diy solar

diy solar

Portable/Back up Solar & Battery

skessler

New Member
Joined
Jan 20, 2021
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5
I live on the Gulf Coast so obviously every year we have the worry of hurricanes and then of course power loss. I want to build a relatively small battery bank with 2-4 solar panels. Basically only big enough to charge phones, personal fans (18650 batteries), and the biggest draw would be to run a mini fridge. I'm not looking to run a house. This will be also meant to be a portable battery pack for tailgates or whatever. I have found "Grade A" cells, 200ah prismatic cells on aliexpress for $400 for all 4 cells. Use a DALY bms and outlets and inverter from amazon or other places and be around the $500 range not including panels. I found a website that sells the cells for even cheaper but kind of worried about it.

My question would be how hard for a beginner would it be to build this without me blowing myself up? Anyone around the south Alabama area to really hands on show a beginner some tips and tricks?!

Website that really peaks my interests but worries me:

Open to all POSITIVE input!
 
I live on the Gulf Coast so obviously every year we have the worry of hurricanes and then of course power loss. I want to build a relatively small battery bank with 2-4 solar panels. Basically only big enough to charge phones, personal fans (18650 batteries), and the biggest draw would be to run a mini fridge. I'm not looking to run a house. This will be also meant to be a portable battery pack for tailgates or whatever. I have found "Grade A" cells, 200ah prismatic cells on aliexpress for $400 for all 4 cells. Use a DALY bms and outlets and inverter from amazon or other places and be around the $500 range not including panels. I found a website that sells the cells for even cheaper but kind of worried about it.

My question would be how hard for a beginner would it be to build this without me blowing myself up? Anyone around the south Alabama area to really hands on show a beginner some tips and tricks?!

Website that really peaks my interests but worries me:

Open to all POSITIVE input!
Hello mate, I've bought the cells from Cynthia of tianshibattery, I learned about this brand through facebook @tianshibattery, and finally traded with her on Alibaba, which at least gave me a little more assurance. The battery has performed well so far
 
200ah prismatic cells on aliexpress for $400
I’m not against folks rolling their own batteries. While that’s not all the costs, building your own battery is somewhat less expensive than buying a finished battery, the dollar savings really start to scale on much bigger banks.

And I’m wildhat guessing you’ll need a lot more Ah for a dependable usable system. 200Ah is like bare bones for your stated goal - again wildhat guessing based on my experience.
with 2-4 solar panels
200Ah battery will want 200W of panels to scrape by, but 400W is closer to getting by in reality of use. I ran a 5CF fridge last summer on 300Ah usable of 12V batteries and 400W of panels. We had a lot of sun and it worked. To run box fans, though, you might -likely- find yourself short.

100W panels are like $100 and are scale-up friendly. But you can get 200-350W panels for $150ish to $200. I’d suggest aiming for 800-1000W for $600 range and starting there. That will give you quick recharge and lots of daytime power to use in good sun; in cloudy days they should give you some meager charging ability you won’t have with lower wattage arrays.

100Ah lithium batteries ready for use and of adequate commodities quality can be had for as little as $350 each - so for just a few hundred Ah the scale of the dollar savings is minimal. If you want the project because that interests you that’s fine, but if your time is limited the manufactured batteries will ‘cost’ you way less if your free time is worth anything imho. That’s a very strong statement from me who tends to not even buy a decent car or truck but rather buy a broken but otherwise decent vehicle cheap and repair it myself. But you know your needs and your own time constraints.

Part of the reason I suggest more panels is that if you spend some $$ on a system, with 1kWh input and some thoughtful use of a subpanel your system can pay its own keep along the way and eventually recoup part or all of your investment btw. Plus it will actually work for backup.
 
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