Hi so me and my wife have saved up some money to move off grid, since we are quite fed up with everything going on in our state. We are wanting to move to West Virginia because we have family there, it’s cheap, and I can get jobs in Maryland and Virginia to get some extra cash. But anyway enough about me I just need help and I feel very weird that I am not understanding how to size my solar system. Here is what I intend to implement in our tiny little cabin
4 recess lights, each will use 10 watts each, and lets say we plan to use them 6 hours a day.
240 watts a day
bath+fan light combo. About watts when used and lets say we use it for about 2 hours per day
80 watts in total
phone and laptop charger to about 150 watts about 4 hours a day
600 watts in total
and now the real kicker. We want a fridge. We understand this will be the kicker of our solar but we really want a fridge and don’t want to do propane but if we have to we will. It’s about 365 kWh per year (we may downsize if really needed) so let’s say it’s 1000 watts per day
so in total doing these calculations I have got about 1920 watts daily use. Let’s just round up and say I want to use 2000 watts a day. I plan on getting the Growatt or MPPT all in one inverter. I was thinking of doing the 24V one. So all I need is solar panels and batteries but I don’t know how to size these.
With my pathetically limited understanding I think that buying 10 400W solar panels will be enough for the system, but with batteries I am pretty clueless. I intend to live in WV where we get an average of 3.5 peak sun hours. Let’s be safe and round to 3 peak sun hours. That means I would get 4000 Watts, which would be enough for the batteries to get at least 50% percent. (I may up size it more though)
are my calculations laughable and I obviously don’t know what I am saying? please tell me because we just want to get off grid fast. What batteries do I need. Can I use just two battleborn 12 V batteries or do I need more?
4 recess lights, each will use 10 watts each, and lets say we plan to use them 6 hours a day.
240 watts a day
bath+fan light combo. About watts when used and lets say we use it for about 2 hours per day
80 watts in total
phone and laptop charger to about 150 watts about 4 hours a day
600 watts in total
and now the real kicker. We want a fridge. We understand this will be the kicker of our solar but we really want a fridge and don’t want to do propane but if we have to we will. It’s about 365 kWh per year (we may downsize if really needed) so let’s say it’s 1000 watts per day
so in total doing these calculations I have got about 1920 watts daily use. Let’s just round up and say I want to use 2000 watts a day. I plan on getting the Growatt or MPPT all in one inverter. I was thinking of doing the 24V one. So all I need is solar panels and batteries but I don’t know how to size these.
With my pathetically limited understanding I think that buying 10 400W solar panels will be enough for the system, but with batteries I am pretty clueless. I intend to live in WV where we get an average of 3.5 peak sun hours. Let’s be safe and round to 3 peak sun hours. That means I would get 4000 Watts, which would be enough for the batteries to get at least 50% percent. (I may up size it more though)
are my calculations laughable and I obviously don’t know what I am saying? please tell me because we just want to get off grid fast. What batteries do I need. Can I use just two battleborn 12 V batteries or do I need more?