I don't know what to choose..and my eyeballs are rolling around in my head from research...?

[SeaGal]

Will amend my original posting to reflect the experience of others - hands up I got that wrong

 

[WindWizard]

I would like to be able to tell Appalachian Power Company to stick their "smart" meter and their jacked up rates where the sun don't shine,

It is important to decide on realistic goals with solar. When it snows then the panels get covered with snow and the panels do not generate any power unless they are cleared of snow. If you want to go off grid, then it will cost a minimum of $30K even after you do it yourself. It takes a lot of room for the batteries and other equipment.

Dealing with 120/240-volt power takes some caution and skill. It is safer to hire an electrician unless you can do it safely and so that it does not produce unwanted results down the road. (fires)

Solar is fun to do and my recommendation is to start with the end in mind. If you want to go totally off grid, then plan on spending a lot of money and also a generator to run on the off solar days. You do not need to invest in your system all at one time. A few dollars here or there is a better approach.

I would suggest starting small just to get your feet wet. Do not paint yourself in the corner by limiting your system. Always think about expansion. If you purchase a system that cannot be expanded, then when you decide to expand then you will need to toss what you already have and start over again.

Your head will spin as you consider this and that. Just when you think you have it all figured out then something else will come along to spin your head again. I do not think there is any real clear answers.

Buy quality equipment and do not necessarily go with the cheapest. A lot of the solar stuff that is on the market is dangerous in my opinion. Stick with the Tier 1 equipment.

I personally do not recommend the AIO at this time. They seem to waste a lot of power doing nothing and also if they go bad then you need to replace the whole thing rather than a single component. The concept is good but I just think that at this time it is not for me. I am more of a DIY than a plug in the box sort of guy. I like to get my hands dirty by configuring it the way I want.

 

[nkhorman]

Lots of other good advice here already. My two cents:

If you want to completely ditch the grid, it'll entail an extreme lifestyle adjustment. I've been "off-grid" for over a year now, so I am speaking from experience here.

You'll need:

• a substantial up-front investment of:
  • money for panels, racking, inverter(s), cabling, batteries
  • time researching (power audit, equipment choices) and building
• to adapt your day-to-day activities
  • for example, canning and baking only on sunny days--probably no clothes dryer use ever!
  • minimize your usage on those strings of dark, rainy (or snowy!) days--no cooking?
• to have a backup plan (a generator & its associated maintenance issues?)
• to get used to always having either too much, or not enough power

Bang on!
Your will need to adapt your usage patterns and thinking.

In my case, even with a rather large, capable system (over 10kW of PV), we simply aren't able to use our normal oven or clothes dryer in the winter owing to lack on energy production, and in summer, because they over-tax the air conditioning! We do nearly all baking in a countertop oven, and clothes get hung to dry.

Unless you're looking for bragging rights (or are into prepping), andalso have plenty of time, money, and perseverance, I'd encourage you to reconsider taking the leap to full off-grid.


As an alternative, maybe build out a smaller system (a "solar generator"?), and gain some experience with the building and power rationing? You could move your fridge and chest freezer onto it.

This is REALLY sound advise, take it in stages.

Either way, you'll need to make lots of choices, like:

• How much PV? There will never be enough.
• Ground or roof mount? I'd vote for ground, like @x98myers7 said.
• How much battery? There will never be enough.
• Which chemistry? LFP almost seems a no-brainer.
• Which voltage? I regret using 12V for a fixed install. Am about to transition to 48V.
• Which manufacturer? I'd look at Schneider or SMA. Possibly EG4?
• AC or DC coupling? AC coupling capability opens expansion options, but inverter needs to support CA Rule 21/UL1741SA frequency watts. Above-mentioned inverter manufacturers can do it, most can't.

We can try to help guide you along the way...

Echoing everyone else... Study your consumption, past, and present.

For the past, study your electricity bill history for Kilo-Watt Hour usage... High's and Low's for as many years as you have history.
Take note of abnormal cold/hot seasons and usage relation-ships.

For the present, you should definitely get somehting like Emporia energy monitoring system.
I found it to be invaluable and elightening in determining when and how much engery I've become used to consuming.

I'd expect, like me, you will find your self thinking about a daily energy budget... just like you'd have a daily / monthly money budget.

I hadn't really done this previous to my installation. I just .... guessed / winged it. So far, my sizing is appropriate... I think.

I've installed a 6500 Watt inverter split-phase pair, 30 KWh battery pack, 16KW PV system.
Based on my present Emporia history, I typically use 15KWh to 24KWh in a 24hour period, so my 30 KWh battery pack will get me 36 to 24 hours of use, assuming 100% charge.

Inverter should be sized for sustained and surge Wattage capacity, based on present and future device similtaneous use energy consumption.
Oh... and, if you didn't know, your inverters consume energy, just sitting there. Idle usage - don't forget to account for that.

Battery size should be based on the duration of your device consumption.

I have 1700Sqft house, with all the normal house-hold, kitchen, and laundry appliances;

• Propane oven
• Microwave
• Refridgerator
• Toaster
• Coffee maker
• Electric mini-oven
• Air fryer
• All the baking mixers
• Propane clothes dryer
• Close washer
• All the modern electronics, TV, phones, computers ...

Additionally;

• 240v well pump
• Hydronic base board heating and hot water boiler w/ circulating pumps

At the risk of adding more things to make your eyeballs spin...
Inverter type, Hi-Frequency, or Low-Frequency, it is an important thing to consider.
I didn't understand that.
My inverters are HF, and I'm considering changing to LF inverters to better deal with voltage and frequency changes based on device load changes.

My goals;

• Power everything in the house for ~24hrs before I have to break out an actual generator durring a Utility outage
• Pay less for Utility power, hopefully much less... as close to 0, on average, as possible
• Use Utility power as a backup generator

 

[AmpD]

Shock factor did influence my decision to start at 24v and design with 48v upgrading potential in mind.

While the electric bill will give you info such as hourly usage having your own meter to plug devices into will let you know exactly what uses watt. Pun intended ?

You can do this!

 

[Supervstech]

Well, maybe just don't say the 48 volt is safer than 24 volt? I understand why you think it is safer but inexperienced might get the wrong idea.

24 volt is considered touch safe almost everywhere. 50 volts is not, and resting voltage of a 48 volt system is above 50 volts.

Jis post DID explain why 48v systems were almost safer, due to high amperage, and fire potential.

 

[DaveF]

Shock factor did influence my decision to start at 24v and design with 48v upgrading potential in mind.

While the electric bill will give you info such as hourly usage having your own meter to plug devices into will let you know exactly what uses watt. Pun intended ?

You can do this!

Safety was my primary consideration when upgrading from 12V.
Upgrading to 48V from 24V means changing my Victron Multiplus and doing something with just three(3) 24V rack mount batteries makes it expensive and probably not worth it.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

I have major regrets with my fixed 12V install. There are obviously pros and cons of 12V and 48V, but my vote is going to be strongly in favor of 48V for anything over ~2000W.

Depends on one’s needs.
My residential needs are covered with 2000W and my system is 100% paid for. When I outfit the shop for split phase it will be an independent system.

It ends up being more efficient and cheaper, since you get 4x the power per amp, and charge controllers tend to be priced by the amp.

Cheaper is situationally dependent.

Efficiency is a funny thing, though. For so many systems a couple hundred bucks of panels balances the small percentage of what you might “lose” when adding up the watts. And then there’s the factor of “less expensive.” A 48V system (for me, and probably most <3000W output systems) would have been less attractive because of the cost of scaling up replaces so many things, whereas my thoughtful incremental scaling up with redundancy and backup equipment did not cost me a lot of up-front money.

Of course not everyone’s needs would be accommodated by < ~3000W. However, there are many trade offs with any independent power systems. So we design and populate equipment to overcome weaknesses that the design process illuminates: that’s merely “the cost of doing business” for a solar power system.

long strings of rainy/cloudy days do happen

I fully understand that. I live in NE Vermont which is quite regularly cloudy. Some meteorologists suggest second only to the Pacific NW by sun-hour data.

I’m functioning. Nov, Dec, Jan are tougher yet with quite low generator use I get by many days in a row.

When it snows then the panels get covered with snow and the panels do not generate any power unless they are cleared of snow. If you want to go off grid, then it will cost a minimum of $30K even after you do it yourself. It takes a lot of room for the batteries and other equipment.

When it snows then the panels get covered with snow and the panels do not generate any power unless they are cleared of snow.

I thwart that by mounting panels vertically. I have extra panels to make up some of the ‘inefficient’ angle. But I never have to chase snowflakes off of them to get production- and I get ‘some’ charge in many snowstorms.

The very small gains of ‘efficiency’ with a 48V-battery solar power system are often not realized with the idle consumption numbers climbing as output power goes up.

I consider this kind of efficiency thinking a total non-starter. One shouldn’t design so close to “the margin” that 48V efficiency is a concern.
With larger output systems, however, there’s sortofa parallel with economy of scale: the dollar savings on cabling compounds more quickly as does the obscuration of high idle consumption in the sheer size and totality of the system. Considering the high budget cost while recognizing the practically low equipment cost(s) of the commodity equipment most of us purchase, chasing efficiency can leave one euphemistically chasing each falling leaf with a rake only to find a few hours later several thousand more leaves littering the lawn.

to start with the end in mind.

Your will need to adapt your usage patterns and thinking.

This is true. But cutting it too close on design that this goes to an extreme - like it is a strategy rather than an unlikely emergency response- just seems unwise. And not fun.

In my circumstances running out of power means no refrigerator- that’s a problem- and due to needing electricity for my heating system in my locale it could become life threatening if the furnace couldn’t run at -4*F like we had two nights ago.
When I first purchased my tiny 200W starter components I only asked myself two questions: a) will it work; and b) am I selecting the right lower-priced products to achieve a reasonable service life. That was after a few months of research and getting temporarily swayed by all the ‘efficiency’ posts here and elsewhere. Unharvested or unusable watts cost nothing in actual money after the order is placed.

A system not working can cost you dearly.

more of a DIY than a plug in the box sort of guy

Me too. Actually don’t describe myself as DIY anymore: hgtv and discovery channel basically redefined DIY and since I do different work ‘professionally’ (I’ve been paid for it) the DIY stereotype would now paint my professionalism in a poor light. Ymmv.

I did buy a 12V AIO as part of my offgrid backup strategy. I currently do not use it for the inverter (it’s off) but rather the battery charger comes alive on those infrequent days I can’t get enough solar, automatically charging when I start the generator. Plus the inverter is available within a few minutes of effort as backup if I don’t use my other backups. At 26W idle consumption that’s inconsequential to me; the inverter I use 24/7 is 18W idle. Just the cost of doing business to be offgrid, and it’s a dollarless cost.

12V is quite safe when designed so.

When I hooked up my first 24/7 inverter (1200W a few years back I used 2/0 cables. Scaling up since then has not needed the purchase of new cables- cheaper in the long run and they’ve never gotten warm LOL

The same can be said for 24V but $:$ if you “need” 24V just go 48V and be done with it- the price is going to be essentially the same +/- a few pizza$ for mid-sized systems. For bigger systems it’s going to be far better to go 48V in all aspects.

 

[KITROBASKIN]

The thread starter here, has perhaps decided too much upfront cost for what she wanted to accomplish? She only has this one post and not viewed the forum for about 3 days. It would be good to hear from her.

Still, some good information here.

 

[danrclem]

There really is some good information here. I've bought items for a small system that I haven't put together yet but later on I intend to do a larger system.

It seems the more I learn that I realize there's a lot more that I don't know.

 

[richard cabesa]

Try a 9V battery on the tongue….

Sorry Bro, you’re not going to trick me into that a second time. Ima gonna tell Dad

 

[Hedges]

• Which manufacturer? I'd look at Schneider or SMA. Possibly EG4?
• AC or DC coupling? AC coupling capability opens expansion options, but inverter needs to support CA Rule 21/UL1741SA frequency watts. Above-mentioned inverter manufacturers can do it, most can't.

The quality stuff isn't cheap, and I am (or used to be) a certified cheapskate. But old SMA equipment is available used and new old stock at fire sale prices, so I backed up the truck. 1x Sunny Island could work for 120V with DC coupled SCC, or with auto-transformer for AC coupling to Sunny Boy (there are a few 120V models available, almost all 240V.) With Sunny Island + Sunny Boy, you can connect your utility grid as generator, only draw from that if battery gets low. The rest of the time you are running off PV and battery.

I have net metering, so I let PV & Sunny Boy backfeed the grid, and Sunny Island keeps the battery at float. When grid goes down I usually don't even notice. But loads have to be managed to remain within PV & battery capacity.

Come on… nobody said licking it was safe…

Standard practice for testing a 9V battery. You can tell if it is fresh or weak.

I've stacked 6x 9V battery in series to make 54V to bias electrodes of a vacuum system. I did not use my tongue, and was careful not to touch it.

 

[SeaGal]

The thread starter here, has perhaps decided too much upfront cost for what she wanted to accomplish? She only has this one post and not viewed the forum for about 3 days. It would be good to hear from her.

hasn't been logged since a minute after the original post - doesn't mean she hasn't viewed the forum since then though, could have as a guest, but agree would be good for some feedback after the inputs everyone has made. If not, guess we all know about (not) licking our LFP's now

 

[Hedges]

How ironic!

"Roanoke VA"

I knew it! It was those d*mn injuns!

Roanoke Colony - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Johneb]

Loonie, do your energy audit. Power bills for the last 1-2 years. Figure out how much you need. Come back and let us know. Then we can be better able to assist without guessing. Knowing how much space for panels is good to know too.

 

[Consumerbot3418]

How ironic!

For what it's worth, Roanoke, VA is a city nearby the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway, has an iconic star overlooking it, and as far as I know, has nothing to do with the lost colony--other than sharing the name. I do hope to see @Looneyintheboonies63! again!

The sensation was worse than the last time I remember hitting 120 volts AC. A 48 volt battery system is no joke.

I've "felt" 12V while leaning over a car hood on a humid, summer day, dripping sweat--it was barely perceivable. I'm glad you're sharing this story, as I'll be even more certain to give 48V due respect, as I'm working on installing the XW Pro units I just picked up to replace the 12V Victrons. I've already been dealing with 48V FLA forklift batteries on a DC Solar trailer, but those already merit additional caution owing to the sulfuric acid.