Assuming the solar panels will charge the battery, on a good day, how many "bad sun" days does the battery need to carry the load?My fridge runs at 115 v at 3.3 amps and 380 watts . How many batteries and solar panels would you recommend ? Best inverter if I want to grow the system ?
Estimate on running a week with no grid . Location is Alabama.
Will be using Lithium Batteries .My fridge runs at 115 v at 3.3 amps and 380 watts . How many batteries and solar panels would you recommend ? Best inverter if I want to grow the system ?
Estimate on running a week with no grid . Location is Alabama.
Thanks to all for the info. I will order a Kil-o-watt" meter today and get back. I have a 5000 watt generator and would like to use to charge the batteries for backup on cloudy days.You need to put a power recording meter like a $25 "Kil-o-watt" meter and get the power per day over a period of several days to see what the frig uses/needs. A larger inverter that allows some growth room will often cost power just from being on, where a smaller inverter will waste a little less. This is just the cost of the business. An 1000w inverter should work if the frigs is a modern one. I think the modern ones need less power to get started. NVS suggests it might take 800 watts of solar panels to make up for 24 hours of use at 50% on time. Consider that plus,
1. You need to be running while you are charging (without robbing your charge power) so add about 400 watts of panels for that load. Also, on a nice sunny day where the day is sun all day long, 6 hours of sun is a blessing. For normal days where some clouds are around or it is cloudy in the morning (Alabama has clouds, right?) it would be good to fully charge in 3 or 4 hours. So maybe 1500-2000w of panels would be in order. Consider you have two totally overcast, dark rainy days. My power is down to about 5% of a normal sunny day, so on those days, I count as zero. The third day, it clears off about midday and you want to fully charge that battery. If the battery can carry the load for 3 full days, 72 hours, now you want to make that up over just a few hours of good sun, if you don't know what tomorrow holds. This is where charging off a generator might make sense. When the weather just don't work, you can't really make a system big enough to run without real sun for 7 or 8 days for those really worst cases.
Having a few lights is ok. My idea was to start a system that would run the fridge then as budget permitted add to the system. Can I do that for around $3500.00Is it realistic for you to be sitting there in the dark listening to the refrigerator run? Will you open the refrigerator door when you need light? What you really are going to need is a system that will power the frig, keep the lights on, and power the playstation so your kids do not drive you insane. Let's throw together some numbers as to what you need to get you through a crisis.
Refrigerator: 2500Wh/day
Lights; 100W X 4 hours/day: 400Wh
TV/console; 150W X 3 hours/day: 450Wh
Misc; laptop, phone, ect: 250Wh/day
Inverter on 24/7: 1000Wh/day
Added up, that's 4600Wh. Assuming you get 3 sunhours of power towards the winter, that's 4600Wh/3sh = 1533W of panels. Call that six 260W grid-tie panels. That will fit on just one double row array frame. With two days of autonomy, that would be a 18000Wh lead-acid battery, or a 12500Wh Li battery. At 24V that would be a 750Ah battery, vs a 520Ah Li battery. Cut these battery numbers in half if you go with 48V.
This is very doable, about the size of my workshop system, with 2000W of panels, a 4000W inverter, and a 568Ah battery at 24V. Adjust the numbers in the list to fit your real-world measurements. Math will stay the same.
I was thinking “800W would do it” so figured “1600W is what they need.”maybe 1500-2000w of panels