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15 Feb ’12
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we want to be totally self sufficient in 5 years, this is a step towards that, we have a 5000 watt generator that we can use to charge the battery bank if needed, what we would pay for gas to do that when needed should be far less than what it would cost for being grid tied, I think we get charged 30 bucks a month just to be on the grid, electric here in Maine is insane, our average bill is 110 dollars, 50 of that is for electric, 60 of that is taxes, fees and delivery charge
the barn is about 170 feet from the side shed
5 Mar ’12
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Yeah, that would be expensive. How many panels would you put on your barn roof? Do you know what kind of KW you are looking for? You can do 170 feet but will need some large cable. Wouldn't be too bad and you could run just a + and - line to your charge controller in your shed. Let me know if you want to go over this is more detail. I have drawn up example set ups for some folks in the past.
Just an FYI since we live in similar climates -- you would be relying on your generator more than you think in the winter months. We ran ours every day through most of winter -- that adds up.
15 Feb ’12
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the last time I sat down and figured it out based on our current usage we would need a 4.6 kw system, I figured to do a 5 kw. Once my daughter is out of the house, our usage should go down a lot, I like to call her energy intensive lol
5 Mar ’12
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That's a pretty big system. If I could do it again I would buy a pre-assembled system. I think it would honestly cost the same when you add up all of the costs for conduit, breaker boxes, breakers, etc. I would be nice to just hang one of these on the wall, hook up the panels and batteries, and be done with it.
http://www.solar-ele.....x3648.html
5 Mar ’12
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Do you have any electric appliances? Or is everything gas? E.g dryer, dishwasher, waterheater, etc. Any of those in electric will make living offgrid hard.
15 Feb ’12
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everything is gas, only thing electric is lights outlets and our freezer, goal long term is to do away with that
15 Feb ’12
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That's a pretty big system. If I could do it again I would buy a pre-assembled system. I think it would honestly cost the same when you add up all of the costs for conduit, breaker boxes, breakers, etc. I would be nice to just hang one of these on the wall, hook up the panels and batteries, and be done with it.
http://www.solar-ele.....x3648.html
yeah, I like those all in one units, one thing I have never figured out was whats better to use, a 12, 24 or 48 volt system, and what are the pros and cons of each
5 Mar ’12
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The higher the voltage the more panels you can put on one charge controller, the smaller the wire gauge you need from the panels to the charge controller, and it is more scalable in general for other reasons. The downside is that your battery bank would be 48V and when you add batteries you have to add them in 48V increments.
E.g. my 48V batter bank consists of 8 6V batteries. I can't add just 2 more batteries to add more power storage -- I need to add another 8 6V batteries. So I would have 2 banks of 8 6V batteries tied together and in parrallel. If you had a 12V or 24V battery bank you could use fewer batteries... but at the amount of KW you are talking about you would really only use 48V equipment.
12V is low end with a max wattage of panels somewhere around 1 KW
24V is a midrange system with maybe 2 KW of panels
Anything higher than that you would be going 48V.
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