The coolest thing is not being aware that the neighborhood doesn't have power. We have a lot of problems with the power company out in the boondocks where we live. That is all a thing of the past now.
And storage is the only thing that makes solar (and/or wind) practical.
Okay, I think I understand. You manually use the batteries (which were charged by solar) until they are about drained. Then switch to grid (manually) to allow the batteries to recharge from solar. Of course, when the sun is shining you are using solar directly. Is that about right?
Everything is completely automatic as far as the switching goes. Yes, the grid is for backup and we rarely use it nine months out of the year. During the three coldest months, at least before the latest upgrades, we normally popped back onto the grid every other day from 3AM to 8AM. There just wasn't enough battery power to carry us all night with the heaters running full blast trying to maintain temps in my horribly insulated workshops. I would like to think our upgrades will allow us to only use the grid 3 or 4 times per month this winter. When we move into our super efficient house I don't think we will ever use the grid unless the panels are covered with snow. That might be two days per year. The top graph shows the sun (yellow) and our electric consumption (blue) for the week. Grid usage (red) is zero. The bottom graph shows the batteries in green (0-100%) for the week. You can tell it was pretty cloudy for the past five days so it didn't get to 100%. I also doubled the number of batteries and they started at only 30% charged. It will take a few sunny days to get them up to 100%. The new automatic boxes and another 18 solar panels (upgrading from 42 to 60) should be online in a week or two and really help out.
My shops total 3600 sqft. My house to the right of the shops is 720 sqft. New house will be 5500 sqft. The shops are full now but here is a pic of my car in one of them.
I think you are probably right. I would have to do the math to know how many "storage" boxes to get, and then understand the "control" boxes.
Modern solar batteries are normally 5.1 KWH. Most boxes require two batteries to operate. You can get batteries for $750 on sale. A box to run them would be $3500 for most people. They can only supply so much power so you have to size the box for your usage. My new box can do 24KW when the sun is out and 21KW at night. The boxes I currently run on (two of them hooked together) error out when I hit 12.5KW. So, for the past month my wife will throw the breaker on the water heater when cooking or running the dryer. This will not be a problem when I swap to the new 21KW box.
Sorry to keep questioning, but can these batteries charge from the grid? Can you tell me the control box brand/PN you are using and going to? Will you be selling the one(s) that can go (seemingly) up to ~12KW?
It is a U25. I saved some money buying the older version small one. Bought new for $40K which I thought was a great deal. I think most of the new vers were $50K at the time. I run it and my wife runs the JD1025r. They are a great combo and we can get most jobs done with them.
Nice! I bought the U35-4 new also and they have gone up some since 2017 for sure. One advantage you have with the U25 is it is probably light enough to fit on a tandem 10k trailer with some allowance for accessories. Our U35 is about 8200 pounds without the 24 inch or 12 inch buckets. I think a 10k trailer can only haul about 7800 pounds. I would need like a 14k trailer and a bigger truck, so I have to pay the local rental company $100 or so each time I want to move our U35 from our house to our mountain property, and I can't easily help out friends who live more than a few blocks away (I think in rabbit mode I can go 2.7mph)
It is a good forum, I post over there too some.
diysolarforum.com
That's possible. Would be a lot easier if you just stick to the panels and drop the whole battery bank part, just because of the initial expense. But then you'd use more grid. I guess solar's just harder in general in the north.
