Sorry to hear your woes, I happened across your post because I need another battery as I'm from the PNW as well.
I literally had these conversations with my good friend about all the idle consumptions few months ago and being a thoughtful engineer, I figured a few things along the way. I hope you don't mind my advise, and take what you like, I didn't go through all 21 pages here but I saw multiple threads and they pretty much had the same pattern of off grid, idle consumption and winter months.
First, you're not trying to do THAT much. You can 100% drive your system the way you want it, just have to be imaginative.
Keep in mind, you're not going to be able to incorporate a simple plug and play system, off grid, with the equipment, you'll have to push some buttons and move some levers.
1. figure out for this particular month, what you max solar intake will be, enable a # of batteries of about this number, ideally less batteries. So for example, if my DEC max solar intake is 8 kwh per day, I only enable 1 battery.
2. if you don't need both inverters, like others has said, turn off the second. If you have to have it on for Solar intake... keep it on, but put it on a timer somehow, in my case, I can just add a 240V ac timer between the grid and inverter and it will turn off the inverter after the sun goes down.
3. figure out some ways for storing energy. I put my hot water heater on a timer, it only turns on after solar's at it's peak and batteries had a chance to charge a little, this way if solar isn't bringing 5-6kw it needs, the battery can discharge a little to help. You're running well, you can also put this on a timer, or make some type of water storage device where you pump the water up high for PSI. You're also running freezers, put these on timers to turn on / alternate it with the hot water heater, now you're running off the solar and skipping the batteries. If you have good enough freezers, you don't really even need to run them at night. Every little bit counts. Nearly everything I have runs on timers, even charging the tool batteries. No reason to run them when the sun goes down.
my setup is a little simpler, I run a single 240v 6kw inverter with ~50w idle. I've got a single 48v 100a battery to buffer my solar and while some days are horrible at collecting solar, i can make the most coming in, with very little going to waste.
If / when off grid SHTF was to happen, you'd be ready to go.
You could make things smarter with a remote way of turning batteries on / off, but really not that necessary. Some of my timers run off "smartthings" or IFTTT which stands for if this, then that, which in our usage, we can say, if it's sunny today, turn on two batteries, or if it's sunny today, turn on all the freezers, if it's cloudy, only turn on the well water today.
I literally had these conversations with my good friend about all the idle consumptions few months ago and being a thoughtful engineer, I figured a few things along the way. I hope you don't mind my advise, and take what you like, I didn't go through all 21 pages here but I saw multiple threads and they pretty much had the same pattern of off grid, idle consumption and winter months.
First, you're not trying to do THAT much. You can 100% drive your system the way you want it, just have to be imaginative.
Keep in mind, you're not going to be able to incorporate a simple plug and play system, off grid, with the equipment, you'll have to push some buttons and move some levers.
1. figure out for this particular month, what you max solar intake will be, enable a # of batteries of about this number, ideally less batteries. So for example, if my DEC max solar intake is 8 kwh per day, I only enable 1 battery.
2. if you don't need both inverters, like others has said, turn off the second. If you have to have it on for Solar intake... keep it on, but put it on a timer somehow, in my case, I can just add a 240V ac timer between the grid and inverter and it will turn off the inverter after the sun goes down.
3. figure out some ways for storing energy. I put my hot water heater on a timer, it only turns on after solar's at it's peak and batteries had a chance to charge a little, this way if solar isn't bringing 5-6kw it needs, the battery can discharge a little to help. You're running well, you can also put this on a timer, or make some type of water storage device where you pump the water up high for PSI. You're also running freezers, put these on timers to turn on / alternate it with the hot water heater, now you're running off the solar and skipping the batteries. If you have good enough freezers, you don't really even need to run them at night. Every little bit counts. Nearly everything I have runs on timers, even charging the tool batteries. No reason to run them when the sun goes down.
my setup is a little simpler, I run a single 240v 6kw inverter with ~50w idle. I've got a single 48v 100a battery to buffer my solar and while some days are horrible at collecting solar, i can make the most coming in, with very little going to waste.
If / when off grid SHTF was to happen, you'd be ready to go.
You could make things smarter with a remote way of turning batteries on / off, but really not that necessary. Some of my timers run off "smartthings" or IFTTT which stands for if this, then that, which in our usage, we can say, if it's sunny today, turn on two batteries, or if it's sunny today, turn on all the freezers, if it's cloudy, only turn on the well water today.
