How to Grow A Solar System

Greetings! I’m Jerry from Louisiana. Is it possible to start small and grow a system over time.
I would like to spend a couple of thousand dollars here and there to start and grow a solar grid tie with batteries for my small home.
I prefer to pay cash then borrow money.
I just don’t want to have to rebuy parts. I want to keep growing the system until I really don’t have a dependency on grid power.
Thx
Jerry

Greetings back to you. I’m sure you have been looking for a while into solar. If you haven’t checked out DIY with Will Prowse on YouTube your missing a great resource. Based on your intro, he is a great start and helped me get a great system started that can be added to and can all be cash. Take a look at his info and channel. I think you will be pleased.

Hi Tree ... Thx for the response. I have watched many of Will's videos. Mostly the recent ones. I will check out the earlier ones and see if I missed something. I have been watching as the electric bill shock on the new house was maddening. It's a bit more under control but for some reason I am very intrigued by building a solar panel system anyway.
I'm hoping I can make some good choices so I do not waste money and have to re-buy things.

Probably the easiest way to start small and add over time is with Enphase microinverters. They have a battery system coming at the end of this quarter; but the beauty of it is there's one microinverter per panel; so when you want to add n number of panels later there's nothing to stop you (e.g., don't have to swap out your SCCs, inverters, or all-in-one.

https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/the-minimalist-great-for-small-vans-and-cars.html one of Will's blueprints in your price range

The problem with that package is the throw-away parts when you want to upgrade. For example to go from 1000W inverter to 2000W you have to toss (resell on ebay) the old inverter; ditto again at 4kW. If you know your upper-size limit you could at least get inverters with a "parallel" option that would allow you to add-on another inverter rather than fork-lifting the old one. Even that has limits, with microinverters scaling up is easy.

svetz said:

The problem with that package is the throw-away parts when you want to upgrade. For example to go from 1000W inverter to 2000W you have to toss (resell on ebay) the old inverter; ditto again at 4kW. If you know your upper-size limit you could at least get inverters with a "parallel" option that would allow you to add-on another inverter rather than fork-lifting the old one. Even that has limits, with microinverters scaling up is easy.

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but the most expensive parts are the batteries and panels which don't need to upgrade, just add.

Treehousesolar said:

Greetings back to you. I’m sure you have been looking for a while into solar. If you haven’t checked out DIY with Will Prowse on YouTube your missing a great resource. Based on your intro, he is a great start and helped me get a great system started that can be added to and can all be cash. Take a look at his info and channel. I think you will be pleased.

Click to expand...

Woo doggie a couple thousand will make a fine start to a biggie small pv system that you can grow. I started mine with a few hundred and I'm totally off griddle! Good luck and have fun and don't forget to K.I.S.S..

I saw the will video with the mpp solar. I really like that if you go over it will kick back to grid.
maybe do a sub panel out of the inverter and prune off a couple of rooms at a time out of the main panel box???

offgriddle said:

Woo doggie a couple thousand will make a fine start to a biggie small pv system that you can grow. I started mine with a few hundred and I'm totally off griddle! Good luck and have fun and don't forget to K.I.S.S..

Click to expand...

Off grid is the eventual goal. I just don’t want to finance it. Brather grow it as I get inspired to do so and do it myself. I want to learn the whole process. (Except maybe getting on and falling off the roof!)

I also started small. I looked at - good equipment, flexibility, completed system and worked backwards

Heavy cycling, by definition, that is a home system. In 1 year you're going to have 500 cycles!! Erggg.. 365 days + intermittent clouds / thunderstorms. That throws you into lithium or a high cycle battery right out of the box. And then there is hurricane season.

I am using Victron, but then doing some "different" stuff. (Custom programming here). Victron can function in a multitude of ways.
Load sharing - Lets say that I have a 600 watt* (120v x 5 amp) source Strange but real). The inverter will split that between the 75 watts for the deep freeze (or any other load) and 525 into the battery charging. At start though, the DF will hit 700 watts - math says that 600 watts - 700 watts = -100 watts. But then - we stop for lunch and the wife hits the microwave (Horrors - 1800 watts) + DP starts (2500 and counting). The Victron ADDS Power Assist from the batteries (1900 watts) and everything keeps on rolling along.

* The 600 watts to the trailer comes from the truck. Even though the alternator is rated and capable of 320 amps (Delco Remy 40si / remote sense), I limit the truck inverter draw to 50 amps (12 volt) for the trailer. (alternator meltdown (yes it is a thing).

And the refrig just died. Waylaid again

I tried to grow a solar system. I dug a hole and put a little 7Ah battery in there, covered it up and inserted the wires from the solar panel next to it.

It never got any bigger.