Starting my journey

[mushroomgrid]

Hello all! Wife & I are starting our off grid journey & I figured I needed to start somewhere so I’m here. We own a couple thousand acres in the mountains of Colorado & plan to move there in the coming years once we’ve finished saving the money that we need to complete this journey/build. We own & operate a machine shop that will be relocating with us, which will present some unique problems in terms of power. I GC’d our current home (with the help of an actual contractor to steer me away from dumb ideas) & had an absolute blast doing it & I plan to do the same thing for this property. I own some construction equipment & will be purchasing more as I plan to do the majority of work by myself & with some friends that live in the area. I still plan to hire an actual GC to help me through the process & some laborers as needed. The house itself will have a main level of about 5,000 sq ft with an exterior patio area of 5,000 sq ft & pool, then a 10,000 sq ft basement of which about half will be a garage with lifts for my small car collection (the basement is basically a giant man cave/gym/utility room, although I will have small utility closets on each level. At the same time I’ll be building a roughly 250’ by 500’ commercial shop where all my equipment will be. The building will be about ½ mile away from the house, but the land fairly flat in that area which makes me think my idea is feasible. As the commercial shop will require the most energy, I’m wanting to base most of my utility stuff there (from water filtration to power generation) & run lines to the house from there. I will still be installing some batteries (looking at SOK 48V) at the home to act as a reserve & allow me to take the main system offline for maintenance & not lose power at the house for a few days (pair it with a DC generator to directly charge the bank but that may be backup overkill). Also toying with the idea of having some generators near the shop set in parallel & when X energy (or a button/sent command when I know I'll be using multiple machines) is being drawn they auto start & act as a supplement to drawing off the batteries. As this is a solar forum I won't bore anyone with the details of the other utilities & get to the point. Can anyone point me to any larger sized installs (specifically batteries built to handle the high draw commercial loads I'm expecting)? For panels I’ve been eyeing 695W Bifacial CanadianSolar panels. Inverters, I’ve been looking at Sol Arks light commercial system. All this to say, does anyone here have any experience with a system like this or point me in a direction to where I can learn before approaching an engineer? On a final note, I realize that this will cost a pretty penny. While searching the forum I saw this "If one is going to live as large and and easy goin as when plugged up to grid ,it can be done …$$$", this is what I'm wanting to do & I fully realize that it will hurt into the six figures just for the electric system (a large reason I'm wanting to do as much of it myself as I realistically can).

 

[Mattb4]

I am sure it will be fun. The scale of your DIY plans are a bit beyond the average. Like the difference of someone building their own canoe compared to someone designing and building a Cruse liner. But I guess if you have the money and talent to accomplish it will be spectacular.

 

[SamDeleted]

That is a long post ?

 

[Bluedog225]

For a first class system, with batteries, look at the kits from current connected.com. Then look around for other vendors to see what tier 2 equipment costs. E.g. Signature solar. Northern arizona wind and power (they have some annoying new name) has good selection as well.

Spend an hour or two looking at past posts for the vendors you are looking at. Some have multiple, months long, recurring complaints. Some don’t.

Your equipment is going to have some significant demands. Pick your inverter(s) carefully.

And not buying anything until you have a complete plan will probably save you a bundle in the end.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Rednecktek]

Blurb time? Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease be blurb time!

Blurb time!

Well, I'll start the default answer to these questions and we can work from there. Here's you To-Do list:

1: Power audit! This will give you some important information on how big your inverter needs to be as well as how much battery capacity you'll need. There is a link in the FAQ section (I think, or someone here will post it shortly) so fill in the blanks and see what it comes up with. You'll probably need some sort of Kill-A-Watt to get accurate measurements. Are you going to be running a 12v system? 24v system? 48v system? What are the specs on your solar panels? VoC? Vmp? Being as this is a new build, throw together a wish list of what you want and estimate on the high side.

1a: Where do you live? Speccing out a system for Scotland is a LOT different numbers than Arizona due to the amount of light you actually get. Someone here can post the link to the PVwatts.com or JCR Solar Uber-Sun-Hours calculator sites to help figure out how much you'll have to work with. That will be a box in the Power Audit form.

2: Parts list: You don't need a make & model list, just a parts list to start from for reference. You'll need an inverter, a MPPT charge controller, fuses, shunt, buck converter, batteries, wire, etc. Once you have a basic list it can be fine tuned to make & models after that. If you're looking at the All-In-Ones check for correct voltage outputs (120v or 240v Split Phase for North America, 220v Single Phase for European type areas) and make sure it has enough capacity for a little bit of growth and fudge factor.

3: Budget!: Steak is great but doesn't mean anything if your wallet says hamburger. Figure out what you're able to spend now vs what you'll have to cheap out on now and upgrade later.

4: Tape measure! Figure out where you're going to stick all the stuff you'll need. A dozen 3000AH batteries sounds great until you're sleeping on the floor because there's no room left for a bed. Is there a compartment that can house all this stuff? Will the server rack batteries fit? Are you going to have to make space? Physics can be pretty unforgiving.

5: Pencil out what you think you need and throw it at us so we can tell you what you've missed (because we ALL miss stuff the first go-round ) and help figure out which parts and pieces you're going to want to get.

Well that's the thing about solar systems, there is no 1-Size-Fits-All answer. Your system will need to be designed to fit YOUR needs. When you design and built the system, it's not going to be the perfect system for me, or Will or 12vInstall or anyone else, but it Will be the right system for You and that's the goal.

As for where to get started, let me throw my standard blurb in here to help point you in the right direction. There's going to be a lot of math and research involved, but that's going to be a LOT cheaper than just buying parts off of someone's list and finding out that it doesn't do what you need.

Don't panic on the Power Audit, you'll actually be doing that a few times. When you do the first pass put in ALL the Things that you might want. AirCon? Sure. Jacuzzi? Why not. MargaritaMaster-9000? Go for it.

The second pass will be the "I Absolutely Need This To Survive" list that isn't going to have much on there.

The third pass will be the "This is what is realistic" audit that you'll use to design the rest of the system.

The Power Audit is going to tell you 3 primary things: 1: How big does your inverter need to be to power your loads? 2: How much battery bank do you need to last $N number of days with krappy weather? and 3: How much solar panel will I need to install to refill those batteries in a 4 hour day (the average usable sun hours rule-of-thumb).

Once you know what you Want and what you Need and what your budget can Afford there will be somewhere in that Venn diagram where those three things meet.

After that, THEN you can start looking at parts.

Yes, it's a long drawn out process, but it's worth it in the end. Not every house has the exact same floorplan, not every vehicle is the same make & model, and not every solar system is designed the same.

 

[mushroomgrid]

I am sure it will be fun. The scale of your DIY plans are a bit beyond the average. Like the difference of someone building their own canoe compared to someone designing and building a Cruse liner. But I guess if you have the money and talent to accomplish it will be spectacular.

Being beyond average is what makes me actually want to do the majority of it myself. That & it being a lot of fun & cheaper lol. I'm going to be taking this on as a second job per se.

 

[Gason]

It's a great plan, complicated but interesting.