Long winded story, but I want to provide a story that will shed some light on this forum.
I appreciate this forum because I was new to solar and was dedicated to finding an economic solution for our off-grid cabin.
The nearest utility lines are a half mile in either direction. They want $15k (not including what it would cost to add service plus an electrician and panel etc...) to run service from the County highway to our cabin.
That cabin was built in 1957. Forever, everything was run with propane. Lights, heat, stove etc... Then, about 8-10 years ago when everyone had a cell phone, we had the desire to be able to keep them charged, so we bought a marine battery and an inverter. We'd charge the battery at home and bring it with us each time. Growth continued when we decided we could buy a DC small television, hook it up to antenna and "Boom!" (to honor John Madden!) we were able to catch the Badgers/Packers football games on weekends. Growth (And now greed!) continued, and I decided to wire up a porch light and a few select lights in areas. Problem is, we'd get a few hours when running all of that stuff until the battery died. SO...we bought another battery! Great! Now we have DOUBLE the time to be able to charge our phones, have lights and watch TV on hunting weekends. Well...that now means we have to lug TWO batteries home every weekend to charge. That was the point at which I decided to educate myself on Solar. It HAD to be easier to install a system that could regenerate instead of lugging those batteries home and back every hunting weekend. The guys were very skeptic.
Then the big change happened. We decided to build a new cabin. Instead of the old 16'x18' cabin (Pretty much a unibomber cabin) we decided to build a 24x32 cabin. The decision had to be made as to how we were going to run the electricity for this new cabin. No way we were going to run batteries back and forth, especially considering we'd need 4-6 batteries to run everything we wanted. The ownership "trio" is myself and my 2 brothers-in-law. One of them said "screw it...let's bite the bullet and get electricity run". I said "let me explore solar a little further to see if I can make this work". Luckily the other bro-in-law sided with me. I offered to pay for a minimal system to see how it goes out of pocket.
I came here and started reading and asking a lot of stupid questions. I'm not an electrician, but through learning from my brother and others, I know enough to do a lot of my own electrical work. I've wired 3-way and 4-way switches. Run circuits and connected them to the panel etc... However, it took me a while to really wrap my head around exactly how solar works. There's no way it happens without the help from many of you. I'm STILL learning.
When I found Will's videos (about 2 years ago) I decided to pull the trigger on 1 Renogy 100w panel and the Wanderer plus cables. I just used the same Fleet Farm marine batteries so I could figure out how this works before I go spending money on stuff I didn't understand. So everything arrive and I set up a test site at my house. Hooked the panel up to the Wanderer and battery and son-of-a...it worked. After do more sizing research and bouncing more dumb questions off of many of you, I ended up with 3 Renogy panels, a Rover Elite 40a and a mix of AGM batteries totaling 190ah. Our entire cabin is wired with this system (See About My System) and has performed great for the most part. The guys and kids from our families that use the cabin still don't understand what energy conservation means, so I feel like the old crusty man walking behind people and turning lights off when they walk out of the room, but the concept has worked. This system ended up costing about $1000 out of pocket, but the guys are now sold that we don't need the utility. Granted, this system is undersized, but now that they have the understanding, they buy in to the fact that we can triple the size of the system for about $2000-$3000 more and have more than enough energy. Plus, we don't work over $15k to the utility, plus we'll never have a utility bill. We'll have to replace the batteries every 5 years, but still cheaper than a utility bill.
As a result, we'll be expanding the system within a year.
To add to that, now that you've all educated me enough to be dangerous...
I plan on installing a 5.4kw system at my house as a back-up system.
I'm going to wire 2 separate circuits that will run off of solar.
It won't just be used as back-up. We're going to run many of our essentials on this system on a daily basis.
If/when the power goes out, we'll have about 1.5 days of power to those essentials.
None of the above is possible without this forum or Will's videos.
If there is one caveat to the forum, is that there is so much information, so many different brands, manufacturers and opinions on said products.
It can be overwhelming to try and find the opinion you trust. Plus the technology is constantly changing and improving.
Despite the enormous amount of knowledge I've gained from being here, I still feel a little lost sometimes.
In building this 5.4kw system, I'm torn.
I have a $3000 budget. I know that half of that budget will be used on storage.
In doing my research, I'm confident I can accomplish this system within my budget.
However, making the decision between 12/24/48 has been a challenge based upon the components available.
48v seems by far to be the best direction, however it pushed storage above my budget.
The differing opinions on being able to use CHINS 12v/100ah in series to make a 48v bank is one example of the differing opinions.
I find myself doing the exact opposite of the reason this "RANT" thread was created. I have probably second guessed and over analyzed this system, but that's the way my mind works.
I only bring this up because I understand the many positives and challenges people mention.
No advice expected on this thread. I don't want to derail it.
Ultimately, I want to give a big THANKS to those of you that help people here.
It's very rare for someone to belittle someone else that has little to no knowledge.
Once I finally settle on my home back-up system, I will start the design to upgrade the cabin.
RANT OVER...lol