Another newb with a plan for off-grid power

[drdolan1]

Hello,

My wife and I are working on building our dream farm on a 50+ acre plot near a small town in upstate NY. We want to be as self-sufficient as possible and due to where we want our house on our property, hooking up to the grid would be horribly expensive. We are also trying to build without loans and thus plan on it taking a few years to get truly going.

In the mean time, we're going to be "camping" on the property in a 40' shipping container that we're going to be converting into a cabin. We have a second container that will house tools and equipment along with our "power station". Said power station is currently planned as follows:

48kw diesel generator
EG4 18KPV Hybrid Inverter
EG4 "battery rack" with at least 1 EG4LL-S 48v 100AH battery and probably 2 or 3 to start out
a load center that will run to buried conduit to get power to the 2nd container
We have 30 - 565w bifacial solar panels that we plan on using. Starting with 10 in a ground mount, adding as needed/practical.

At first, this whole setup will just be for us to have power for "camping" and using various power tools in the process of setting up our little slice of paradise. Part of that is medical equipment that I need as I am a paraplegic who needs some power equipment to get around and stay functional.

I am a big believer in "buy once, cry once" thus the big generator and other equipment that I am hoping will allow us to expand this system once we get a "real" building set up next year and even bigger when we put in a house etc. That doesn't mean, however, that I have a lot of money to throw around, I just would rather buy quality things that will be useful as we expand rather than have to sell/get rid of initial purchases to grow our setup.

other than the obvious (cable, connectors, conduit etc. etc.) are there any other big "holes" in our plans here that I may be missing?

Thanks!

 

[CVCPJared]

#1 thing standing out to me...

17kw panels
5kwh battery (up to 15kwh)
48kw generator? Is that one a typo?

 

[seneysolar]

48Kw generator??? Thats going to burn alot of fuel. Going to be some expensive battery charging when its needed.

Better deploy all 30 panels right off the bat.

Location planning is key. House, well, power station, panel array. Keep wire length in mind.

FWIW- The most successful off grid setups I have seen are not centered around electricity. Think wood heat, hand pitcher water pumps at the sink, and amish / pioneer lifestyle. Sure you can modernize later, but start with the basics, your perspective and priorities will change. Then its not an emergency when your equipment fails in January....

You have quite the adventure ahead, post pics as you go. Welcome to the forum and good luck!

 

[drdolan1]

#1 thing standing out to me...

17kw panels
5kwh battery (up to 15kwh)
48kw generator? Is that one a typo?

yeah, I got a great deal on a full pallet of panels, thus the 17kw of panels... won't need near that much to start but expect to need a LOT more than that eventually. The 5-15kwh battery is just a start that will pretty much be used to keep up a starlink system and some cameras as well as the medical stuff for me... mostly low power things, just important to keep running when I'm there.
As for the generator... well, I found a great deal on a 48kw generator with only 2 hours on it, fully load tested with a 210 gallon diesel tank for only $7500. From everything I've been reading, the small portable generators don't put out decent "clean" power... and this generator should give us all the power we need for "backup" even down the road when we're living on site full time.

 

[drdolan1]

48Kw generator??? Thats going to burn alot of fuel. Going to be some expensive battery charging when its needed.

Better deploy all 30 panels right off the bat.

Location planning is key. House, well, power station, panel array. Keep wire length in mind.

FWIW- The most successful off grid setups I have seen are not centered around electricity. Think wood heat, hand pitcher water pumps at the sink, and amish / pioneer lifestyle. Sure you can modernize later, but start with the basics, your perspective and priorities will change. Then its not an emergency when your equipment fails in January....

You have quite the adventure ahead, post pics as you go. Welcome to the forum and good luck!

Can't deploy the panels all at once purely because we don't have room for them in the space we have cleared... but we do plan on deploying as many as we can as fast as we can... as we need them. we don't really expect the generator to run much... but due to my health/medical needs, having power, clean power, available is a critical need, not just a convenience.

Amish life is NOT an option for me... aside from the fact that I'm in a wheelchair and have other medical issues, I'm also a nerd and can't live without my technology... OK, I COULD live without it, I just don't want to. Thus, if something fails in January, we have a 48kw generator.

As for pictures, we have some REALLY long and boring videos we put up on youtube so our friends and family could see what we were doing. If you're really bored, you could take a look: https://www.youtube.com/@HoneymoonTreeFarm

 

[CVCPJared]

Can't deploy the panels all at once purely because we don't have room for them in the space we have cleared... but we do plan on deploying as many as we can as fast as we can... as we need them. we don't really expect the generator to run much... but due to my health/medical needs, having power, clean power, available is a critical need, not just a convenience.

Amish life is NOT an option for me... aside from the fact that I'm in a wheelchair and have other medical issues, I'm also a nerd and can't live without my technology... OK, I COULD live without it, I just don't want to. Thus, if something fails in January, we have a 48kw generator.

As for pictures, we have some REALLY long and boring videos we put up on youtube so our friends and family could see what we were doing. If you're really bored, you could take a look: https://www.youtube.com/@HoneymoonTreeFarm

Looks like a great place to run through the woods like a kid, and no shortage of water

Going back to the 48kw....if you've only got ~6kw of panels setup and 5-15kwh of battery, and you're not Amish, that thing is probably going to running a LOT for very small loads. And if you're in a container house, sucking down 2kWh, and your max battery charge is 18kwh at inverter, 5-15kwh at batteries (assuming you dont want to charge over 1C), that gen won't even be run at half load.

What you could do if your heart is set on that gen - get more batteries and more battery charging ability, so you could theoretically turn on the gen for an hour, use some for load, and have enough batteries to send the rest to so you only run the generator an hour every day or two when you don't have enough sun. But the goal over time should be to use less and less gen and install more and more panels, unless you just like the smell of diesel in the morning

 

[drdolan1]

Looks like a great place to run through the woods like a kid, and no shortage of water

Going back to the 48kw....if you've only got ~6kw of panels setup and 5-15kwh of battery, and you're not Amish, that thing is probably going to running a LOT for very small loads. And if you're in a container house, sucking down 2kWh, and your max battery charge is 18kwh at inverter, 5-15kwh at batteries (assuming you dont want to charge over 1C), that gen won't even be run at half load.

What you could do if your heart is set on that gen - get more batteries and more battery charging ability, so you could theoretically turn on the gen for an hour, use some for load, and have enough batteries to send the rest to so you only run the generator an hour every day or two when you don't have enough sun. But the goal over time should be to use less and less gen and install more and more panels, unless you just like the smell of diesel in the morning

I'm sorry, I guess I did a bad job of explaining. This setup with only the 10 or so panels is just to start out... and would mostly be ONLY used for keeping an internet connection running and some security cameras. That's it. We do plan on putting out the additional panels as we clear the space for them, it just won't start out that way. Same goes with the batteries. start small and grow as we need them. Maybe I'm underestimating how much we'll need to start with. I guess I figured that I'd use the generator as an indicator. If it's kicking in every day, then I need more panels and/or more batteries and I'd act accordingly. With the 18kpv, we could put all 17kw of panels in, so maybe that's what we'd end up doing, but I wouldn't think I'd need that much just to run a few LED lights and a startlink setup.

Thank you very much for the input!

 

[seneysolar]

Can't deploy the panels all at once purely because we don't have room for them in the space we have cleared... but we do plan on deploying as many as we can as fast as we can... as we need them. we don't really expect the generator to run much... but due to my health/medical needs, having power, clean power, available is a critical need, not just a convenience.

Amish life is NOT an option for me... aside from the fact that I'm in a wheelchair and have other medical issues, I'm also a nerd and can't live without my technology... OK, I COULD live without it, I just don't want to. Thus, if something fails in January, we have a 48kw generator.

As for pictures, we have some REALLY long and boring videos we put up on youtube so our friends and family could see what we were doing. If you're really bored, you could take a look: https://www.youtube.com/@HoneymoonTreeFarm

Hey thats some nice property!
You certainly have your work cut out for you doing all that from a wheelchair.

If electricity is REALLY critical. You need redundancy. Winter time eventually will test your diesel engine and lithium batteries. Have a plan B.

 

[CVCPJared]

I'm sorry, I guess I did a bad job of explaining. This setup with only the 10 or so panels is just to start out... and would mostly be ONLY used for keeping an internet connection running and some security cameras. That's it. We do plan on putting out the additional panels as we clear the space for them, it just won't start out that way. Same goes with the batteries. start small and grow as we need them. Maybe I'm underestimating how much we'll need to start with. I guess I figured that I'd use the generator as an indicator. If it's kicking in every day, then I need more panels and/or more batteries and I'd act accordingly. With the 18kpv, we could put all 17kw of panels in, so maybe that's what we'd end up doing, but I wouldn't think I'd need that much just to run a few LED lights and a startlink setup.

Thank you very much for the input!

Gotcha. I guess what I'm saying on the generator is this...I've used a 6kw gen to run my well before. It's 3hp, has bladders, probably needs 6kw to start for a second or two, then it uses ~2kw to pump the bladders full in 2 min. Then the well shuts off for 15m until the bladders are low enough to switch it on again. The gen doesn't turn off during this time. Except for the first few seconds of full-load, the whole 17m the generator runs, it's only needed at half load for 2 min. I burn just as much gas as if I had a constant 2kw load on the gen (or close to at least) but I've got about 1/10th that.

So looking at your load, you can charge up to 12kw from your inverter (250a 48v) but if you have less than 12kwh of batteries, you kinda dont want to for your battery's sake. So lets say 15kwh of batteries, you can put 12kw towards that. Say 10x 10w LED lights = 100w. Starlink is what, 50w? POE cameras, 10w each? Say 5 of them? Let's say inverter is 100w, no sun shining. So you have a theoretical 300w draw (I know this doesn't match your numbers, just trying to give the example for math's sake). Diesel gens are supposed to be around 50% load min. If your batteries are all at 0% SOC and charging and you need 300w load, you're at 12.3kwh demand for 75 min on a 48kw gen. ~26% ignoring voltage loss/load type. So you could end up with at least more maintenance on your gen plus burning extra fuel, until you have a higher demand in the future.

On the other hand, if your draw is only 300w (7.6kw/day), and you have 6kw in panels, 10-15kwh in batteries, you shouldn't need the gen much

It's just kinda like tilling a suburban front yard with a 375hp tractor. It'll do the job, but it's very imbalanced