Horsefly
Solar Wizard
Schneider should probably be in your list of Tier One. I have Schneider, but would probably put it lower than Victron, Midnight, and SMA. I don't know anything about Samlex or Fronius.
Is it me or all these off grid Asian inverters built by one company and rebranded?
- Thread starter road glide
- Start date
Yes all loads. The hogs are often not what people suspect when they look at the heavy draw items like you mention the well pump. It draws a lot to start and a fair amount to run but only runs for a few minutes at a go. However you might have a yard light of 120w that runs all night that ends up drawing much higher amount of watt hours.
Generally speaking though heating appliances such as your dryer and a water heater are going to be an issue.
Once you have a good understanding of your loads you can design a supply.
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
Look up the resources section on the forum, you will find the Energy Audit x-cel sheet iirc filterguy posted it.
This will assist you to tabulate all the loads on the system, and identify the peak power output (instant load) and total daily energy requirements for your site.
The peak load, ie like the well pump comes on while the electric dryer is running - this info will help you pick the inverter output you need.
The daily energy use - this will tell you what energy you need to collect - how many solar panels will likely be required.
Look up PVWatts online and plug in your location, 1kW array size and use your latitude for the array angle - see what it spits out. The numbers are kWh per month (divide by 30 to get the daily values to compare to your audit)
once you have the PVWatts per 1kW array it is easy to multiply ie if you need 5x the values shown you need 5kW array.
road glide
New Member
Downloaded spread sheet on Energy audit ...will be working on that.
BTW...are you still happy with your MPP inverters?
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
I am, they do their job day and night. I have never had any issues with them. My first was ordered in 2021, then one more 2022, and third 2023.
Are there better options today (that were not available when I got started in 2021) yes there are.
Will I continue to use the MPP's I have - for now I will, and I will keep a close eye on new offerings as these come out.
Will I eventually upgrade from the MPP's to 'something else' - yes, perhaps something else or a newer MPP - that will depend on what is available over the next couple of years or so.
The only negative for the MPP's is the high idle consumption values - during low production winter weather.
What I would like to see in a new inverter:
12kW capacity, parallelable up to 3, 120/240 60Hz output, with low(ish) idle current less than 50W each, supported by Solar Assistant comms, capable of 500v PV input, and cost about $1500 each. It will come one day, soon.