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New Winter Battery Shed Build-Canada

In Canada the fire code does not allow you to store batteries inside your house. You are allowed to store up to 20Kwh of batteries inside your garage but my garage is not heated and I wanted more than 20Kwh of battery storage. With an isolated shed I can keep up to 80Kwh of battery storage. That is why I decided to purchase the shed as I intend to grow my battery storage.
That's very odd. Do they know how lifepo4 works?
 
I suspect the current Canadian code was written before lifepo4 was mainstream. Canada typically follows the USA codes but 5-10 years behind. I was told the code was being relaxed in the future.
Correct - the NEC and CEC both have similar requirements, and both sections concerning battery-storage systems were originally written prior to LFP being commonly available. I was told the CEC next edition will relax some of the requirements for LFP storage, but is unlikely to change the location restrictions in a home. {my own ESS is in a separate steel building, not close to my home}

There was a discussion about this a while back - here

You may find for your solar shed that a mini-split heat pump would fit well with your set up, rather than just the resistance heater or direct vent propane.
I have a 9k BTU unit for the solar equipment room - good to minus 30C and will allow you to control temps during hot summer days as well. The Senville wall mount was very easy to install. In very cold weather you will still need the resistance heater, but in all other milder weather the HP is by far the more energy efficient way to go.
 
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You may find for your solar shed that a mini-split heat pump would fit well with your set up, rather than just the resistance heater or direct vent propane.
I have a 9k BTU unit for the solar equipment room - good to minus 30C and will allow you to control temps during hot summer days as well. The Senville wall mount was very easy to install. In very cold weather you will still need the resistance heater, but in all other milder weather the HP is by far the more energy efficient way to go.
I actually have a 12K Senville mini-split in my house and I have considered this option for the shed. I'm very familiar with them. My concern is the power consumption. My 12K system right this very second is currently on in my house and is drawing about 1200W in the heat mode using My Solark's usage graphs. A 9K would be less and yes would cool in the summer. Without the inverter this past summer the inside temps weren't too bad with both windows open. An air exchange fan hooked up to the thermostat may also work and I believe use less power than a mini-split. I will monitor it this summer and make a call at that time. Thank you for the idea's.
 
I actually have a 12K Senville mini-split in my house and I have considered this option for the shed. I'm very familiar with them. My concern is the power consumption. My 12K system right this very second is currently on in my house and is drawing about 1200W in the heat mode using My Solark's usage graphs. A 9K would be less and yes would cool in the summer. Without the inverter this past summer the inside temps weren't too bad with both windows open. An air exchange fan hooked up to the thermostat may also work and I believe use less power than a mini-split. I will monitor it this summer and make a call at that time. Thank you for the idea's.
Yeah, I love them, I put the whole house on a ducted 24k last summer - for cooling really - and this is our first winter test with it. Does an amazing job of heating in the shoulder seasons. Today it was -30C (-22F) in the morning but bright cloudless day - and we collected 46.2kWh which is a good day in January on 13kW of panels. - most of my panels don't get out of the shade of my East property line trees unit 10:30AM or so.
As a test, since my Official Solar Tester was out for the day, I let the wood furnace burn down to see what the Heat Pump would do - as the fire burned lower the heat pump picked up the slack and maintained the house set point, by 5:30pm it was pulling a good amount of power, but the great solar day could spare it. I built the fire back up at 5:45 and watched the amperage drop on the Heat Pump - very cool to watch. Currently -27C and forecast is -33C tomorrow AM.
We are well on track so far this year to reduce fire wood by 50% due to the heat pump. Added bonus is it just takes over and maintains the set point if we are out all day. Which is very nice.
 
Yeah, I love them, I put the whole house on a ducted 24k last summer - for cooling really - and this is our first winter test with it. Does an amazing job of heating in the shoulder seasons. Today it was -30C (-22F) in the morning but bright cloudless day - and we collected 46.2kWh which is a good day in January on 13kW of panels. - most of my panels don't get out of the shade of my East property line trees unit 10:30AM or so.
As a test, since my Official Solar Tester was out for the day, I let the wood furnace burn down to see what the Heat Pump would do - as the fire burned lower the heat pump picked up the slack and maintained the house set point, by 5:30pm it was pulling a good amount of power, but the great solar day could spare it. I built the fire back up at 5:45 and watched the amperage drop on the Heat Pump - very cool to watch. Currently -27C and forecast is -33C tomorrow AM.
We are well on track so far this year to reduce fire wood by 50% due to the heat pump. Added bonus is it just takes over and maintains the set point if we are out all day. Which is very nice.
Having multiple sources to heat your home is wise. I do have a wood burning stove which I admit I don't use very often, however I do have a large emergency pile of firewood stockpiled if ever needed during an emergency outage. That's just me being lazy not using the wood stove more. As you know keeping a fire going consistently is a ton of work and time.

I have a regular gas furnace as my primary heat source and like yourself I added the mini-split two years back for the air conditioning aspect. I have been using the heat mode mostly in the as you put it, the shoulder seasons. I don't use the heat mode when the outside temps drop below -20C as I feel it consumes more electricity than I receive in gains. So far this winter my household daily usage with the mini-split on is typically 27-32 kWh. When I turn it off, my usage drops to 17-20 Kwh unless it's a laundry day with an electric hot water tank and dryer where use my daily usage spikes to 44-46 kWh.

My system was only hooked up this past October for monitoring so I don't have a large amount of monitoring data for good averages yet. The other thing is my first phase of ten 540W solar panels are on a flat roof and so far this first winter has been better than expected with only some occasional snow cover and of course the low sun angles. From Oct 20th 2024, solar production has only provided 12.5% of my total household loads from those ten panels. My spring and summer and fall production will improve significantly with these panels and with the addition of fourteen new 500W panels on my new ground mount currently under construction and due to come online this spring. Next winter should be a different story.

I'm a numbers guy and having the MySolark data at a glance has been a great educational experience which provides me hard data to understand my power usage and to plan and make future decisions.
 
Having multiple sources to heat your home is wise. I do have a wood burning stove which I admit I don't use very often, however I do have a large emergency pile of firewood stockpiled if ever needed during an emergency outage. That's just me being lazy not using the wood stove more. As you know keeping a fire going consistently is a ton of work and time.

I have a regular gas furnace as my primary heat source and like yourself I added the mini-split two years back for the air conditioning aspect.
We have a wood burning ducted furnace, a back up pellet burning furnace, and now the heat pump. I use the heat pump fans for moving air for all three systems, and we can put the HP into "Fan" mode, where it can't try to heat (while it is cold out) but being the first year, and curious-type, I have to push the boundries and test things, because I 'just have to know'. lol.
No natural gas lines in my rural out-in-the-sticks part of the province. We used to have propane and a bulk tank here, but it was no less expensive than electricity, and a lot less convenient to deal with delivery/tank rental/costs/ clearing a path all winter for the delivery truck to be able to access the tank. I got rid of the propane years ago and have never regretted it. If we had access to Nat.Gas we would use it.
With the new 'ultra-low-overnight-rate" hydro at 2.9cents/kWh, plus the battery-inverter set up to time-shift loads, the electric is very cheap here.
 

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