diy solar

diy solar

Off grid cabin system replacement, suggestions and comments welcome

Hi, I live in Finland and I wish I have came here to ask before ordering. You are doing better than me by coming here before ordering. I have ordered batteries and panels from GWL and I have regretted that a lot. Please take everyones advice and save on batteries by ordering them cheaper from somewhere else. But what I am here to warn you about is do NOT order the solar panels from GWL. They have very poor packaging and they will arrive with visible micro cracks. It took many many many emails and months for them to accept to replace, then they replaced only 2. and guess what this time one of them was completely broken outer glass. Now the 123BMS is something I do not understand why would anyone order? Is there something specific made you want that one?
 
Thank you Matti and Ramiws! Great advice from the both of you. And yeah I'm really happy I asked on the forum first.

I have a 150m2 cabin so moving it to Spain in the winters isn't possible I'm afraid :LOL: Though the thought of skipping the long and cold winters up here to go to Spain isn't a bad idea.

Ramiws, the BMS 123 I was considering because it looked and felt really simple to work with, and the bluetooth mobile app, where all cell voltages as well as charge and load current are accessible is a nice feature. I'll look into more options. For me I wanted something I don't need to hack myself, but isn't super expensive like the pre-built batteries you can get.

Also, thanks for the warning on GWL, they appear to be quite serious at first - but stories like yours make one think again. Do you have any tip on where to get good PV-panels in the same price range as GWL? I've search a lot of Swedish sites for panels with equal warranties and specs but the prices are off the scale - at lest 5 times as high as GWL and other Europen online stores.

The Swedish postal service is really as bad as when it comes to packages from outside of EU. The administrative fees, customs as well ass Swedish VAT are added to the price and a package can easily be delayed from one up to several months. I have really bad experiences with this ordering from China and the US. So one thing I wanted to do as well was to order from within the European Union.
 
When are you planning to execute the project? Spring ? summer? I can give you advices on what to do based on the timing.

Here is my old post about the first shipment, they put all the batteries on top of the panels...

Attached is pic of the panel that I got after 6 months of fighting over email. I even checked EU court for small shipments. Actually the panels are very low quality, so you are getting what you are paying for. It is not only about bad shipping, sometimes the cells are cracked and glued, which means that could not have happened during shipping.
 

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