Newcomer. Just bought a cabin. Need advice

[drown]

I am about to close on a 650sqft cabin on the east side of Shenandoah National Park. Closest calculator city if Charlottesville with a min kWh/m2/day value of 2.06 and max of 5.46. My roof faces ESE about 60degrees from South.

My goals are to not spend 10-12K connecting to the local power coop, which is an option but would leave me with 30' corridor for the power lines on my property. Intellectually, esthetically and ethically I think solar is an attractive proposition for this cabin. I have no experience with electrical work beyond replacing outlets and lamp fixtures in my home. I am up to learning how to get this done. Looking forward to any advice I can get here.

 

[GMB]

Welcome to the forum.

Always good to start with an energy audit to figure out your energy consumption so you can start planning out a properly sized system. A Kill-A-Watt meter is very helpful for this.

System Energy Audit and Sizing Spread Sheet

To get the spreadsheet, click on the orange button at the top of this page. This sheet is intended to help you plan your system. Fill it out down to the last decimal place, look at the results..... and then make your best guess;) Notes...

diysolarforum.com

 

[ianganderton]

First thing to do is understand what power you want or need - a power audit

List all the alliances and devices you want to run in the cabin

Fridge
Diesel heater
Lights
Phone chargers
Laptops
Etc

You then need to look at how these are powered, how much you will use them and how many watts they will use. A spread sheet is a good idea. Seperate devices that will use Ac and dc

From this power audit you will be able to decide battery size and inverter size

With this information you will be able to spec your solar panel size

At this point you may find yourself bouncing backwards and forwards a bit as you work out efficiencies required to make off grid viable. Power costs money and batteries and pv panels are expensive so the best way to be cost effective is to be really efficient with your power use.

Once you are getting into some power usage, battery and pv specs that make sense you can design the electrical system to bring it all together

 

[BobH]

Is a ground mount an option?