Solar Power for dummies, This system is easy!

welcome back to the homestead today we're going to talk about solar power my wife and I lived 13 years plus in this Log Cabin right here off grid off-grid basically means no Public Utilities in case you were wondering and we've had no solar power wind turbines or any of the sort for 13 plus years A couple of years ago we started this adventure on adding solar power to the homestead and I'm going to walk you through the process right now on what we learned and what's working right now and give you some buyer be Wares and just to be clear for 13 years we've lived off this generator not that particular generator but we've lived off a generator for 13 years we've called it power on demand so when we need power we basically just turn it on for laptops and little dinky stuff that we use around here we've learned how to not use electricity you know really good for all these years all right so we're just going to get right into the buyer beware part not all solar companies are created equal a couple of years ago we got contacted by this Solar Company right here and basically you know they were like man you don't like solar power solar power so good and I was like yeah I don't really see the return on investment and they were like look we're going to make you a solar believer and they sent out this whole unit here I built this whole building they sent the solar panels I put the solar panels up I wired everything that they said to do and it never worked from day one pretty much so that caused us a lot of problems if you can imagine having a whole deep freeze here full of all of our sustenance our meat big problem so I basically unplugged the whole system I talked to the company and they basically said we've sent you ten thousand dollars worth of stuff and we're washing our hands of you good luck that's what happened so I basically shut up about it I disconnected this stuff and moved on another company reached out to us just recently in the last couple months and they said hey man we we want to work with you on the solar power stuff and I said look I had a bad experience with the last company you know I don't know if I'm really a believer in the stuff I said the only way I'm going to work with you is if you get our main stuff running you know what we've put together already and if you get that running I'll talk about the actual system you know that they wanted me to talk about okay so this is full disclosure and buyer beware a DC combiner box a 48 volt solar inverter charger three smart lithium ion phosphate 48 volt 50 amp hour batteries and then they hung out on the emails and walked me through the whole process and we've had the system up and running now for almost 30 days solar panels we already had but they weren't connected up properly so I had to get on with those guys talk to them about the setup and they actually got me hooked up properly with the solar panels so these three solar panels are hooked together these three solar panels are hooked together and these three solar panels are hooked together okay this is the part where I'm going to walk you guys through how I have it all foreign first up my solar panel wires positive and negative from with the first three positive and negative from the second three positive and negative from the third three there's nine panels up there those all come down I put in my little hillbilly transfer pipe here ah don't judge and then those three wires right I taped those and they come into the DC combiner bot now this DC combiner box is perfect for both on and off grid solar systems it has a five to one connection feature combining up to five solar panel inputs into one it's easy to install and built in standard DIN rail built-in circuit breaker for surge protection and lightning protection device one year warranty on material and workmanship all my positive lines are coming into the top of these circuit breakers my negative lines are going into this negative bus bar my negative line comes off that bus bar my positive comes off of here goes out and into the 48 volt solar inverter charger the 48 volt 3 500 watt solar inverter charger is an all-in-one combination of inverter solar charger and battery charger the UPS system powerful bypass function with uninterrupted power supply function for user configurable models for different system configurations and perfect for remote power applications where grid power is not see we have 51 volts stored we have 120 volt system that's what we go for that's the solar power right there means that it's pulling in solar charging power right here putting it into the batteries and using it to power anything that we're powering right now now the batteries smart lithium ion phosphate batteries 48 volt 50 amp hour batteries modular design is easy to scale to meet a range of configurations more than 4 500 life cycles that means they can charge and discharge 4 500 times low heat generation and high efficiency during high power transmission and they also have a built-in self-heating system that keeps the batteries charging even when it's super cold so if you have these on a shed outside or something maybe you didn't have it super insulated they've actually took that into account because you're off grid and they heat up the battery so they can optimize the charging and holding capacities [Music] [Music] [Music] so that's the solar system power in our 11 acre Homestead but like I said we really don't use a lot of power but I'll show you what we got Stacy here inside now remember I told you guys earlier that we we tried to do this before and we got like a little bitty refrigerator I got like this little bitty it was like a little bitty apartment refrigerator like it's not very big at all so they actually sized this system up to run a deep freeze in a refrigerator no problem all the time and you know whatever else we're running like some LED lights or um a TV next door the modem so I can upload videos and all that stuff right so I got her a 28 or 21 cubic freezer and refrigerator I've been watching the videos I mean we haven't had any sun around here this is probably the first time I've seen and good couple of weeks that's why my eyes are squinting so much so with the new system going and uh you know running the refrigerator all through the night with no sun we have had to power the generator now the generator that I showed you still Powers those batteries up I can I have it plugged in and I ran a line I'm going to show you guys that on a different video but I'll show you how you get I'll run a line to your main fuse box so if you guys lose power it could save your life especially in the winter time you could run your heater I'll do that on a video coming up leave a comment down below if you want to see that video but I got that that generator out there is to charge the batteries when the sun is not keeping up with it and so I've had to turn that on a couple times but so far that's why I waited to post the video plus I was waiting for a little sunshine so you could hear this thing operating uh everything is working peachy King okay so there you go all right so the name of that company is renergy r e n o g y I'm gonna leave all the stuff down there for this system okay this is the the stupid easy system that anybody could install I did it and it's inexpensive you know probably between six to eight thousand dollars and you guys can have your freezer and your refrigerator and your lights and everything like that running on your off-grid place okay um if you add more batteries to it then you can obviously have you know more stuff running if you have to have more power then you have to reconfigure and figure that out too they're easy to talk to over there as well I one thing too full disclosure this is not an affiliate link I do not make a dime if you guys go buy this stuff so there's no affiliate link here I'm not swayed on my opinion I told the guys right up front I'm gonna use your stuff and I'm going to tell you just how it is I'm going to tell the folks that watch our Channel just how it is and he appreciated that uh and just wanted to make sure that I had all the information and I was doing everything right and so they are under the full understanding I do not make a dime if you guys buy this stuff but they're gonna send it to me I'm gonna test it out give them feedback and then let you guys know what I'm finding out along the way there's the farmer's Watch Dogs yeah challenging down again sell them Duty all right guys so we got solar power we got the panels hooked up it's a stupid easy system that anybody can do I'll leave all the information down in the description below uh or you can check out r-e-n-o-g-y on Amazon or wherever you buy your solar power stocks [Music] did you guys know that in the 16 17 and 1800s chocolate was consumed as a beverage there was no such thing as a chocolate candy bar well we're bringing chocolate tea back to the 21st century because it's loaded with antioxidants our body loves and it's a great source of magnesium that's wonderful for bone and heart health it's a great addition to your coffee machine or your French press or just along with your favorite sweetener you can find it at off-grid with Doug and stacy.com along with our brand new tea infuser simple to use for easy steeping cheers [Music]

Channel: OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

Views: 512,915

Keywords: Off Grid with Doug and Stacy, Doug and Stacy, Doug, Stacy, Off Grid, off the grid, off the grid living, off the grid homes, off grid living, off grid cabin, off grid with Doug and Stacy, off grid solar power system, off grid house, off grid homestead, off grid solar, homestead, homesteading, homesteading for beginners, homesteading off the grid, cooking from scrtch, self sufficient, growing food, how to grow food

Id: EZWJVsn2D3A

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022