You miss the point Garry, that 10kw array in the winter time is only putting out 15 kw a day average. It’s the price of panels that are getting people to size arrays for winter production numbers; something unheard of even 5 years ago. So that is why there is so much extra capacity come summer. It is cheaper to go this route today then to add a large generator to the mix. You still have one but a smaller one and perhaps not a prime mover maybe one step down. I don’t judge consumption everyone has a life maybe it’s growlights for early plants maybe hottubs for aching bones.
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The quotes I got here based the system for 2 hours of full sun to match winter time sun. It also included 2 days storage. The website I listed above uses the same sizing if I choose Boston which is as close as their drop down gets to my home.
I agree with the statement that panels are now cheap enough to size for winter sun and just accept that over size in the summer. That is why I plan on also building an Electric tractor for haying the system I want to install would have spare power for the tractor. I hoped to install a system this summer but I have too much work to do on the barn first. Once I get that done maybe next summer I can install solar.
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Exactly Dan. A solar tractor would be perfect. We are talking with the same client with the 10kw array about a dedicated plug in his garage for a level 1 charger on an electric vehicle. Probably hooked to a timer to take advantage of that summertime overcapacity. He has a grid connection but can’t net meter due to utility limitations in the area.
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That sounds alot like my situation. My power company said they where getting out of net metering and with 2 services here on the old farm property I am stuck with $50 a month of fixed charges. So I am looking at leaving the grid and connecting the houses and barns onto one micro grid. It will be expensive but will pay for itself in 15 years less with the tractor. I think I can get it down to 7 years with fuel savings. Soo many things to think about. I like the idea of including an EV it would also double for more storage in a pinch. I don’t know if any of them have V2H (vehicle to home) technology built into them or not. I wouldn’t want to modify a new EV to get direct access to the DC bus for fear of warranty issues. I have heard of people tapping the dc bus on a Chevy Volt and using it as a genorator for their house when the voltage gets low enough the car will start and recharge. I know chevy doesn’t approve of this too much risk of people filling the building with fumes. But it is a cool concept.
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I’ve heard of it done on priuses but never looked into volts or tesla. I’m sure it’s coming. An expensive battery to tap except in an emergency I think. I wonder if you could cut into its accessory battery for limited 12 volt power draws… here is a fun one about a chevy volt http://gm-volt.com/2012/11/01/a-chevy-volt-as-an-emergency-electricity-generator/
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I have seen midnight mentioned a few times above from reading there specs they are designed for higher voltages and different supplies pv wind solar . I was looking at them when I got the new batteries but my old setup is working fine.
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Midnite solar was formed from the same engineering team that created the original trace equipment then they.moved on and formed outback then moved on again and formed midnite solar. Rock solid stuff…
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Thanks every one for all the info, gives me more to chew on. If anyone has any other thoughts on off gridding , please share here. Steve U, I do not give up, I was always the one that if I was told you can’t do that, it just makes me more determined to do.
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Al, I like that kind of thinking, there is always, it seems more that one way to do things, in this world we live in, there is always someone, government, agency, science, oh yes and experts that say it can be done. I have fallen into that hole many times. Ha ha. Keep trying and do it. (Stealth is the key) and do not tell everone in the world you are doing it, and they are fools for not doing do it. That just makes them mad, and want to stop you from doing it. I always let people know, who ask me, that my truck runs on gas, but I can drive on both gas and wood. No signs rubbing it in their faces on my truck. I live in Washington State, the tree hugging, evergreen State. I love trees. In the Right way you should love them. Pick up all the dead wood I can find, and use it.
Bob
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Is that your power companys graph or yours?
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The graph was made by the power company. I made a screenshot of what they posted under my account on their web site. Enphase also provides a graphical report of the power their Micro Inverters produce, but the one from the power company shows what I buy from them, and also what I send to them (when I produce excess). Al stated he was considering ten 240 watt panels, so his panels would produce almost the same power feeding my house, shop and car. We have a home-made solar water heating system, and do quite a bit of cooking outdoors, but the house is all-electric. If we were off-grid, and a battery bank were charged, then I would think about diverting excess power to either refrigerate or heat a big tank of water. One of my neighbors with two small windmills plus solar diverted excess power to a water heater in his kitchen. Two other neighbors have multiple electric cars with 85 kWh Li-Ion batteries, and their PV arrays are much, much larger then mine. Both have Tesla Powerwalls on order.
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RayM, please no offense intended. You are actually one of my personal DYI actual Doing-it, Living-it hero.
Just please do realize that Texas is on a separate self-independent national grid from US western grid and US eastern grids.
Diffnert top-down powers-that-be dictate to us. They do not like anyone muddying their power suppliers monopolies.
tree-farmer Steve Unruh
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I would support Steve on this one. A lot of utilities are pushing back hard against net metering Usually smaller ones running on coal or municipal ones that rely on those revenues to finance other municipal expenses. Ontario is pretty progressive with net metering since we have a few nuke plants the powers that be would love to not have to replace. Of course each inverter company has developed their own push back counter to those steps. In Outback’s case it is called grid zero which uses the grid to take the role of the backup generator and nothing else. The utility supports the offgrid system only. It’s a fun sleight of hand which allows you the grid benefits without the getting hammered by them for disconnecting.
Cheers, David
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Ray we looked into the blue ion lithium system in response to all the tesla wall inquiries we were getting. We became a dealer;Great tech, based in Hawaii and built to be an off grid battery, available now and shipping unlike the wall. The wall was built mostly to be a peak load shaver for markets like California… Of course all of that does not matter because their pr is so good.
Cheers, David
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Nice, ours only does per day, but then I realized that your is probably like that due to net metering
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David , I looked at blue planet energy site for a rough price guide for there Blue ion 2 system , just interested to know , although I am in Australia what price would you sell that setup for locally .
Thanks Dave
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Hi Dave, couldn’t find prices on Blue ion. Any chance you could? thanks
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Hey Al, I just signed up for this forum to do some research on charcoal gasifiers, but stumbled into this thread as it is up my alley. I live off-grid, and also have a 24 volt battery bank. 48v may be more efficient for larger arrays, but there is a lot more stuff available that will run directly off 24v. As for your original post, 240 volts seems kinda extreme to me, are you transmitting really far? 150 vdc is the max Voc that my outback mppt controller will handle, and I doubt you want to exceed that. Even the breakers i use top out at 150, I believe - as high volage DC arcs are really hard to interupt. My first solar system had a transmission distance of 150 feet, so I ran it at about 100-115 volts, and that was able to send about 8 amps with acceptable losses on a 10ga wire.
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Hi Carl,
Not sure what you’r looking for but, some solar array’s are up to 600V DC before entering an inverter.
An Hybrid inverter can turn that into your utility power and or store that into your batterie set.
Many systems on the market, many setup’s possible.
Example info on the net: Hybrid Inverter | Hybrid Solar Inverter | altE
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Hi Koen not to make too fine a point of it but for clarity we must emphasize that the hybrid inverters still require a seperate charge controller to charge the battery with solar at least the schneider and outback units. They are not an all in one solution. I agree with the poster above probably the midnite solar classic 150 with 8 strings of 3 panels each. The 10 guage sounds optimistic I’m code limited to 2 percent loss so I would run it through a voltage drop calculator.
Cheers, David Baillie