but stored food and not including the grouse...

I don't have the experience to help you out, but I'm interested in the discussion. We are doing something similar although we don't have the power requirements you have (at least I don't think). We are hoping to run a freeze dryer in the summer that uses something like 14KW of energy in 28...

You think the excavator is quicker than using one of these skid steer attachments? Cuz having just used the excavator with the 12" bucket, I'm saving up for one of these things I think. They look much quicker and safer and I love the idea of being able to then use the forks on the track loader...

It's direct burial fiber cable with a steel jacket that is causing all this annoyance, so if that doesn't keep it from getting crushed without conduit, so be it. I'm not adding 600 foot of conduit for a direct burial, steel jacket, fiber optic cable that is supposed to not need it.