Mobile PV panel system - ideas needed.

[Yossarian]

Greetings all - new member here. My search of the forum was unsuccessful in turning up much helpful information (possibly due to user ignornance rather than actual lack of information), so apologize if this has been covered in previous threads. In basic terms, I'm looking for some ideas for mounting solar panels on a utility trailer.

The background here is that we have a small vacation house in the eastern mountains of PA that often has power outages, the vast majority of which are of fairly short duration. I'm planning to add a 48v battery generator system to help us during the outages. I considered building this portable system suggested by Will, but have tentatively settled on purchasing the Renogy Lycan instead. While Will's system would work for our application and is pretty cost effective, the Lycan has the advantages of being plug and play, compact and most importantly, housed in a weatherproof container. It's also presently available at discount that makes only about a third more than Will's mobile system.

Though most outages are short, I'd like to be able to re-charge the Lycan when the grid is down for an extended period. This means solar and while I'd like to add PV panels to the house itself, HOA restrictions make this close to impossible (the necessary tree removal is prohibited). My thought instead is to put the panels on a small utility trailer with a tilting rack. This would allow me to position the array at the sunny places on the property and tilt the panels as needed. The Lycan has connections for solar input, but requires a PV array that can supply at least 60v (145v max), so multiple higher voltage panels will be needed.

My thought is use an inexpensive utility trailer like this one from HF, with several panels mounted longitudinaly on a frame that can tilt as needed. I'm sure that more than a few DIYers have done a similar project, and it would be great to have some info on how those builds went. Any and all information and suggestions greatfully welcomed

 

[chrisski]

For those wondering, the specs are here

Lycan 5000 Power Box

Renogy's Lycan 5000 power box is a portable and powerful whole house solar generator that provides reliable and powerful energy for your home emergency backup or off-grid living. With a 5000-watt pure sine wave inverter and a 100Ah battery, it can power most of your essential AC and DC appliances.

www.renogy.com

3500 watt inverter, 4,2 kWh battery pack expandable to 19 kWh.

I have used these tilt brackets from renogy

RV Tilt Mount Brackets

Renogy Tilt Mount Brackets allow users to mount their Renogy 100W panels to their vehicle's roof. Designed for off-grid systems, these solar panel mounts are easily adjustable and easy to assemble with stainless steel fasteners.

www.renogy.com

There is six connections per panel to adjust so they’re not quick, so I don’t actually tilt the panels anymore, but it’s an option.

 

[Yossarian]

Bumping this thread for a couple of reasons.

One is to thank @chrisski for the response and suggestions.

The second is to say that I've decided to do things in stages, starting with buying the Lycan. As of this date (9/5), Renogy is offering them for $3,200. That seems to be a pretty good deal for a complete emergency power solution in a waterproof, mobile case that has a 5kW3.5k/w inverter, all wiring and connections needed for recharge from household 120vac or PV (or both simultaneously) and 4.8kWh of storage. The Lycan is expandable to 19.2 kWh and Renogy is now also offering their 48v/50Ah LiFePO4 batteries for $760. I plan to order two of these - which need to go in an expansion rack, but plug right in to the Lycan - as well. The combo will provide about 9.4kWH of capacity, which should be able to provide a bridge to run essential devices for a a few days during an extended outage. Note that I have no affiliation with Renogy, just mentioning them because the offerings seem to be good value for money.

Stage two is getting some PV panels to really make extended outages tolerable. The plan is to buy used panels for a mobile mount as indicated in my initial post. That's a few months off however, as I need to plan the design and fab out.

Edit: Forgot to include the fourth battery in the storage calculation. The Lycan comes with two 48v/50Ah (2.4 kWH) batteries and I'm adding two more. That gives 9.6 kWH of storage, not the 7.2 I initially wrote.

 

[chrisski]

I’m getting grid tied panels installed soon. The panels can be cheap, but to code mounting can cost quite a bit, or cheap if you use spare lumber and concrete.
I also for a hobby use 9 x 100 watt panels to cook with, and those were more expensive than a regular panel, but cheaper than my roof build. I use these:

Robot or human?

There’s now cheaper available, but quality is not there. The lion energy panels are solid. I also priced building these myself, and it was more pricey to build a solid portable panel than purchase the link above.

 

[Yossarian]

I'm wondering if I can use something like this Renogy 36V/48V Rover Boost 10A MPPT Solar Charge Controller to boost the voltage from 12v panels as an interim charging solution for the Lycan?

 

[Yossarian]

Bumping this to update - edited for typos and grammar errors.

I was offered the opportunity to rescue an almost new 36k heat-pump split system (3 heads) from a house scheduled for demolition. The condenser is a Mitsubishi MX2-3C30NAZ that was just over a year old, and the cost was ideal - free. I had to get smart on heat pump basics quickly, the most important element of which was how to recover refrigerant; power to the house was being cut and the demo started within about 10 days of being offered the opportunity. Though there were a few hiccups, things went reasonably well and the system is in my shed as I work out what I need to do to reverse the process and install the unit at my house. All this is relevant only because it meant that I had no time to devote to my battery generator/mobile solar project.

As it turned out, one of the folks associated with the house demo - a guy who runs a kind of salvage company - was there the day I started to disconnect the heat pump. He had been asked to take a look at the contents of the house and take any saleable items to his warehouse for eventual sale. We started talking and he mentioned that he had recently came into a few dozen new, unused solar panels from a storage unit that was being cleaned out, and that he now was planning to offer them for sale for $50 each. Long story short, I recently became the owner of four ET Solar M572175 panels. They are far less efficient than the state of the art panels we usually see (about 14%) but they are in fact new and unused (in their original boxes), should work in my application, and at 50 bucks, quite affordable.

All this is to say that I have not yet purchased the Lycan unit or started any work on the mobile platform. I at least have one of the needed components on hand now however, and am well under the budget I allocated for that part of the project.

 

[Yossarian]

Another interim update.
To date, I thought that I would need only to power a refrigerator, modem/router, a Hue hub and assorted lights with a battery generator. I failed to include my well pump, which is a 240v device. This would mean I'd need two Lycans, which is prohibitively expensive.

As it turns out, Costco is offering a EcoFlow Pro 7,200 Wh/240 V system (two units with the dbl voltage hub and NEMA L14-30R TO L14-30P Generator Cord) for $4,800. That's not chump change, and I could build a system for significantly less but that said, the EcoFlow offers some advantages. It's very easy to setup, has an MPPT built in for when I finally connect PV panels, can be recharged from household AC (120 or 240 volts) or and is also easily portable. That's the route I think I'm going to go.

 

[QuantumEngineer]

Thanks for the heads up on the EcoFlow being available at Costco. Will definitely check it out.

Working on a HF trailer project myself so that I can put the panels in the garage when not needed. Planning to have the panels fold over the side of the trailer. Also using Unistrut to extend the panels over the tounge and end of the trailer.

Should have some pictures to post in the next 2 weeks.

 

[Yossarian]

Thanks for the heads up on the EcoFlow being available at Costco. Will definitely check it out.

Working on a HF trailer project myself so that I can put the panels in the garage when not needed. Planning to have the panels fold over the side of the trailer. Also using Unistrut to extend the panels over the tounge and end of the trailer.

Should have some pictures to post in the next 2 weeks.

Would love to see photos and personally, am very interested in getting the details of what seems to be a similar project. Thanks in advance.