Solar power for heating system | Alternative Energy | Forums

Here is my solar project plan, I want to be able to power my heating system off grid in the event of a short or long term power outage. “I live back in the woods you see” and living in rural Maine we often lose power. During large outages, because of where we are located we generally are one of the last ones to have our power restored. For the most part it’s not a big deal as I have a variety of generators and fuel stores. However at night, I find even the small suitcase generator annoys me while I am trying to sleep.

My heating system consists of a Biazi oil fired furnace tied in to an H. S. Tarm indoor wood boiler. The Biazi is the primary system that kicks in when the water temp drops below 160. Above that the wood boiler keeps everything hot. I have somewhere around 1000 gallons of water in the system between the two furnaces, the radiant tubing and two 400 gallon insulated hot water storage tanks. I keep the pressure in the system between 10psi and 20psi hot. This allows me to bring the storage system easily up to around 220 degrees. With the storage tanks at 220 it will heat the house for a few days even on the coldest days of the year. I only want to run the Tarm and the circulators off the backup system. I don’t know what the amp draw will be on the Biazi, but I suspect it would be substantial.

So I will be running the small blower motor on the Tarm for 10 amps and 10 circulators at 0.55 amps each. It’s kind of a compacted heating system on the surface but very efficient considering the number of zones. I have a close friend who put it all together for me, he said he took a commercial sized system and scaled it down for my house. I don’t believe that all the circulators will ever be running all at once and the blower motor won’t run constantly either. I want to over build the system for other small draws such as a two way radio and small appliance charging. It is a fairly new heating system with a low water shut off so I am not worried about having to run the well pump to introduce water in to the system should some type of catastrophic failure happen somewhere in the system.

I have a friend who is the manager at a local auto parts store and he can get me six month old deep cycle gel batteries cheap. New batteries can only sit on the shelf for six months. After that they get the name brand stripped off and sold as a second. I have my sights set on three 100 amp hour batteries.

I figure this inverter has plenty of power for the furnace and some left over for whatever else I come up with.

http://www.solarblvd....._info.html

This is the charge controller I am considering

http://www.solarblvd....._info.html

These are the panels to power it. I plan on building removable mounts to install on the front deck. They will be removable because they will only be installed in the event of an extended power outage. The rest of the time the batteries will be kept charged with the use of trickle charger.

http://www.solarblvd....._info.html

What can be improved or what can be done cheaper or better. Any advise would be greatly appreciated.