first things first

You guys are the source I have been looking for for about 5 years. Thank you all for being here. It has begun. The major wastefull toys just hit the market an hour ago. 24.5 foot cabin cruiser is for sale, 18 foot starcraft fishing boat is for sale and our 1 ton Ford camping van is for sale. These three items should net us 16 to 20 thousand dollars. I have a buyer or buyers I should say for cabin cruiser. There are a couple of guys( gay) that live on the Lake Michigan shoreline who saw it when we had it in to be winterized. They offered to buy it then as the one they have is rotting out. Its the same model as ours. So many parts will work as spares. That sale will buy our new sun frost freezer shipping included. The van and some cash for Refrigerator. Then we have to go after the range and Genny getting them on Propane. So much to do but I feel like a just cut loose a lot of extra crap. Feels good. Less insurance yea baby!!!! I still have my 14 foot fishing boat which we use most of the time any way. our canoe and pedal boat for the lake. Kingfish

 

Very nice set up Andy! I've been getting Homepower magazine for a few years trying to learn how to do this. With the information you guys have provided I'm confident about getting this done.

 

Well, I will give you an A for effort. The max60's have a plus or minus factor or fudge factor as you put it at about 10% I don't know how long they can hold that though. Why not just build a third tracker to handle the extra load as that seems to be where your headed anyway ? Would make more sense to me in the long run.

 

why not try a wood cook stove?

 

We can cook on our wood stove now. Still on the grid so still using electric range. soon to go propane , Kingfish.

 

Will be building a 3rd tracker, but just for the 10-245w panels, which will max out a new FX80 charge controller I'll also have to put in.

I'm happy with the results of 'the experiment'....just need to fill out the 8 panel array with two more 175's and I'm done.

That will give me an almost 6kw system, and at that point, my inverters will be the limiting factor....and I'm NOT adding on there. IF I could consistently get 5kw going out, I'd be tickled. That would mean they would be paying me 75/mo or so, or 900/yr. That's enough.

 

Yeah, propane is the way to go. Just remodeled out kitchen, and out went the electric stove ( which was truly on it's last legs ), and in went the propane. Also built an "auxiliary" kitchen off the back of the garage which we used for this summer/fall while I had the kitchen gutted to the studs, and put a wood cookstove out there. Kept trying to figure a way to get it in the main kitchen, but just no way to get a flue in I could see.

Actually think we'll like it better out there anyway, if we HAVE to use it in warmer weather, it won't heat the house, which is why old timers built the kitchen as a separate building from the main house here in the South.

 

Andy, what if you bought a 60 amp controller, put it on one of the exsisting arrays and then moved your 80 amp to the new array ? Should save you some bucks.

 

Uh, you're not reading it right:

I don't HAVE an 80amp controller installed NOW.

I NOW have 2--60amp charge controllers....one for the 10 panel array ( 1750w @24v ) and one for the 8 panel array ( 1400w ). My plan is to add two more 175w panels to the second array, and max it out at 1750, the same as the first.

THEN, I'll be building a new tracker/array with 10 240w panels ( 2400w @24v ) and putting the NEW, still in the box, FX80 on THAT array.

 

Since I have yet to even build the home all this discussion is really helping me plan

I would like to have as much as 8 KW of total generation from solar, wind and micro hydro.. with a backup generator. What is the best make/size of controller for this, an can I use just one large controller for all? I want the best, even if it's more expensive..

 

I'm only familiar with Outback equipment, and the largest controller they make is the FX80...an 80amp controller. The total wattage you can connect on the input side depends on the voltage. For 24v, it's 2500watts....for 12v, half that, for 48v, twice that.

I've never set up a combo solar/wind/hydro system, but my "guess" is you're gonna have to have a separate controller for each.

Here's why:

The solar, you can pretty well figure from the panel rating. If you put up 1,000 STC rated watts, you can figure they won't put out much more than that ( you do actually have to consider temperature, max low, and allow for some things like that ), and most of the time, much less.

With wind, I "guess" you would have to size the controller to whatever the max the generator would ever put out in a max wind....I guess.

With hydro, kinda the same....what's the max the generator would put out with max water flow, and then size the controller to that.

Additionally, 8kw is a fair amount of input....even at 48v, you're looking at 166amps, assuming everything was producing at max at the same time. That looks like 3--60amp controllers, and depending on how you split the sources, maybe 1 or more of them 80amp controllers.

Also, you'd probably have to have a pretty good size battery bank to take advantage of that much input ( assuming you're off grid ), otherwise, times like the middle of the night when you're probably NOT using much, and the wind/hydro are cranking, you're gonna be wasting your input.

Not gonna be an easy system to set up and balance.

 

My head is smoking. Can someone recommend a solar starter book?

 

Not as easy as the "salesmen" in the solar places would have you to believe is it ? However, rest assured, that you can ask any and all questions you have here, and one of us will do our utmost to answer it correctly without trying to sell you anything. One thing to keep in mind no matter what, is you only get what you pay for. The people at one of the solar stores near me, since I was there yesterday, were bragging about the $30,000.00 Profit they had just made on a $70,000.00 install they had just finished. That same 30k could be in your pocket instead of theirs. This is the place to find out how you can get the same basic system and keep most of the 30k instead of watching them bolt, wire and turn on your system.

 

Thanks for your time.. does anyone know of larger controllers that would be practical for combining 2 or more of these elements? Seems the less units the simpler the system would be

Although having separate controllers would not put you fully out of commission if one fails, whereas if one large unit fails you are taken out

It will not start out at 8 KW but eventually it's a possibility. We're also considering hooking up to the grid, too.. a possibility at least, depending on the cost. The power would have to go over a 2 lane road, and a trench dug up a steep 350 foot + hillside to the homesite, through timber and roots

I'm a former R & D Electronics technician so the electronics and assembly of the system are no problem, and I have battery experience as well as being a specialty construction contractor for 15 years. No off grid or solar experience but that seems to be reasonably simple, and the wind/hydro, no problem. I just need to wrap my mind around the realistic equipment possibilities

 

Many thanks!