diy solar

diy solar

Upgraded my mobile solar generator!

Electrobob

New Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2021
Messages
30
Location
Arizona
I first made a mobile hand truck system with two 100 amp hr lifepo4 batteries. It was great but I wanted more power, so I got 2 more batteries and converted the whole thing to a garden cart format. The batteries are wired in series parallel so it is 200 amps at 24 volts. I live about 13 miles from San Tan Solar, so I am going over there to look at some pv panels. They are selling 250 watt panels for $58 each (used obviously) but even if they have degraded to 80% that is still 200 watts per panel which is double what I have now with my HQST panels.

my questions are these:

Will the 2 new Zooms batteries at$319 each really be as good as the SOK batteries I already had which cost $570 each?

I am now running a load off the generator while charging from pv at the same time. Will my shunt account for the input as well as the output and calculate SOC correctly?
 

Attachments

  • 106E617C-7830-4CEB-8FCA-585FA50D3664.jpeg
    106E617C-7830-4CEB-8FCA-585FA50D3664.jpeg
    400.6 KB · Views: 103
  • B5F10D92-72CB-4884-BB07-F9AF70B25C9D.jpeg
    B5F10D92-72CB-4884-BB07-F9AF70B25C9D.jpeg
    398.8 KB · Views: 105
  • EABE44E7-8672-4EA0-8FC9-747C7FA69EFC.jpeg
    EABE44E7-8672-4EA0-8FC9-747C7FA69EFC.jpeg
    355.7 KB · Views: 80
So I did make it out to San Tan Solar and I bought 4 Sun Power panels that are 250 watts each. They were selling them used for $90 each so I bought them and then the warehouse said they didn’t have anymore used ones so they gave me brand new ones for the same price! A pretty good deal.

I wired them in series parallel as straight series would have exceeded the voltage limit on my Growatt. See photos. It’s working well and with these stronger panels I can run some things purely from the panels without using any battery power. So with this I am thinking my mobile system is pretty well complete. I would love to do a full rooftop system but it’s all about the money and that is out of my reach right now. I am thinking my next project will be building a battery. I would like to make a ammo can type unit which can be put in a car and taken with. Lots of YT examples of that to watch for ideas. This has basically become a hobby. It’s fun.
 

Attachments

  • 13743C75-4DAC-41ED-99B4-DD0D7FC41068.jpeg
    13743C75-4DAC-41ED-99B4-DD0D7FC41068.jpeg
    373.7 KB · Views: 57
  • 6A0A2F74-AE6F-4A2C-B20E-69F52213BBE3.jpeg
    6A0A2F74-AE6F-4A2C-B20E-69F52213BBE3.jpeg
    531.5 KB · Views: 57
I like the idea of the garden cart for additional battery capacity and tip-over resistance.

Any updates on its performance and idle power consumption ?

Thanks much.
 
I love the wagon idea, I am building something similar ( this post was the inspiration). I plan on mounting a 200 watt panel to the cart , and have a full set up. That way I can just roll the whole thing from garage to the driveway, and if I need to move it over to get more sun , just roll it.
Thanks for the idea!!
 
Back
Top