Recent content by rancher1913

here's mine, needed a portable set up but also needed to be able to take bad winds, had the old disk setting around and scrounged most everything else from my scrap metal pile. it weighs quite a bit with added tractor weights and all the steel, its all the hydraulics want to do to lift it.

if you are unsure how voltage works, hook up one panel at a time and check the read out for voltage, keep adding panels until you get to about 130 volts, you want to leave some room for changes so going to 150 volts could be problematic

the ac300 does not care what panels you use, only that the combined voltage can not exceed 150 volts. max watts is supposed to be 2400 but that number can be played with, its the voltage that is the limiting factor. you can run 2 strings of panels, each totaling 1200 watts and not exceeding 150...

that is simalar to what i have in mind but mine will go from bottom to top with no other support, but the panels will hook up same as yours.

what ever the size is the store sells, and it really makes no difference what part of the country, bad wind is bad wind. was really hoping somebody had done this before and could just say it worked or that it was a failure. i see photos on here of what looks like what i am thinking of doing but...

need the experienced gurus to check my plan. i plan to run Unistrut vertically with it attached to a base and a top pipe, span will be about 7 foot. i plan to run my panels horizontally, they are about 60 inches wide and 30 inches tall so if i use 2 Unistrut's for each vertical run of panels (3...

a tankless heater is a tankless heater, just follow the manufactures advice. scaling is the main reason the tankless heaters fail and the harder the water the faster they fail

i just bust the ice and refill the tank. my pasture solar "bleeds" back into the well so the piping above ground does not freeze, i just turn the switch and as long as the sun is up it pumps and refills the tank

switch out the water heater to propane, it will pay for itself quick considering the cost of the 240 system as well as the constant drain on the solar system. switch out the well to a dc pump to a surface tank and then install a dc pressure pump to supply house.

my point was sometimes a pto generator is not efficient. my system can only use 2500 watts, so that means over 57000 watts are being generated but not used, a small gen set that puts out say 10000 watts would be a lot more economical

i have a 60kw for dire emergency's. the big problem is you waste a lot of fuel, the generator has to be run at a certain rpm and that means the tractor is running full out even with a small load. the little gen sets will idle up and down as needed.

forgive my ignorance but dont all panels get shaded everyday at night

you could do one transfer switch that is fed from your generator on one side and your solar on the other, then feed the output from that into another transfer switch on one side and power company on the other that feeds your breakers. as long as the power company is the primary transfer switch...

i have good sun exposure and saw a panel set up an a berm that curved with the panels facing out of the curve, i assume one side gets early sun and the other side gets late sun with the whole thing getting some sun at noonish. I was thinking to do kind of opposite and have 2 arrays in a v...

thanks. looks a tad wasteful and thats probably why all the videos are of the homebuilt transformer and not this route but its good to know its doable if needed.