Projects!!! Solar arrays, firewood storage and more...
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2024
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Happy growing!
If you haven't already tried it, I'd recommend looking up every residential & small commercial solar installer in your area & give them a call to ask about their used/broken panels. They may not have any right when you call them, but they will sporadically throughout the year & would probably be happy to have you pick them up for free vs taking them to the dump. It's your foodscraps collection method, but for solar panels 😂
Use a multi-meter (they'll have one if you don't) to make sure they're still pushing juice before you haul them off.
I work on grid-tied solar installations, so I'm not as versed in off-grid applications like you're setting up, but you're on the right track & someone will have the answers you need.
Happy panel hunting!
Great reminder, yeah I have a pile of about 10 panels from these pursuits :)
They have cracks but still make energy and are perfect for individual pumping setups in the landscape
please continue to chase this topic. We got our first panels today. We will start by running a ceramic heater to augment heat in our home, and seed starting area. ultimately we will want to power more and more. our panels are reclaimed/light blemish.
Very cool you are getting into it too! I'll share more as we go
Grounding the solar panels is mainly for lightning strikes so the high voltage doesn't fry the inverter or catch your house on fire. I use my excess solar power to heat water for the house or charge my car. To make the most out of the solar power I run 2 chest freezers in my house one for a refrigerator (5 minutes on / 1 hour off timer) and one is still a freezer which only consumes 75 watts is extremely efficient. The standby power consumption for the inverter is important to know how much energy the inverter is using just by being on.
Great notes, thank you. If you are willing to have me pick your brain would you email me? sean @ edibleacres.org so I can ask about how you heat your water and charge the car with the excess? Maybe I can offer ideas for gardening in exchange? :)
I second the standby being extremely important, yet I don't see that stressed enough.
@@edibleacres Hello sounds good thank you for sharing your ideas! Absolutely yes I will send you an email to get more into the details of the solar system I setup myself but I will answer your question here for everyone. I use a single inverter on a transfer switch to run everything just not at the same time. My house is low electrical draw, so on a sunny day the batteries get fully charged by noon time which at that point I use the excess power for many things including charging my car at 120v level one, heat water with my "at point use" electric water heater, cook with the electric oven or even wash clothes!
I think You are little bit wrong . Grounding only reduce chance for damage of Your equipment in case of lightning strike . You should still use additional surge protection device.Which still does not provide 100% protection . Grounding generally protects against shocks , malfunctions and fires .
Grounding of solar panels is esoteric science . Many people claims many different things .
Love the idea of your firewood shed being a battery of wood energy for the winter and electric energy in the summer!
Yeah, I'm really hopeful I can figure out the details. Excited to show you when we hang again soon!
Very awesome solar endeavors!
That's such a great idea to have multiple small, independent arrays.
I know there are inefficiencies in this approach in some ways but the redundancy and smallness of each setup is very compelling to me
Hey- you could easily setup an array that runs a pump to build a water battery between two ponds. Then you capture the power at night when you drain the higher pond through a small hydro turbine. I've always wanted to do that.
A hydro turbine for ants?
Pretty neat idea, something to consider for sure
Great idea to reuse those solar panels as a roof 👍🏼
I've been waiting to do something like this for a bit, I'm excited to share the next phase :)
Wiring the panels in parallel can help prevent power loss from shading. Also might consider insulating your batteries from extreme cold.
Yeah, they are LifePo4 in the garage that we are working with. The next set of backup will happen in the basement so long as I can get good humidity control happening.
The panels out at our neighbors will be full blast sun so series is the wiring since I have a bit of a run to send it over and the mppt wants high volts in this case...
I love how you invest your funds in the tech that will payboff goig forward.
We try to
Me encanta tu canal Sean , siempre temas interesantes , ..thank you for sharing ✔
Of coutrse!
hola vivo en barcelona - y tu? vives en espana?
@@adamtash2891 Sí , soy española
@@tess72121 muy bien muy bien.....lets buy a farm together haha
I love this strategy. I can't wait to start doing the same thing on our property. I'm so over being dependent on oil for energy that we can get from the sun. :)
Little steps here or there seem like the way to go, rather than many many thousands of dollars and high risk to get it perfect the first time. That feels like the right path at least for me
I love your resourcefulness and how you get things for free or cheap nice scores
I try and it seems to come together a fair bit.
do be sure and ground them at the panels...with a good ground
Thanks
Can you go over how you basically take the power from the panels and run it to your fridge? I love that idea.
I can try to share more notes on those details as we get things more set up. Right now its all very much in the early stages!
Another great video from Sean.
For hot water, /I would recommend getting some flat plate collectors and heat your water that way. My house has pv and thermal. Thermal was much faster payback and I typically have 500 gallons of 100+ degree water at my disposal. (except for about 4 random weeks throughout the year with extended number of cloudy days). My pv installation experience is all grid tie, so I cannot help there, but if you have any interest in a thermal system, I would be more than happy to talk with you and help however I can.
Thank you kindly, I appreciate that perspective... I think I"m sticking with all PV because our home is super shaded and the direct hot water thermal plates need proximity. Plus I can get PV panels for next to nothing so it makes sense in my particular case...
have you thought about or looked into passive solar water loops? it might not be suitable for zone 5 year round, but I bet you'd get a lot more efficiency through that than heating through solar generated electricity. it's a big thing in Puerto Rico, which is where I first heard about it. there may be more heavily insulated options for your use case!
I think we're too cold in the winter for that... Maybe summer...
@@edibleacres totally fair! I wasn't sure if it would be a cold climate suitable solution, cursory search seems to suggest "yes but complicated" - I just thought the efficiency would be significantly higher without the power conversion. I don't recall what your water heater situation is, but there are probably integrated systems out there if you're curious. could be a fun junkyard fix, though with the baby (congrats!) I'm sure time is in short supply these days!
cheers!
Nice upgrade to the wood shed. Wondering if you've ever considered building a rocket mass heater for the home. Folks generally use 10-20% of the firewood versus woodstoves for the same BTUs in heat.
I love the idea but it isn't possible in our wood floored and insured home!
@edibleacres gotcha, hadn't considered that. I think a lot of ppl put them in workshops on slab
You’ve been busy! Awesome work.
Life is full in many ways... Good ways to be sure
Wondering how you plan to run power from those 5 panels on the metal frame. I assume you'll have an inverter out there? As you know, running DC lines is inefficient and expensive. I'm sure you've got a plan 😉
I think I'll put together a video with much deeper details on the array, design itself, and how we are running the wires. It's in the spirit of our other stuff, a little loose and scrappy, but I think the line losses should be negligible with the design we have. More notes to follow.
If you use a midnight solar charge controller or the like you can wire up all the panels in series and send the high voltage to the controller which will then charge up your battery bank
There at the end I see you put the ladies to work. Must be nice to have that source of free labor (jk in case it wasn't clear)
Do you ever use dead trees or whatever from your larger site for firewood or is that usually just the beginning of those awesome beds?
Pine/dead/older trees tend to go towards hugel mound creation. They work beautifully for that
I wouldn't call myself a solar expert but one thing you'll need to be aware of is the resistance loss (voltage drop) over that stretch from the panels to your home. You'll need to make sure the panels are wired in series to max the voltage and use thicker cables (gauge) to minimise the loss over the distance it travels. And then of course make sure you have an appropriately rated mppt controller to take that voltage at the other end. I understand this stuff but have little practical experience (yet), we are likely to take a similar route as yours having already built a solar powered 'smart' greenhouse last year. If you think a chat would be helpful you're welcome to pick my brains.
Thanks kindly for the notes here, much appreciated! Seems like we are on a similar paths quite often actually. These panels will be at roughly 180 V and be sent along 10 AWG line roughly 120 feet. I believe it will be a 2 to 4 V drop, which is very reasonable especially since I got the cable for free. I think I have a decent understanding on those basics. It's the automated switching of the array to a heating element when batteries are full. I wanna make that safe and robust. Whatever we figure out the plan to share.
@@edibleacres Oh I see what you mean. Yes you need a charge controller that lets you select the dump load charge voltage of the battery, there might be another device I think I saw a video when I was researching the same topic last year, we're in a similar 'state' where most hot water is heated by wood. Funnily enough I have a 12v heating element on my desk next to me I was going to start playing with sand batteries and dumping load into that. If I find the video I was thinking of I'll post it here.
@@edibleacres OK this is the device you need, this is a more inexpensive solution that going and buying an all singing and dancing charge controller. You'll also need a relay that sends the higher amperage needed to power the heating element. This box is the brains which controls the relay. ua-cam.com/video/m1KuQ6cfjYA/v-deo.html Here's another vid with a guy in the UK but the principle is the same ua-cam.com/video/S8-bfxQMr8o/v-deo.html Hope that helps.
Have you thought about using your wood stove to heat your water? I grew up with a simple system by running a coil of pipe (black pipe) and heating an old electric water heater. I didn’t need a pump as it was gravity fed. Worked for years. Had a relief valve on the tank but never activated it. Just a thought.
Wonderful idea for sure, it's just our bedroom is directly above the stove so that doesn't work in our case...
@@edibleacres Not sure I understand. It could heat water whenever you used the wood stove. It would supplement your regular system.
On the woodshed, I built two different wood sheds. Both were big enough to hold 10 cord of wood and left room to do all my splitting in the shed. Out of the weather. I do like the use of material you collect. It’s about function. 🙂
Don't foeget to hit the like button.
Country Living Experience - A Homesteading Journey has done lots with Solar if you’d like to check his site may be helpful.
Thanks, just subscribed and I'll check him out
❤ let me know when you need HVAC/R advice. My partner is commercial/residential tech❤❤❤
Thanks!
Sean. I'm concerned about the lack of snow and cold weather this winter ( Toronto) can you offer any advice on how to mitigate for low snow winters? Should this be a concern?
El Niño and climate change, water retention
Swales ponds
I worry about the berry bushes without snow in gta.
It can be a concern and yeah I think about it, but I try not to think too hard about it. It is getting warmer earlier and faster so I work earlier and faster. I can't change anything at the big scale so I'm riding the weirdness wave as best I can and appreciating the changes for what they offer...
lets goo always improving 💪
:)
How much do they charge for a Full Face Cord x5 of wood?
It's $900 delivered which is an incredibly good deal it feels. It's all slabwood hardwood mainly maple, oak, and ash. I'll check in with the guy when he delivers and probably offer a shout out for other folks who want that service.