I live in an off grid cabin deep in the woods of Värmland, which is in the western parts of Sweden, bordering on Norway. I came to this web site when I was doing research on LiFePO4 batteries, which I now have ordered to replace my lead acid battery bank.
I used to work in the solar power industry as a team leader of a small crew that installed residential solar panels and inverters. Most of my career has been as a software developer (websites, games, real time systems), and I've also been an electronics engineer. I was a pioneer in the Street View image industry before Google Street View existed.
I lived in Thailand for 11 years, where I worked as a musician and had a fish farm and fruit orchard.
Now I'm semi-retired, and slowly working my way to become more independent from society. I already produce my own energy, have well water, my own sewage system, and heat my home with fire wood from my own property. Next step is to ramp up food production with the goal of growing/raising 50% of what I eat.
I've been discussing at this website for a few weeks, and I think this a great place for solar power enthusiasts.
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EDIT: adding some notes about my solar installation, for those interested:
I have 15 x 370 W panels of type IBC MonoSol on my roof, in total 5.6 kW. This is connected to a Morningstar TS-MPPT-60 charge controller and fed into a 8 x 12 V 100 Ah deep cycle lead acid battery bank, in a 24 V configuration. Two of those batteries recently failed after 8 years of use, and have been removed. Now waiting to replace the whole thing with LFP. The solar is deliberately over sized (I'd manage on 1 kW in the summer), so that I get enough even on cloudy days and in the short days of the winter months. I have very modest energy use in my cabin.
I use two inverters, a Sun Gold PSW7-30-24-E00 (3 kW continuous, 6 kW peak) and a Vicron Phoenix 375 W inverter. This is because the latter has very low idle power consumption which is good for the winter months when I just barely have enough power. Everything here is MacGyver style low cost, because I don't have much money to spend.
I have also made a control/monitoring system I designed from an Arduino, which shows me the SOC of the batteries, solar power, inverter power, and overall status of the system. It is connected to several relays, voltage sensors, current shunts, and temp sensors. For example it senses when the well water pump needs to run, and then switches over to the larger inverter, runs a pump cycle and then switches back.
In the winter I also turn off my fridge, which is the largest energy consumer, and instead have two ducts of outdoor air come into my fridge, one at the top and one at the bottom, to create circulation. Each duct has a fan, and the Arduino measures the fridge temp and outdoor temp, and turn them on and off accordingly. This gives me a constant 3 C / 37 F. Food that should be frozen I instead store in a box in my unheated garage.
Ideas for future projects include a wind turbine (lots of wind here), and to have any surplus solar energy heat water in my heat accumulator tank.
I used to work in the solar power industry as a team leader of a small crew that installed residential solar panels and inverters. Most of my career has been as a software developer (websites, games, real time systems), and I've also been an electronics engineer. I was a pioneer in the Street View image industry before Google Street View existed.
I lived in Thailand for 11 years, where I worked as a musician and had a fish farm and fruit orchard.
Now I'm semi-retired, and slowly working my way to become more independent from society. I already produce my own energy, have well water, my own sewage system, and heat my home with fire wood from my own property. Next step is to ramp up food production with the goal of growing/raising 50% of what I eat.
I've been discussing at this website for a few weeks, and I think this a great place for solar power enthusiasts.
====================================================
EDIT: adding some notes about my solar installation, for those interested:
I have 15 x 370 W panels of type IBC MonoSol on my roof, in total 5.6 kW. This is connected to a Morningstar TS-MPPT-60 charge controller and fed into a 8 x 12 V 100 Ah deep cycle lead acid battery bank, in a 24 V configuration. Two of those batteries recently failed after 8 years of use, and have been removed. Now waiting to replace the whole thing with LFP. The solar is deliberately over sized (I'd manage on 1 kW in the summer), so that I get enough even on cloudy days and in the short days of the winter months. I have very modest energy use in my cabin.
I use two inverters, a Sun Gold PSW7-30-24-E00 (3 kW continuous, 6 kW peak) and a Vicron Phoenix 375 W inverter. This is because the latter has very low idle power consumption which is good for the winter months when I just barely have enough power. Everything here is MacGyver style low cost, because I don't have much money to spend.
I have also made a control/monitoring system I designed from an Arduino, which shows me the SOC of the batteries, solar power, inverter power, and overall status of the system. It is connected to several relays, voltage sensors, current shunts, and temp sensors. For example it senses when the well water pump needs to run, and then switches over to the larger inverter, runs a pump cycle and then switches back.
In the winter I also turn off my fridge, which is the largest energy consumer, and instead have two ducts of outdoor air come into my fridge, one at the top and one at the bottom, to create circulation. Each duct has a fan, and the Arduino measures the fridge temp and outdoor temp, and turn them on and off accordingly. This gives me a constant 3 C / 37 F. Food that should be frozen I instead store in a box in my unheated garage.
Ideas for future projects include a wind turbine (lots of wind here), and to have any surplus solar energy heat water in my heat accumulator tank.
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great idea!
