The Ultimate Guide To DIY Off Grid Solar Power | Tin Hat Ranch

we don't need electricity - the last 100 years humanity has survived without it since the dawn of time the truth is we've forgotten how to live without and we've also become accustomed to the conveniences it provides fortunate for us technology also provides methods for us to generate our own electricity lots of folks look to alternative energy for various reasons some do so to offset electric bills some choose to do so for environmental reasons but Preppers do it for control and self-reliance in my case I looked a solar to provide my grid down needs the tin at ranch solar system isn't designed to offset my electric bill nor is it designed to replace all of my electrical once in a normal world it's designed to provide the power to maintain a lifestyle of reasonable convenience should the grid go down for a day a week or forever the do-it-yourself off-grid solar system can be somewhat intimidating in reality it's composed of five components solar panels to generate the power a charge controller to charge the batteries the batteries to store the energy the inverter to provide AC to the house all items you wish to power and lastly lots and lots of questions the purpose of this video series is to answer the questions for the rest of the components we turn to a company called Rena G the tin hat ranch off-grid solar system is typical of the type of system you might look for for your grid down needs as well as a typical off-grid cabin system from Rena G we chose for 100 watt monocrystalline panels a 40 amp MPPT charge controller a 1000 watt pure sine wave inverter and to store the energy we went to batteries plus 4 for 6 volt golf cart batteries totalling 470 amp hours don't worry about all that jargon now you'll learn what it means in the rest of the series for now just note that there's links below in the description to all the products used as well as a link to the complete list of parts and a schematic amongst other information the first question I'm betting on everybody's mind is what will the system like this run but before I answer that question let me put things in a bit of perspective the average American household uses 30 kilowatts of electricity every day if you were to attempt to replace that usage and looked at the cost for most of us it would be financially unattainable but as I mentioned before that's not the point of a system like this in my area the 4 100 watt R energy panels that I chose will provide me with about one and a half kilowatts of power per day well that's only about 5% of what the average American household uses it's more than enough to run the things I need to maintain a semblance of my lifestyle if the grid should go down I can have a freezer power lighting pump water maintain communications use tools and charge every little device I have from flashlights to Kindles I can also maintain some of the simple pleasures in life have a movie night with popcorn and even brew a pot or two of coffee I'd bet that most folks don't flip on a light switch and take a mental note of how much power they're spending but that's the key to relying on solar in a grid down world in today's world most people don't consider how much power they use they don't quantify it why because they don't have to you can keep plugging things in and it doesn't matter there's no consequences except maybe a little increase in your electric bill but the electric bill consists of a smaller and smaller portion of people's income in a grid down solar power world things will be very different not only will you have to understand the power that you're using but you're going to have to treat it like your bank account you can only make so much power every day store so much power every day and you can never spend more than you make thinking about solar power like money is a good way to look at things we can talk watts amps and volts all day long and I can actually see your eyes rolling in your back your head they're through the camera but if we talk about it like it's money everybody can understand that you're going to need to assess your situation to understand what you need for your off-grid solar system assessing your situation is a critical step in the leap towards solar and I found the best tool to as your electrical needs is the kilowatt meter the kilowatt meter measures two things you have to know how much energy your devices draw at any given moment and how much power they consume over time I've got a link in the description below to the meter even if you don't move forward with a solar system this meter can work wonders in showing you where you can save big money on your electric bill and at less than 20 bucks it's a no-brainer let's take a look at this chest freezer to show you how the kilowatt meter works the device itself is very simple it goes in line with whatever you're testing simply plug it in press the Watts button and it shows you the instantaneous draw of whatever it is that it's plugged in this freezer draws around 80 watts of instantaneous power if I leave it on for an hour it consumes 80 watt hours of energy you may have noticed that devices like freezers don't run continuously and that's where the second function of the kilowatt meter comes in handy it measures electrical usage over time leaving this freezer plugged in for 24 hours shows that it consumes 840 watt hours of energy per day keep in mind that not all devices are on all the time take this LED light bulb for instance this LED light bulb draws about seven watts if you leave it on for an hour it draws seven watt hours of energy if you figure that you're going to need this light bulb for four hours a day on average put it down for 28 watt hours of energy need 10 of them it's 280 watt hours continue to use the kilowatt meter to measure the electrical consumption on every device that you feel that you should need your the grid go down now there's some devices that you can't plug into the kilowatt meter for those we've included a worksheet in the description below on how to estimate the electrical consumption of things like pumps blowers and things that are hardwired lastly you're going to have to figure out how many of the devices you're going to want to run at the same time this will determine the size of your inverter the inverters function is to take DC power from the batteries and convert it to AC power for use with household appliances I have a thousand watt inverter this means I can run up to a thousand watts worth of devices at the same time in the example of the freezer we're talking about 85 watts this coffeepot takes about 800 watts the four LED light bulbs we talked about earlier would take 28 watts that's about 900 watts of power or just under the limit of the inverter once you've evaluated every device that you feel that you're going to need should the grid go down you're gonna have a good idea of how much power you need to generate each day it's as simple as adding the watt hours together unfortunately with solar there's one more factor you have to contend with and it's determined by where you live and that is the number of Sun hours that you're going to get on average every day and this is where a company like R energy can come into play you see the amount of power your panels will generate is determined by the number of Sun hours on average your area receives I figured that I would need about a kilowatt of power each day to run the essentials as I mentioned earlier my area receives around 4.2 hours of Sun on average every day now I could generate the needed amount of power with 300 watt panels again simple math 300 Watts times 4.2 equals a bit over 1200 watt hours a person in the desert Southwest might get seven eight or even nine hours a day it's almost possible for a person in California Arizona or Nevada to generate a thousand watts with a single 100 watt panel per day if you're in a scoot viewer of the 10 Hat ranch and we all know everybody who watches the tin hat ranches and the Stu viewer you'll notice that I said I have four panels and not three this is because I want to quickly be able to recharge my batteries and have a margin for error after cloudy days and in the winter as far as solar systems go our grid down system is pretty small so adding a panel or two to your system is not going to break the budget I'd recommend that you do the same once you've determined how much energy you need to generate give R energy a call and tell them your location or your approximate location and then we'll help you size your system whenever we do something like this at the tenant ranch we try to find vendors that are best-in-class in the case of a small to medium-sized off-grid solar system renergie is one of the best there's links below in the description to get a hold of renergie for most of us an off-grid solar system means generating power via 21st century technology and storing it and let acid batteries which have their roots centuries ago now while let acid batteries have many drawbacks they do have a positive attribute the the cheapest way to store energy they're not the lightest they're not the most forgiving they're not the most efficient but we can afford them in the first video we introduced you into the concept of thinking of solar power like it's money and the first general rule is you can only spend what you make but batteries introduce two more rules into the equation you can only save so much and you can never spend all that you save you see energy is generally not used directly from the panel's its first stored in the battery you can generate all the power that you want but if you don't have anywhere to send it and you don't use it on demand the energy simply wasted so you can only store as much power as you have battery capacity the tin hat ranch battery bank consists of four six volt Duracell SLI GC 125 golf cart batteries from Batteries Plus we chose golf cart batteries for good reason think of them as entry-level solar batteries now the batteries that you might be most familiar with car batteries are truly the wrong choice to store and utilize energy from a solar system car batteries are designed to deliver massive amounts of energy in a very short period of time and then recharge slowly golf cart batteries are designed to deliver a lower amount of power over a longer period of time and then recharge quickly car batteries compared to golf cart batteries are very poor at delivering lower current for longer periods of time such as running appliances or lights overnight while a car battery would technically work in a solar system the golf cart battery is far more suited to the application it's for these reasons that even if you think you're saving money with the car battery the golf cart battery is going to deliver more energy per dollar and last longer to boot we chose a size our grid down battery bank at 12 volts and while it's true a 24 or 48 volt battery bank might be more efficient the 12 volt is more economical weight a little light might have just gone off in your head a 12 volt system with 6 volt batteries I'd appreciate it if all your electrical geniuses would hit down for just a second yes by connecting to 6 volt batteries in series we make a single 12 volt battery when you take 2 batteries and connect one of the positive terminals to one of the negative terminals and then you draw your power from the remaining two terminals you've made a 12 volt battery out of 2 6 volt batteries each battery is rated at 235 amp hours in our case but in series both batteries together are still only 235 amp hours but now at 12 volts this is because an amp at 12 volts is double the energy of an amp at 6 volts in our system because we want the end result to be 12 volts we take the other two batteries and make them into a series as well then we connect the 2 series together by connecting the two remaining positives together as well as the two remaining negatives when we connect the two sets of batteries together we double the amperage what we end up with is a 12 volt battery bank with a 470 amp hour capacity in effect we've created a parallel string of two 12-volt batteries two other possible battery configurations are 24 and 48 volts and the prime advantage of going with 24 or 48 volts is efficiency it's much easier to go from 24 or 48 volts to a hundred and 20 AC in the inverter than it is to go all the way from 12 volts 220 volts put for a small grid down system like ours 12 volts is just fine because it's much more cost-effective even so our 4 6 volt batteries could be wired for 24 volts simply by connecting them all in series like this to get 48 volts we would need a total of 8 6 volt batteries in Cirie's we've been talking about everything in watts up there in the first video we refer to everything in watt hours and now we're talking amp hours well to convert amp hours to watt hours we're going to take the voltage which is 12 and multiply it by the amp hours which is 470 and we're going to come up with five thousand six hundred and forty then we're going to take that number multiply it by about 85% to account for some of the losses you get in the inverter and what we end up with is 4800 watt hours now you would think if this chest freezer consumes 800 watt hours of energy a day I'd have six days of backup unfortunately that's not true and this is where you run into the second rule of batteries you can never spend all that you make we're using six volt flooded lead-acid golf cart batteries in essence centuries-old technology one of the drawbacks of lead acid batteries is you should never discharge them below 50% capacity if you do you will severely limit the life of the batteries in fact the less you cycle the batteries the longer they last if you ever totally drain a battery you run the risk of killing it so when on the surface looks like a 4800 watt hour battery bank is actually a 2400 watt hour battery bank you only get half of what you buy in the first video I told you I needed a thousand watt hours of energy a day to supply my critical grid down needs this would give me around two and a half days backup with the four batteries I have this is a minimal ability to weather a few cloudy days and remember your panels will still be generating some energy even on overcast days on paper this looks like a two and a half day backup with my system but in reality I've had it last five or six overcast days in a row with some careful use of power on the flip side you may not want to size your battery bank much more than five times what you plan to use each day with too much capacity you dig yourself into a hole where your panels have a hard time fully charging the batteries in each cycle as I mentioned in the first video we chose to work with batteries plus for two simple reasons first this particular Duracell battery fits the needs of a system of this size and they carry them at a decent price about 125 bucks each second pretty much forget about shipping batteries they're very heavy they're considered hazardous materials and shipping costs would exceed the cost of the batteries in most cases batteries plus has locations across the u.s. so these particular batteries can be picked up locally by you folks watching if you live in an area where solar is more prevalent than you may have many more choices but battery Plus is nationwide and this particular battery will work for anyone and it's within driving distance for just about anybody watching the show in the US so to recap when sizing your battery bank use as a rule a minimum of two days but not much more than five and get as much capacity up to that five days as your budget will allow even though my system size that only two and a half times what I consume I've gone five or more overcast days in a row now this is partially due to me sizing the generating side at one and a half times what I need as well there are many other nuances and details you need to know about batteries and we'll cover everything you need to know both about the batteries the box and everything in it on it and tied to it in a future part of the series obviously you're going to have to install your solar system in an area that receives full Sun for most of the day but it's a bit more nuanced than that especially if you install a smaller off-grid system like ours there's going to be two things that you're going to have to know first the Sun isn't at the same elevation throughout the year and second you're going to want to try to locate your panels as close to the batteries as possible when picking a spot to locate your panels you have to consider that the Sun will be lower towards the horizon in the winter and closer to directly overhead in the summer while later in the video I'll suggest that you need to tilt your panels as well for now know that you must locate a spot that will be in full Sun throughout the year how do you know where the Sun will be in your location there's a link to a calculator down below in the description in my case up north the Sun dips to just 24 degrees above the horizon in the dead of winter but it rises to 72 degrees above the horizon in the middle of summer you'll have to determine your range and make sure that your panels have an unobstructed view of the sky you might think that I'm on this roof because I'm about to tell you it's the perfect spot to mount your solar panels while roofs are good for antennas and for folks that have more money than they know what to do with it might not be the ideal spot to mount your solar panels the first thing you have to consider is the age of your roof a panel like a renergie is going to last you good 25 years about the same lifespan as this roof how old's your roof unless your roof is brand new you'll be removing your system at some point to repair the roof I guess if the grid went down tomorrow it wouldn't matter but there's two more reasons you might want to consider otherwise and both have to do with efficiency while it's possible to get a tilt system for a roof mount it will entail you climbing up on the roof to tilt the panel's most roof pitches point the panel's towards the Sun at an angle that favors summer power generation if you can easily walk on your roof this is the case when winter hits and the Sun moves lower in the sky output will be drastically reduced if you can't point the panel's towards the Sun for quite a few of us we get snow in the winter which causes two problems first you can't get to the panels to tilt them and second it kills power generation when they get covered if you can't easily clean them off you've effectively killed your winter power generation now I'm not saying that you shouldn't mount your solar panels on the roof what I am saying is to consider these challenges if it's the only place that you have to mount them in my case I decided to make a frame that would put them about eight feet up in the air and give them an unobstructed view of the sky no matter what time of year it also serves a second function as the rec yard for the chicken prison building a system that actually tracks the Sun would be best as the panels are always pointed directly at the Sun but this being a budget build and also out of my budget maybe we'll have to save that for a future video now you can use whatever you want to mount your panels from treaty two-by-fours to laying around the house in my case I built the frames out of unis strut unis strut is available at any home improvement store usually in the electrical section it's sturdy inexpensive and the holes just so happened to line up with the rena gz brackets so i didn't have to bring out the drill for the tilting mechanism i use screw hooks and gate straps i got those from my local Menards using my mounting system I can adjust the panels till once a month to ensure they're pointed directly at the Sun all I have to do is remove this bolt and adjust as necessary your second major consideration and locating and mounting your solar panels is their proximity to the batteries while the rule of thumb is to get them as close as possible to the batteries this isn't always the case and this is due to the fact that solar systems use low voltage electricity you see the more and more power that you try and transmit at a low voltage the thicker and thicker the cabling must be and this can get very costly the problem is it's very nuanced but there's many tips and tricks that we can employ to get around some of these limitations but at this point we're ready to start wiring stuff together once you have your panels selected and have picked a place to mount them you're going to have to get the power from the panels to the batteries in the last video we said that mounting your panels as close as possible to the batteries was important this is due to a simple electrical principle that as electricity travels down a wire it loses energy due to resistance the longer your wire run the more energy is wasted due to resistance this principle plays an especially important role in solar electricity because the lower the voltage the more we have to deal with this phenomena and as far as solar power is concerned it's pretty low voltage resistance in the wire is directly related to the thickness of the wire the thick of the wire or the lower the gauge the less resistance in the wire theoretically we could mount our solar panels as far away as we wanted to from the batteries but the wire gauge in between would have to be so thick that it would be impractical ultimately speaking it's the cost of the wire that limits us from mounting our solar panels wherever we want at this point in the series many of you watching are designing and planning your own off-grid solar systems and due to your differing needs you're going to come up with different configurations different number of panels and so on now I can't go through every scenario that's out there but what I can do is show you the different configurations that I faced and show you how I worried my system at this point in the series you know that our system contains 4 100 watt R energy panels if your system consists of more than one solar panel you're going to have to make a choice in wiring you're going to have to wire the panels together somehow to transmit the power from the panel's to the batteries and just like in our battery video you're going to have to make a choice between series and parallel wiring each one of these r energy 100 watt panels generates 18.9 volts and 5.2 9 amps under full Sun multiply those two numbers together and you come up with the 100 watts listed if I were to take my 4 panels and wire them in parallel that's bringing all of the positives to one point and all of the negatives to one point and then measure the output I'd end up with 18 point nine volts and 21 point 1 6 amps multiplied 18 point nine times twenty-one point one six together and you get roughly 400 watts this is because at a parallel system you had the amperage together and the voltage stays the same conversely if I were to wire them in series taking the positive of each panel and connecting it to the negative of each panel and then taking my reading from the two remaining positives and negatives I'd get a reading of 75 point 6 volts at five point two nine amps multiplying these two numbers together again gives me roughly 400 watts this is because in series we add the voltage together and the amperage stays the same so as you can see wiring the panel's either way comes up with the same 400 watts but with two very different results for volts and amps now I'm not going to tell you which way is best per se what I am going to do is show you what happens when you wire the panel's either way and then let you make the decision let's take a look at my situation and how wiring the panel's either way would affect my decisions when locating my panels the son and spousal zoning ordinances dictated the closest I could get my panel so the batteries was about 60 feet while you should try and get your panels closer than this many of you might find yourself in the predict I faced if I chose the wire my panels in parallel I would have to first understand what happens to the power as it traverses the 60 feet wait a question might have popped into your head why are the panels eighteen point nine volts I thought this is a 12-volt system good question well in reality to charge a battery you're going to need to produce about fourteen point four volts and a fully charged battery isn't even really a 12 volt battery it's a twelve point seven volt battery you also have to keep in mind that you're going to lose voltage due to resistance over the wire so if you start out with eighteen point nine volts you should end up with fourteen point four volts or higher when you get to the batteries and lastly you have to keep in mind that the panel's aren't generating full voltage unless they're under full Sun I'm going to have to select the proper gauge wire to transmit the power from the panel's to the batteries and that's going to involve you knowing two things first a particular wire gauge can handle only so much power or amperage and second each wire is going to realize a different loss over that distance the thinner the wire the more the loss does a calculator in the description below so you can apply it to your situation but we're going to have a look at our case I need to transmit my power at eighteen point nine volts at 21 amps over a distance of 60 feet and still end up with enough voltage at the end to charge my batteries as efficiently as possible a quick look at this table reveals that our 21 amps can be safely transmitted via 10 gauge wire but that's only half the story as I mentioned the thinner the wire the more losses will be incurred to resistance let's take a look at how much power we lose to resistance with this calculator using 10 gauge wire there's a link to it in the description below entering in our starting voltage wire gauge amps and the distance we see that we lose almost two and a half volts over the 60 feet to put this in perspective losing two and a half volts we go from the possibility of storing 400 watts an hour to 346 watts an hour keep in mind the panel's only generate full voltage and direct Sun as well if we choose 10 gauge wire to transmit the power 54 watts to resistance in the wire alone while we can use 10 gauge wire it's not very efficient at all to deliver more wattage to the batteries we would need to increase the thickness of the wire if we went all the way down to 3 gauge wire and reran the calculations you'll see that we deliver 18 point 4 volts to the batteries a loss of only half a volt and 10 watts now 3 gauge wire is pretty expensive if you go to the local home improvement store you can get it but it's probably going to cost you a couple bucks a foot now you can choose to use heavy gauge wire like this or you can look at your second option and that's wiring your panels in series remember when you wire in series you add the voltage together while the amperage remains the same in my example it was 75 point 6 volts at five point two nine amps referring to the chart I see that five amps can use a very small gauge wire this is how I wired my panels and it reversed the 60 feet I chose 12 gauge direct burial wire running these numbers through the calculator it shows that my voltage dropped only by a single volt this is because the higher the voltage the less loss you experience to resistance and even in a small off-grid system like this the differences in efficiency are pretty remarkable stepping up the voltage is a principle that's in practice every day all around us in your home you typically use 120 volts of AC power but the power companies will step up that voltage to tens and even hundreds of thousands of volts to transmit it for the very same reason we might do the same in a small solar system to lose less energy to resistance and to save money on wire if you can locate your panels within 10 or 20 feet of the batteries it really doesn't matter if you wire them in series or parallel but if you have a large system or your panels are a considerable distance from the batteries you may want to consider stepping up the voltage even so you might be asking yourself why wouldn't every system be wired in series and that brings us to the next part of the do-it-yourself off-grid solar series the charge controller I keep saying panels the batteries but in reality in between the panels and the batteries is the charge controller and the charge controller does exactly what its name implies it controls the charging of the batteries and the charge controller brings us a few more options and choices so stay tuned the charge controller does exactly as its name implies it controls the charge of the batteries and make sure that the batteries get the proper voltage that they need and that they don't get overcharged in a small off-grid solar system like this you're gonna have a choice between two different types of controllers the PWM controller and the MPPT controller the first type of controller is called a PWM controller like this 30-amp pwm controller from renergie this type of charge controller is basically a sophisticated voltage regulator that takes the incoming voltage from your panels and changes it to what your batteries need a controller like this has a couple of good attributes they're small simple and inexpensive this particular controller is less than 30 bucks from renergie for simple systems you can't go wrong with a PWM controller if you have a single panel or a couple of panels mounted very close by these are perfect in fact getting your feet wet and solar can be pretty inexpensive you can get a single hundred watt panel and controller for less than 200 bucks and that will get you charging something they're simply the only choice for very small systems but as I mentioned this is a 30 amp controller so its power handling capabilities are limited take for instance our example of 4 100 watt R energy panels from the last video the open circuit amperage of those panels would be 23 amps charge controllers are rated in open circuit amperage of which you should never exceed 80% so 30 amps times 80% he goes 24 amps these 4 100 watt panels put the charge controller at its limit in a 12 volt system this PWM charge controller only accepts a 12 volt input and that is the second limitation of the PWM controller if you watch the last video in wiring the panel's a little light might have just gone off in your head and you might have noticed that I can't use the PWM controller if I wire my panels in series and that's because I have 75 volts to deal with in this you would be correct and that is where the MPPT controller comes into play when faced with your decision to purchase a charge controller you're going to notice two things that people don't ever really explain very well and I'm going to give it a try the first are claims of efficiency the PWM controllers claim around an 80% efficiency while the MPPT controllers can claim efficiencies into the high 90s second you'll notice that the cost increases exponentially between a pwm controller and an MPPT controller this charge controllers 30 bucks this one is well over 200 and that might be a deal-breaker right there but hold on you need to understand a few things about the MPPT charge controller before you make your decision as I just mentioned the PWM controller must accept near 12 volts in a 12 volt system like ours that stops me from wiring my panels in series because I'd have a 75 volt input the first major advantage of an MPPT charge controller over the PWM is it can accept a much higher voltage in the case of this run eg 40 amp controller up to a hundred volts this means I can wire my panels in series and take advantage of two things first the transmission of the power is far more efficient more importantly I can use thinner cheaper wire in my case wiring the panel 60 feet away from the controller I was able to save enough in the wiring alone to nearly pay for the cost difference between the PWM and the MPPT for me it's a no-brainer for the same overall cost I can gain efficiency as I said the efficiency that the spec sheets speak of is never adequately explained kicking up the voltage saves some in transmission losses but the rest of the magic as they say is in the math you see right as the Sun Peaks over the horizon your panels start generating voltage this voltage might be a meager say four or so volts if you had wired your system in parallel and connected them to a pwm controller this power wouldn't equal the 13 or 14 volts necessary to charge a battery in short the power is wasted but in a series system connected to an MPPT charge controller the voltage well it adds up literally four panels at four volts deliver 16 volts are enough to begin charging the batteries granted the amperage might be low but your batteries begin charging the moment the Sun peeks over the horizon an MPPT charge controller can charge your batteries nearly the entire time the Sun is out the PWM has to wait until the voltage necessary to charge the batteries is generated this is where the bulk of the efficiency is made up in closing when making a decision between a PWM and an MPPT charge controller note that there's no real advantage with going to an MPPT charge controller in a single panel system if you have multiple panels then you have to weigh the cost versus the benefits if you want more efficiency if your panels are far away and you want to save money and wiring then the MPPT might be right for you once the power hits the controller it heads down to the batteries in the next video we're going to take a look at storing the power and the battery box in this part we're going to talk about the battery box and solar safety both of which are intricately intertwined wait I know I said the S word just don't turn off the video stick around I got a puppet hey short hairs hi T seriously safety is the most often overlooked component for any do-it-yourself project that I'm frankly surprised that you're actually watching this video in the second part of the series we showed you how to choose size and wire your batteries in this part we're going to show you the things that you should be concerned with when making your battery box the battery box is all about safety in my case I've got over five kilowatts of energy stored in that box enough to light this light bulb for over 700 hours point of enclosing batteries is to avoid having all five kilowatt hours from discharging at once in spectacular fashion when working with batteries we have lots of point of access to the power or terminals and we really want to avoid something shorting them or touching a positive and negative terminal at the same time if that were to happen you can melt the screwdriver in half in an instant or heat a wrench red-hot hot enough to melt through the battery case start a fire and get acid everywhere in short your battery box is to keep accidents and prying hands away from causing big troubles I use plywood for my box but you could use virtually any non conductive material you want I've seen people use old furniture and even plastic totes the point is the non conductive material one of the major drawbacks of using flooded lead-acid batteries is they create hydrogen gas when charging and anybody that's familiar with the Hindenburg knows what happens when hydrogen gas and a spark find themselves in the same room luckily the same principle that lifted the Hindenburg into the air is the same one that's going to keep our battery box safe hydrogen being the lightest element Rises so if you give it a path to rise you won't blow up your box in our case we drilled a 2-inch hole in the side of the box and ran a 2-inch piece of PVC to the outside this should create a path for the hydrogen to harmlessly escape if you have a larger system you may also want to consider installing a small fan to help the process also on my battery box I've installed a voltmeter when the batteries are neither being charged or under load the meter will tell you the approximate charge state of the batteries I got this simple meter off of Amazon and there's a link below in the description it's wired into the positive and negative terminals with a fuse on the positive leg there's a link below to a chart that will show you how to translate the battery voltage to the percentage that's charged now it's not the best idea to keep flooded lead-acid batteries in the house but if you live in a northern climate you're going to have to find a way to keep your batteries warm batteries will lose efficiency as the temperature drops and they'll become downright useless in the dead of winter if they're kept outside and you can pretty much forget about using the power you're generating the system of this size to heat the batteries because you're going to need more than you generate the two major things that you're trying to accomplish with the battery box is to keep the batteries isolated from accidents and mishaps and vent the hydrogen to the outside to avoid a hydrogen explosion once you've taken care of that then you can begin to look at other aspects of safety in the system did somebody say safety we're dealing with a lot of power here enough power to injure or kill someone if the Schumer hits the rotary oscillator and your house catches fire because of your solar system and your lack of safety what then personal and property protection are one thing but employing safety measures can keep your system running as well what happens when lightning strikes nearby instead of blowing up equipment you can send that extra energy where it should be going to ground instead the first step in making your solar system safe is making sure that there's an automatic and a manual way to disconnect power in each segment of the system starting right here at the battery box we have a 300 M manual switch to kill the power from the batteries to the inverter as well as a 200 amp fuse that will blow automatically if something were to short in the inverter at the solar panels themselves you need a method to kill the power manually in this case I used an outdoor box normally used for something like a spa that has lugs the land the wires from the panel's as well as a spot for a breaker in this case I'm using the breaker as a switch and a fuse for automatic protection the wire runs into the house and lands at another box usually used as an air conditioner disconnect here I can disconnect the power to service the equipment indoors once the power hits the charge controller there's another fuse between it and the batteries once at the batteries we get to the previously mentioned 300 amps which infuse just like our video on wiring solar panels when you choose each component it's going to have to be rated for the amperage in the environment that its installed for instance the 300 amps which it should never see 300 amps because there's a 200 amp fuse that will blow before it does with fuses you're going to have to determine the proper amperage for each leg of your system for instance in my system from the panel's of the charge controller I have 75 volts and 5 amps so I chose a 10 amp fuse but once it hits the charge controller the voltage goes down and the amperage can go up to about 20 so I put in a 30 amp fuse now unless you copy our system exactly you're going to have different results following these suggestions will probably keep your house from burning down but there's still one more component to the safety and longevity air system and that is grounding as Preppers we want our systems to work if they're ever called upon if there's ever a malfunction in one of the components or say lightning struck nearby that stray voltage has to go somewhere that somewhere might be your body if you touch one of the charge components or other components in the system luckily for us electricity is as lazy as my brother-in-law it will always follow the path of least resistance so what do you do to get rid of stray electricity you give it the path of least resistance instead of allowing this errant voltage to find a path through good components or through a person you're building a highway for these lazy electrons and they can't resist it grounding your system is quite easy to do so get an 8-foot grounding rod and drive it into the ground then pick up some copper grounding wire some lugs and connect the frames of all the panels and any metal components in the system in my case this included the disconnect charge controller and inverter one thing that you have to understand about electricity is although it's lazy it's always on the move and it's always going to fine ground so if this component becomes charged and I touch it and I'm touching the ground the electricity is going to travel through me if however there's an easier path to ground such as through this lug and out to the grounding rod it's going to choose that way grounding is a must that will increase the chances of both you and your system will survive the apocalypse and comparatively speaking it's the least expensive component in the system so don't overlook it so the grid went down you woke up one day no power no cell phones no internet once communications are lost you might never know what happened you're simply thrust into a new world bewildered in my case I know what happened but more on that later the important part is the grid went down and you had the forethought to generate your own power my opening statement in the series was that you don't need electricity to survive and that is true but there are certain things that you cannot do without it in the first video in the series we talked about understanding solar power as money and your system the bank you can never spend more than you make and in a grid down scenario this could never be more true we explain all the basic rules and if you missed it there's some links below even with those basic rules there's a few nuances you're going to want to be aware of everybody's electrical loads are going to be different and you should have sized your system accordingly our example was a chest freezer that's going to run continuously yours may be different it's in the extra power that you generate above these loads where things get interesting the most interesting thing I've found so far living with solar power is how much energy is potentially wasted if you sized your system larger than your continuous loads then there's going to come a point on most sunny days where your batteries are fully charged from there on out even if there's hours of sunlight left there's no place for that power to go and it's wasted in a grid down scenario you're going to find yourself making it a point to spend that power in the late afternoon for folks who prepared late afternoon might be a time to run the vacuum cleaner wash a load of dishes or wash a load of clothes you might even consider charging the neighbors a can of beans to watch a DVD the point is on some sunny days you're going to have power to spare and you're going to have to spend it right at that moment speaking of sunny days it'd be nice to know when those are going to happen wouldn't it but it's grid down and there's no weatherman or is there I don't give up quite easily and I found two solutions that are going to help me spend my power when the grid goes down the first is this accurate weather station at 3 watts I can afford to spend the power on a device that can give me a good estimate of tomorrow's weather it's reasonably accurate and can help me in my decision on whether to spend a large amount of power today or wait the transmitter runs two years on a set of lithium batteries so I figure I might give decent weather prediction at a very low power cost for quite a few years to come if that isn't enough there's another really cool option for predicting the weather if the grid goes down at least for a couple years anyway if you want to see what the weather is like across the country or if you want to see if there's any big storms approaching with this $25 USB device and this home antenna you can download weather data directly from satellites as long as the grid wasn't brought down by an EMP or a CME in which case you'd have bigger problems whether satellites should be at your disposal for some time more on this in a future video earlier I mentioned I knew why the grid went down and I know why the grid went down because I'm a ham radio operator without electricity instant communications are impossible a solar backup for communications was one of the essential reasons for my system luckily for you if you join both clubs amateur radio and solar power that is you'll find yourself in great company they're more than enough of us to get the word out in a disaster and a great deal of us also utilize renewable energy as a backup source of power for communications even if you don't want to become a licensed amateur radio operator we're going to show you in a future video how you can inexpensively listen to the same things that we do I spent the entire series talking about things that you can do with this system but there's going to be some things that you'll no longer be able to do some of those things include heating anything with electricity while you might get away with heating up some leftovers in a microwave or making a pot of coffee heating anything else is a complete waste using electricity for heating is a waste now let alone in a grid down scenario I can run tons of gear with my system but if I run a space heater for anything more than an hour I completely blow out my battery bank the same is true with air conditioning while you might be able to treat yourself to a 15-minute blast from a window unit during peak Sun hours 24 hour air conditioning will be a thing of the past while I can't continue my normal usage with this grid down system I can complete most of the tasks to continue a semblance of the day when power was limitless it just takes some careful power use planning on cloudy stretches it might also mean going without for a bit and besides I have a guilty conscience I like to show you guys things that use electricity so there you have it it's been a year since the off-grid solar series and I'm happy to say that the system has worked pretty much flawlessly all the links mentioned in the video can be accessed via the link in the description below to the tenant ranches ultimate guide to off-grid solar power solar power is an integral component to continuing life with a modern semblance of convenience and this for sure won't be the last of our videos on solar in fact be sure to stay tuned and subscribe to the tenant ranch if you haven't already as we have some new series in the works one of which will give you a look at the light can power box it's a new product for energy that's going to revolutionize parts of what you just looked at in short imagine a box that contains all the components - the panels in a system that's the charge controller inverter and a 900 watt hour battery in a portable package that weighs less than 70 pounds check out a preview in the links below and thanks for watching if you found this information insightful drop us a comment hit the like button below share this video with your friends and subscribe to the tin hat ranch channel thanks for watching you

Channel: TinHatRanch

Views: 1,700,920

Rating: 4.9021988 out of 5

Keywords: solar panels, diy solar, off grid living, off grid solar, solar power, how to solar power, off grid solar power system, off-the-grid, solar energy, off grid cabin, off grid homestead, prepper solar power, solar power basics, solar power for beginners, shtf solar power, battery solar system, battery solar power, lds solar power, how to wire solar panels, mppt vs pwm, mppt versus pwm, mppt charge controller, pwm charge controller, grounding solar system, solar power safety

Id: w4qcoEXYqK0

Length: 47min 46sec (2866 seconds)

Published: Sat May 14 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/creekyoffgrid]

This is a commercial. And the equipment is terrible. Don't bother watching.

[u/aintnocoffeeshop]

No, no it's not. There are so many misconceptions propagated throughout that it's probably better that people do not watch it.

Edit:

It's been awhile since I watched that video and that is why I did not start a discussion about the misconceptions, but I'll gave it another look and provide examples below.

@ 7:14 - He butchers the concept of "sun hours." His area does not "receive 4.2 hours of sun every day." Maybe he is oversimplifying the concept but that does not actually serve his audience.

Yearly average solar isolation is an immensely important data point for grid-tied systems. It's nearly useless for off-grid battery based applications. The most important factor for sizing off grid systems is determining the month (or season) where the available sun hour will have to work the hardest (Seasonal Load / Average Seasonal Sun Hours; which ever season's figure is the greatest should be the design month). That could even be in the summer if some prepper wants to be able to run his emergency hot tub.

The faulty presentation of solar isolation in the video is enough, in my book, to ignore this guy all together, but I shall move on.

Additionally, solar isolation charts are handy and good enough for net metering systems when one is seeking to basically zero out at the end of the year, but they don't cut it for off-grid. Use NASA data. It's free and easily accessible. Not exactly a misconceptions but it just annoyed me.

Also, and perhaps this is a bit pedantic, I can't stand his sloppy use of the words "power" and "energy."

@ 15:38 - Not really a misconception but just bad advice: golf cart batteries are not well suited for solar. And for $125 each, he is awfully close to affording T-105 REs. And no, freight is not going to cost you the same as the batteries.

@ 19:55 - Recommending 2x4s or unistrut for mounting is both dangerous and irresponsible. Enough said.

@24:36 - None of you got this far in the video but if you did, please tell me you scratched your head at this. He's not simplifying concepts for his viewers; he really thinks this is how batteries and cabling works. Also, did any of you, in your training, learn that 24% was an acceptable wiring and distribution loss? That is just insane.

@ 29:30 - He doesn't know how a PWM CC works. ... Also, do you guys think he bought the Renegy PWN CC for purposes of showing it for this video, or did he buy the system as a kit with a PWM CC and then realize his losses at a 60' run and bought the MPPT? I think the latter is more likely given what we know of his expertise on the subject.

@ 32:43 - Morning voltage readings are the highest readings you will get all day (not necessarily at dawn, but you know what I mean). He goes on to talk about how an MPPT charge controller works but he doesn't understand the concept himself. The MPPT CC doesn't "add" voltage between the panels (and he just talked about wiring modules in series...).

I'm done with this video. I've wasted enough time trying to prove my point. Don't recommend this awful video to clients or anyone else interested in off-grid solar. It's trash. If I were to recommend something on youtube it would be the altestore videos. They simplify concepts but they do not misrepresent them.