Solar Panel System for Home Electricity: Dont spend to much, go DIY and save $$$

hey guys Gordon here in this video I'm going to go through our solar system piece by piece with you from our solar panels up on the roof down to our charge controllers um into the batteries out through the inverter and out to the sub panel um basically just give you a rundown of how what the wire we used all that kind of stuff we are using the sun gold 18kw um big 18,000 watt inverter five 100 amp batteries um and four charge controllers 100 amp charging charge controllers that can handle 5200 watts each um just remember guys I'm not a license to anything so don't do as I do it's all for entertainment purposes but hey if you learn something it's even better give it a thumbs up if you like it hit the Subscribe the next thing we're probably doing is a water wheel the next big project we're probably going to be doing after we get the solar completely done it's not completely our solar is not completely done but it is really close I just got put 10 more panels up but it's just too hot right now to get up there on that roof so I'll do it later in a couple weeks maybe but the system's up and running all but one charge controller and those 10 panels um so anyway guys um on with it hit the Subscribe button if you like it thank you so much for watching okay here's a rundown of our solar system so far um so far we have 22 panels up on the roof of the 32 that we have um 20 of these are actually active these last two right here are not hooked up yet um they're in series right now but they're not hooked up to a combiner box so the way we wired these is we have four panels wired in series and and we basically took um so that far far end down there we have the bottom two and the top two wired in series and I did them that way instead of like across the bottom I did them in groups of four going from the North End of the house to the south end of the house because at about 5:00 those trees right there start shading them so I wanted to not have I wanted them to die out in groups as the sun as the shade hit them in the in the afternoon so um the B the last four down there so two on the bottom two on the top are wired in series um so that means um from the hot to the cold of one panel hot to the cold to the next panel hot to the cold or negative of the next panel and so on okay so those four are wired in series and then they're um home Rand wire into the combiner box um the fuse combiner box okay and then another set of four wired in series to keep my voltages where I need them and and keep my Watts up but keep the voltages down this why you wire them in series um so the next four wired in series the wires then come over to the combiner Box the same combiner box we have four combiner boxes up here I gotta do a little more uh laundry there some cable here as soon as I I don't know I'll either do it now or after the sun goes down this afternoon because it gets hot hot hot up here so um those those eight panels in are in one combiner box and the reason why there's only eight perk a binder boxes because they're 550 watts each so during the heat of the day this stuff is very important I mean during the heat of the day those eight panels can produce about 4500 Watts DC Watts okay our charge controllers can only handle 5200 watts and so we have we have four charge controllers down there so 5200 Watts maximum so I made them at 44 or 4,500 watts is what these work out to so I have a little play down there in the by uh down in the charge controllers okay so first four down there are are one group is we'll say uh 1 a the second four or um 1 B right they're in the same combiner box the same charge controller but they're wired in series and then paralleled up in the combiner box so then the third set of four and the fourth set of four is the next combiner box and then this next one I only have four of them hooked up right now in the combiner box number three and then these last two um will go in also with that group in that combiner box when I wire them up um and then I'll cut off these excess um uh unist strut here I'm going to leave that one long to run my cables on but these here down here these will get cut off and then up here where I'm standing there will be 10 more panels that go on this roof okay so I'm going to take you down below and show you the room downstairs all right so from from the roof all our cables come down these are the PV cables that come down to the combiner or um from the combiner boxes to the charge controllers um so the the negative side for each one each combiner box come out of the combiner box with one set of PV cables the negative goes directly into the charge controllers the hot side goes into these so I can shut them off okay so right now number one has eight panels on it it's like 9:00 in the morning and it's producing 2300 Watts DC power okay and scroll through says the batteries are at 53 volts shows the charge uh the solar panels charging the batteries batteries are then power in the the load so it says this machine is producing 41 amps DC amps right now it's not warm yet but during the heat of the day this will start reducing the power it it lets go through to the to the batteries so the batteries are probably about a quarter charged maybe half charged right now so it's basically producing all the power out these main big cables up to the bus bar up here that then feeds to that breaker and goes into the bus bar on the battery Bank charging the batteries okay so this one like I said is producing 41 amps 41 amps DC power and right now we're at 2300 Watts okay number two is this one it's producing also 23 36 about the same so it's it should also be producing it should also be producing about 41 amps so right now that's 82 amps going into these charging these um these DC batteries now this third one only has four panels on it so it we could probably figure it being half half of what the other ones are yep 20 amps is what it's producing so right now we we have 100 amps out of these three controllers we have 100 amps power and charging these batteries okay and then it's producing 1100 Watts these are 2340 so yeah just about half of what these are doing okay so this one has nothing on it yet this is the other part that we will be hooking up um I don't know got some old man softball I'm playing next weekend so it might be the weekend after that we actually get this complet this this portion but as you can see these three combiner boxes with just the 20 right now I'll put on those other two today tied into this so that would give us 22 solar panels up there actually working right now in the summer and it's basically these batteries get us through the night and uh these right here I mean it's 8:30 in the morning they're already charged the batteries the batteries were at 8% this morning um and now let's see what they are now so right now they're at 24% so they're so in an hour's time they went from about an hour and a half's time they went from 7 or 8% to 2 a quarter you can see down here these green lights blinking it's I mean this morning this blue this first one was blinking showing that it was below 10 anyway those are doing what they're supposed to be doing right now we have on this inverter it's 25% um of its Max 27% of its Max Capacity of what it can produce so let me run this by you guys again our charge controllers each one of them has a main cable coming out of it and those are two Aug not two a but two Aug two two gauge wires coming out I have eight gauge PV wires coming in this is just a bigger jump R it's just because of what I I had extras so I used it um so that's going in feeding the um the hot side from the PV it comes out on two a wire goes up to the bus bar I got these bust bars off Amazon the two of them the set with all the hardware um was like 35 bucks box I just bought some neoprene Rubber and covered them so then they all four of those combiner boxes are tied into this and now if I ever want to put in and I'm really going to I'm trying to engineer a water wheel because we have a re round Creek so I'm engineering a water wheel that will come into here also and so I have room that I can plug the water wheel into this also okay so then I'm coming out of that on two a wire so two SL zero wire to go down and feed these battery mianks cuz this could be you know if each one of these were to produce 100 amps each that would be 400 amps that these could produce through this so this is going to be pretty big wire going to feed this um I have them reduced down I don't think they would ever produce that much but they are capable of it um so then those wires come down tie into the bus bars on the battery bank and then all the batteries are tied to it okay so that's what's that's that's the charge side of my system then at the outgoing side this one another two wat wire goes up and goes into this 400 amp breaker and then that goes into the charge control or to the inverter um over here on this outgoing side I do have a breaker here it's a 100 amp breaker I think I'm going to need to replace that I ordered another one of these for here because like I said right now we're P we're pushing like 90 amps to this right now it's not even the hottest part of the day me will start to restrict us this these get full these will start to restrict and these will start to warm up restricting the power so you don't overload the batteries but this I'm thinking I'm going to replace that with I know I'm going to I'm going to replace that with one of these a 400 amp cuz this is 100 amp um wasn't thinking there I got the wrong thing so anyway I'm going to switch that out so where were we coming out of the batteries up here on two out wire feeding into the 400 amp breaker into the bottom of the pan uh inverter this I am so happy with this machine it is No Frills it is produces power it's all it does it produces power it is a hybrid inverter what that means is it has a built-in charger in it so if my solar panels are not creating enough power in a winter I have a 100 amp breaker right here in the main commercial power that will come out goes in the wall and it comes out right here and it feeds into this as you can see right here this top one right here it says it has 243 volts coming into it it's not using any of that because it's you can see here it's running off battery into the system at 25% the house basically the only thing I do not have on this right now is my hot tub right here my um my my range my oven and the hot water heater okay this is like the dishwasher that's part of my office I'm going to leave that on it um and then these these right here are all Cadet heaters in the house I'm going to probably take off this one and put on here and I might take the hot Tu put in here and the water heater I might put into this panel which is my sub panel running every light in the house every Outlet in the house the shop the wood shop um the the our well um I have two wall Cadet heaters on it um I mean there's a lot of stuff on here right now we are running the pump in the where is that 32% and I know that I am running the pump p in the pond filling up the pool I'm running the circulation pump in the pool um the the pond the koi pond pump is running and I'm not sure if you know my wife's doing anything in the house I mean obviously you got fans running she probably does not have any air conditioners on yet like I said our whole house is electric um we do not have a heat pump so basically this machine it's 18 KW it produces power and a lot of it I've never seen it I've never seen it above I think 43 or 44% of its capacity I'm running so that is our system in a nutshell oh so basically I have this inverter so I have power coming into it the power coming out of it so my um these are my two legs for the for power and then my white is the neutral coming into this panel obviously these are all hot that's not a negative that's a hot that's a hot I should put a no that's right a black a red and then a white as a neutral um I get kind of lost sometimes talking about DC power where that would be hot that'd be cold but then you go to AC power that's hot that's hot and that's negative neutral um so anyway that's our system I am so happy with it I think after I get the water wheel built I might put in another bank of batteries for wintertime I built this for winter basically we live here in Oregon I built it for wintertime um so with 32 panels in the winter I'm hoping it keeps up with what we need um if not I'll get more batteries or I was also thinking about in the summer because I have way more power than I need in the summer taking the p like maybe taking um two of these panels uh two of these um charge controllers I was thinking about taking those off of the system in the summer and putting in a secondary on grid system that I can do a met net metering with um so I already have the panels and there are over abundance of them right now like said we're running on 20 of them and I have 12 left that we're not even using yet and have plenty of power so I think um I might look into that next year let's see how the winter goes and I might do that um like I said I'm really thinking I want to move my water heater and a Cadet heater at least into this panel the sub panel I'm not sure about the the that hot tub the bill for that hot tub on economy mode is about a145 .75 per day um from my commercial power so maybe maybe I take that off of there and put it on I don't know yet I know at night cuz it runs 1 hour every 12 hours it runs for 1 hour if it needs heat it turns on the heater otherwise it just circulating water but so if I if I reset it at 5:30 and at night cuz I want it warm when I get home that means it's running at 5:30 in the morning before the sun comes up and it could really drain these bath so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do there yet um anyway guys if you like the video give it a thumbs up I could always use more subscribers um like I said the next major major project we'll probably be doing after we get this one done is is building a water wheel um I work for phone company so I have access to 8 foot tall uh metal cable reels and 5 foot tall uh round metal cable reels I'm going to probably do some well then make a water wheel out of it tie it into this too anyway guys thanks for watching give it a thumbs up subscribe and uh have a great glorious day God bless you okay so here's an update P batteries are full now um so these charge controllers are now basically notched down all the power that all the amperage that's put into the batteries remember this was pushing like 1 30 amps DC amps to the batteries the three of these so we now that the batteries are full these are now restricting the flow to the batteries these are sun gold power 100 amp hour I'm sorry 100 amp charging output um they can handle 5200 Watts DC input each

Channel: This Is How I Did It - Solar Power

Views: 2,149

Keywords: solar, solar system, solar panels, complete solar system, sungold power, solar power, solar energy, solar charge controller, solar inverter, sungold solar panels, sungold 18kw inverter, sungold charge controllers, free power, free energy, home solar, solar system for home, home power options, DIY soiar, solar system diy, Tesla solar, Tesla, lifepo4, Generac, po4, Sol ark, EG4, JA solar, Big battery, Growatt, offgrid, ongrid, off grid, hybrid inverter, diy home solar system

Id: RKe_qyDhx5o

Length: 18min 54sec (1134 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024