After two days of very little sun my off-grid solar system shut itself down for a few hours just before dawn. Not a big deal, it came back up this morning once there was sun on the solar panels.
But... my web server is an old laptop, and the outage was long enough that it shut itself down. I'm 400 miles from home and there is no one there to punch the button to start it up again. I guess that I'll need to replace the laptop with a machine that supports boot on power restore.
The #offgrid solar was a $10,000 investment, a 10KW pallet of solar panels, a pair of lithium iron phosphate batteries for 10KW, and a 6KW solar inverter. I ordered from #SignatureSolar and they had the liftgate truck in my driveway the next day. It took me a few hours to snap everything together and 500 volts of current flowed into the solar inverter to charge the rack mount batteries and give me 240/120VAC. Everything is generic, highly redundant, and easily bypassed, repaired, or replaceable if something breaks. I had mounted a breaker box on the wall with outlets and a lot of DC converters directly to custom high power LED lighting for the rooms in the house. It is enough to charge the EV batteries too.
And so I went back outside, this time with an electric heated jacket and finished clearing snow away from the solar panels. Well...it was snow, but turned into packed slush and ice. Good to get cardiovascular exercise between reading books for the last few weeks. I went inside to see how much power they were generating, but the house batteries had already charged to 100%. I turned up the electric heat and the panels started ramping up to about 2KW, which is good for the sunset and shade from the trees covering most of the panels.
At least the solar panels are clear of thick snow and I no longer have to use the high voltage hybrid car battery to keep my house warm.
The birds love the seeds I left out for them, but early this morning they learned about the cat food when they had no seeds. If they keep snacking at the cat food bowl, they are going to grow cat ears and meow...
The house batteries fell below 20% from heating the house overnight. Looks like the snow has stopped for the week and I may remove the snow from the solar panels today. I went ahead and started the plug in hybrid to deliver 360 volts and charge the batteries. The thick cables from the inverter are warm and recharging the batteries with 100 amperes at a little over 53 volts. The internal resistance of the highly efficient lithium iron phosphate batteries is quite low and may not experience a temperature rise. I started cooking and the heat from roasting whole grains is enough to warm the room with a delightful smell.
The #deer quickly finished off the large bag of corn I left out, so I poured out a fresh bag that the #birds may enjoy too. So many #chonk beautiful birds are feasting upon these seeds to keep warm. I brought out some warm chicken for the feral #cats.
Grandmother Builds Incredible Home From MUD, For Less Than โฌ2,000
@sean Well the panel-part of the equation is now a lot cheaper. Batteries and esp cabling and control gear, not. Not to mention installation, if you have to pay other to do it.
I was recently a bit miffed when I tried to order just 1kW of panels to replace those that were damaged in the recent wild-fire. But the minimum order was 2kW - to cover delivery and handling at such a low mark-up. I bought the extra capacity, tho more than my control gear can handle, but fitted them SE and SW facing. Now I get max power system can handle from sunrise to sunset, or, on a cloudy day, still enough to run essentials without eating into reserve. No regrets now! #PV #offgrid
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