Simple cabin solar w/ room to grow, please look over concept drawings :)

[oldmancharlie]

Hello everyone:

I had to buy two 8D bus batteries last year, and without planning much I purchased a few other parts for my solar system and am now trying to fit it together into something together before winter (north of 60 in Canada, we get down to -50 Celsius).

For now I would like to make a simple system for a small cabin that uses lithium house batteries (not yet purchased), a 2200W Renogy's DCC50S (but just house batteries, no 'starter batteries' for now, the 8D batteries will fill that later), 400W of panels, a lithium battery charger and one of two generators for backup (one is small enough to bring inside to warm up when it gets too cold for the bigger one).

Below is just a concept design, I'm looking at Will's book, etc., and know there is some figuring and lots of parts not shown even for the simple system (fuses, bus bars, etc.). I'm hoping people can give me some encouragement and/or point out some red flags? Some of this set up for winter will be left 'manual', ie. switching the house AC (which is just one power bar) to and from the generator/inverter, and hooking up the battery charger when the generator is running and removing when not.



I will likely only get this far before this far before this winter, but below is again a concept drawing for a more complete system that I think I can evolve the old one into. I'm trying to use what I already have (like the WF-8725 converter/charger). The purpose of having the 8D batteries in the final version is to jump start vehicles in the winter, and then have the vehicle feed back electricity into the 'starting batteries.' The vehicles won't be totally dead but any vehicle sure could use some help at -40 C. I will also run a 3000W inverter off the starter batteries to a shop space outside the house (mostly summer use when we have lots of solar).

Some feedback would be super appreciated, this is my first time doing this and I live way out in the bush with infrequent town trips and not too much help. Once it is seeming reasonable and there aren't major safety concerns I'll make a more detailed plan, and I guess ask more specific questions until I have the system actually figured out? I'm hoping at that point I can put it up again for folks to look over? I hope this is not 'asking people to build it for you,' I want to be figuring it out I'm just scared of electricity (I think rightly so) and am not interested in lighting my cabin on fire, hahaha...

Thanks!



Charles.

 

[MisterSandals]

Have you done an energy audit to see how much energy you expect to need and use? I think you will learn more in this step and save more time and money by doing an audit first. Seriously, you know nothing until you figure out your needs/wants.

Some feedback would be super appreciated,

4x tiny 100W panels sounds like about 1/4 of the minimum for what little you've described.

Have you looked for big cheap panels on craigslist? If you provide a city or zip code, maybe someone can recommend big cheap panels in your area.

The Renogy DCC50S is meant for charging from an alternator and solar. Its not really good for what you are doing. I'd hate to recommend anything from Renogy, but their Wanderer or Rover units will suit your needs better than the DCC50S.

What size and flavor of "lithium batteries" do you have in mind?

 

[oldmancharlie]

Thanks for your replies and input, to this and my intro post, sorry for not responding earlier.

Yes, I definitely jumped the gun on the charge controller, but either I will sell it or use it on a utility trailer, but that's down the road.

And yes, I also did not realize how little 400W of panels was, especially in my location. I definitely oversized the inverter, our power consumption is pretty low, max 500Wh/day, so for this winter I'm going to use a Bluetti AC200P (I ran out of time to do anything more complicated this year) and charge it periodically off the gas generators (which have to run anyway every other day to heat a vehicle's block heater). In the spring I'll figure out panels, hopefully an array that works with the Bluetti and that I can adopt into a more substantial system next year. I know the Bluetti is an expensive stopgap measure, but one I felt I had to take for this winter, and I will have several uses for it down the road.

Thanks again!



Charles.