My solar adventures

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

Show me your solar setup,

I'm doing a test with the cheapest equipment I can find just to power my outside lights and cameras, this is an AGM battery, a cheap controller and 4 good solar panels 400 watt in a series producing 80 volts dc, and a very cheap 3000 watt inverter , so far it's working

 

[Donoroto]

I'll post more later. @Ozarks Mountain Brew

As an electrical engineer with more than a lot of experience with SLA batteries, some unsolicited advice:

Please, put some kind of protection on at least one of them big battery cables. Like a 120 A circuit breaker. I'll even send you one, free.

One only needs to experience a dead short with such a battery to remember the moment forever.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I'll post more later. @Ozarks Mountain Brew

As an electrical engineer with more than a lot of experience with SLA batteries, some unsolicited advice:

Please, put some kind of protection on at least one of them big battery cables. Like a 120 A circuit breaker. I'll even send you one, free.

One only needs to experience a dead short with such a battery to remember the moment forever.

yes I have all the breakers, this is just proof that everything works, Ill post more when its mounted on the wall and safe

 

[Donoroto]

yes I have all the breakers, this is just proof that everything works, Ill post more when its mounted on the wall and safe

Ah, ok and good to hear. And thank you.

 

[Minbari]

I'll post more later. @Ozarks Mountain Brew

As an electrical engineer with more than a lot of experience with SLA batteries, some unsolicited advice:

Please, put some kind of protection on at least one of them big battery cables. Like a 120 A circuit breaker. I'll even send you one, free.

One only needs to experience a dead short with such a battery to remember the moment forever.

I had a small 10Ah agm where i didn't fuse it. Wires melted, then welded together, lol. Was scary for sure.

 

[GFHomebrew]

I've done one install on my car a 12v 100AH AGM battery with Victron 75:15 MPPT controller running a cheap 200 W eBay solar panel on the roof of the car.
Kept a car fridge running for a couple of years continuously.

Until one day we smelt sulphur in the car yup the batter was slowly heating up and warped out of shape.

That victron mppt is now running a garden pond pump with a tiny little 9ah battery overkill but I really rate victron it's also got the WIfi so you can nerd out on the specks.

This guy gives some great honest non sponsored reviews on batteries and such.

Talking of batteries be careful of them ebike ones were getting a few house fires in Aus with them causing fires when on charge.

Looking forward to your build

 

[Steve SPF]

Following this. I'm very curious about solar power. I have a vague notion of taking my shed with all the DIY chaos plus the brewing process off grid by using solar. Won't be this year because I've a lot to do and there's a lot to learn, but post away please.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I'll set this up ahead just to get the word out, my goal is to power everything with an ac adaptor only, no motors, heating elements, nothing but led lights, with the acceptation of my cameras that do have a motor but they are under 5 volts. so far 9 watts is the most that my lights pull and I do have several on this, right now I can power the tv and modem but only during the day, adding 4 more panels and another battery might fix this

I can also say I've researched solar for years and there are a lot of myths out there, I’m taking off grid in this statement so to sum it up in my research powering 115 volts is relatively inexpensive "but" adding a heat element or high amp fridge or any other device requires much more money.

using solar to power 240v is twice the price, so powering your brewery and power tools is possible but will cost as much as 14K to do it right so keep that in mind, to power my whole place with a heat pump and electric water heater it will cost me 20K just for parts and me installing it, I hope this helps

just took a reading and I'm only running 0.90kwh right now and its holding fine in the sun

 

[Minbari]

I'll set this up ahead just to get the word out, my goal is to power everything with an ac adaptor only, no motors, heating elements, nothing but led lights, with the acceptation of my cameras that do have a motor but they are under 5 volts. so far 9 watts is the most that my lights pull and I do have several on this, right now I can power the tv and modem but only during the day, adding 4 more panels and another battery might fix this

I can also say I've researched solar for years and there are a lot of myths out there, I’m taking off grid in this statement so to sum it up in my research powering 115 volts is relatively inexpensive "but" adding a heat element or high amp fridge or any other device requires much more money.

using solar to power 240v is twice the price, so powering your brewery and power tools is possible but will cost as much as 14K to do it right so keep that in mind, to power my whole place with a heat pump and electric water heater it will cost me 20K just for parts and me installing it, I hope this helps

just took a reading and I'm only running 0.90kwh right now and its holding fine in the sun

you also have to consider conversion efficiency too. taking DC and turning into AC is not perfect and there are heat losses. some more sensitive equipment need a pure sine wave convertor as well. (most use a square wave)

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

the cheapest good set up that I've found so far to power 32 amps 240 volts even at dark will run 8K which isn't really bad, the draw back is a place to put 8 batteries and 27 panels

 

[Steve SPF]

the cheapest good set up that I've found so far to power 32 amps 240 volts even at dark will run 8K which isn't really bad, the draw back is a place to put 8 batteries and 27 panels

Can you post a link or a spec for that? I'm at the very early stages of getting my head around this stuff

 

[Donoroto]

One related point about specs. Panels are rated in Watts, but you will never actually get that many watts from it.

The standard ratings are current at a short circuit multiplied by voltage across an open circuit, but such conditions never occur in practice. Not deceptive, since they form a rational number for comparison, but a "4 kW system" cannot deliver 4000 watts in the real world.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

Can you post a link or a spec for that? I'm at the very early stages of getting my head around this stuff

there are bigger set ups available but this is what I'm looking into at the moment, this does not include shipping, mounting and wiring

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

The latest pic, haven't set up the fuse yet but it's coming

at night I just hook up a battery charger, easier than unplugging everything

 

[GFHomebrew]

The latest pic, haven't set up the fuse yet but it's coming

View attachment 25014

at night I just hook up a battery charger, easier than unplugging everything

So your running some lights and chargers and such with that setup Ozarks?

Pretty cool man.
I've got around 300 Watts of panels sitting around here doing nothing it'd be nice to set up something similar.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

So your running some lights and chargers and such with that setup Ozarks?

Pretty cool man.
I've got around 300 Watts of panels sitting around here doing nothing it'd be nice to set up something similar.

while this does work great during the day I'm very unhappy with how fast this drains at night, the second battery doesn't help much, I need to figure my total load, somethings not right

 

[Zambi]

So your running some lights and chargers and such with that setup Ozarks?

Pretty cool man.
I've got around 300 Watts of panels sitting around here doing nothing it'd be nice to set up something similar.

I run a 12 volt fridge/freezer on 2 x 100 watt panels and 1 battery plus simple controller.
Might be something to look at.
I'm thinking of getting 1 more panel at some point in time.
Then by the time my big bad batteries, that run the big system, are ready for replacement, t'll use those on the 12 volt.fridge/freezer

 

[FrostyBeach]

I need to figure my total load, somethings not right

With those two 100 Ah lead acid batteries in parallel you have about 1 kWh of storage. So if you have 500 Watts of load you should get about 2 hrs runtime.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

With those two 100 Ah lead acid batteries in parallel you have about 1 kWh of storage. So if you have 500 Watts of load you should get about 2 hrs runtime.

yes looks like I need more batteries, the issues I'm running into with the cheap equipment is the total pv input is only 150v that limits everything

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

This is on the controller display