part one here.
After finishing the first part of the solar for our off grid ranch I have to say i am surprised more people haven't done this. We split our power thought process into two piles. Our base use which is lights, internet, direct TV, power tool rechargers and fans. The other pile is energy hungry things like air conditioners, power tools, vacume cleaners and microwave.
What we did...
1. We determined our usage with a kill a watt and a 2500 watt Yamaha Generator. We wired the generator plug into our panel (use an electrician!) and got a feel for what we could run. Generally it was the base use and one other energy hungry thing at a time. So no airconditioner AND microwave.
2/ We embarked on a mission to reduce wattage and use less energy in general. We swapped all the window fans which were 130-300 watts each for a much more efficient and watt sipping Quiet Cool whole house fan. It does a 1200 square foot house 2240 cfm for 160 watts. We added shade cloth arbors for the summer and south facing windows into an old sunporch space as a winter heat sink. We put reflectix in the beams in the attic and new R 30 batts. We added a solar fan to cool the attic. The old ranch already had high ceilings and pocket doors between rooms so we could close off parts of the house to keep the cool side cool in summer and the warm side open in the winter.
3. Phase 1 of the solar project was an 800 dollar 2500 watt controller/inverter that could run our panels AND work in conjunction with our generator at night topping off the batteries etc. Put your money in a GREAT controller/inverter. We put in 4 100 watt panels and an old car battery. All our base use was covered. (total cost 1200)
4. Phase 2 is 4 more 100 watt panels AND a special 12 volt big marine battery. The marine battery was 550 dollars but we felt it was the best value versus several smaller deepcycle batteries. The additional panels cost 110 each. So our total to date is 2200. We still can't run the Air Conditioner but we will be able to when we get 8 more panels ($1,000 more)... What we can do now is run the guest house base use from this addition since it all goes through the same elecric panel and was just a breaker we had switched off for our initial installation.
Tips and mistakes
DO make sure you understand what you have plugged in at the end of the day. If you are grid tied this isnt a problem but if you are off grid all the little devices use the battery at night. We designed and planned for our TV satelites, set top boxes, recorders, phones, internet and computers to run 24/7. We have the whole house fan on a timer that runs late enough into the night to cool the house but stops to conserve the batteries. We also have gone back and run a set of dedicated plugs from the controller for our 24 hour stuff. This way when we turn off the genni the rest of the house goes down. This has solved the whoops. We have a little more work to do on this.
Just get started. Like everyone else we were intimidated by solar. And the first jump in is a GOOD controller inverter which is expensive. We decided to get a 2500 watt one for $800 because it was much cheaper than the 4000 watt or bigger one. We also knew we could use this stand alone on a barn or something down the raod and we just wanted to learn. We probably need a 3500 watt but again that is significantly more money. We also knew that our 2500 wattt generator was already powering the house... and the air conditioner.. just not everything at the same time. So we jumped in thinking we were practicing. And guess what... this works.
In our layman opinion Solar needs good batteries to work right... The controllers need to smooth out the power and the spikes so the batteries assist with that... even if you shut everything down at night. We ran 'ok' with a little battery... but it ran much better and recharged correctly when we had 'more'..and.. of course our 24 hour use items need it. And you must have a plan to keep the batteries recharged.. more panels can do this. We do this when we run our generator in the evening.
What is next?
Phase 3 is enough panels to get us to 2400 watts... we are saving roughly 200 a month in geni fuel during the summer months so we are buying panels as we can afford them... we have 8 panels, we are adding 8 more and will most likely add 8 beyond that some day in the future. The panels will help carry the peak load of the air conditioner. So we are at $2200. We have 8 more panels coming ($1000). We will take a break there... and then if we need to add 8 more. ($1,000). What is great about solar is you can buy them one at a time as you can afford it and hook them in.
