Powering up the House on Solar power from Canadian Solar EP Cube. Getting ready for Inspection.
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- Today we are wiring up the house to the Canadian Solar EP Cube. We will running our entire house on solar.
We have a single EP Cube inverter with 7600 watts of output power and 4 batteries totaling 13.3 Kilowatt hours of Energy Storage. With 7360 Watts of solar panels on the workshop roof.
EP Cube all in one Solar Energy solution: bit.ly/47dLudA
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Country View Acres
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We live in southeastern Illinois on a 41 acre homestead. We just finished building our log cabin in 2018. Now we are focused on trying to grow our own food and raise livestock. Follow us on our journey we continue to develop our homestead and farm, while becoming more self sufficient.
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#solar #solarpower #solarenergy
Power company is coming Thursday to inspect the system. 🤞 Hopefully i dont need to make any changes.
Will your power company store your extra power? We added solar and our company E will let us send additional power back to them and store it for us. That power is banked and we can use it in the Winter time At a 1 to 1 conversion. In the Winter time when the sun goes down at 5 o'clock our batteries do not last all night so we are able to use our stored energy. You used to be able to sell for much higher than they are buying power now. So we decided too just use what we needed and then befthe time limit runs out on that stored power we will sell it back
My power company doesn't net meteri. They just buy at wholesale price.
Wish you luck sir!
@@CountryViewAcres Your experience is pretty much everyone's experience with electric power companies. Mine is complaining that I'm not paying my fair share of power distribution costs. Why solar is the bad guy versus EPA energy star appliances is a mystery to me.
Hi.... Evan and Rebecca thanks you for showing your video homestead bye 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋👍👍👍
I know that it’s all by your design, but, as a former Hotel Chief Engineer, it is delightful to see such “clean” electrical panels .
Evan you both do such great work, and that makes your videos such a pleasure to watch.
Another 6 days in hospital so I have catching up to do !
Trust me I don’t mind that with CVA.
Doing a great job for us.
Thanks to you both Rebekah and Evan,
As always,a great pleasure to watch!!!
Very sincerely,
Rod
I don’t understand most of what your talking about, but your videos are amazing to watch so I had to subscribe.
It is great seeing your homestead progress, the two of are an inspiration! Thank you for taking us along on your adventures.
Or you can add more batteries for power storage
Yes, I will be adding 2 more batteries
@@CountryViewAcres Sounds like a plan!
Just curious about the wiring and how easy it is to add the extra batteries, because of the wiring at the top of the stack.
A video of the process would be interesting and much appreciated!
I plan to show it in a video.
*Evan, you are one smart puppy ! 😃👍That trick with the vacuum cleaner and the plastic bag with string tied to it blew my friggin' mind ! 😃Thumbs way up for you man ! 👨*
Seeing it for the first time too, that is genius！
Yeah that was a pretty cool trick !
I have seen conduit pigs used but that different.
I'm always amazed at the projects you take on and how well they turn out!
I forgot to add, great video. So many of us are installing solar right now due to high power prices and the un reliability of our grid power.
Add a second electric hot water heater and put that in front of your main hot water heater and use it as a dump load for extra power. I have been doing this for 6 years for my dump load. I get to use my pressure washer with hot water to wash all my tractors and trucks and things.
Nice system. Net metering is nice, that is what we have with our electrical supplier here in Colorado. That is why we don't use back up batteries. It really doesn't matter how much your utility pays you for your excess power, the real value is in the power you didn't have to purchase. Anything else is just a bonus.
Ok mind blown and don't hate on me in the age of the internet, but I just learned how you pull wire through a conduit...damn! lol
Good job!!!!
Glad to see you got the wire ran from the solar room to your house. Also cool that your inadvertent stress test, with large loads, went smoothly. When I set up a small solar array, with controller, batteries and inverter, my initial "worry" was the battery wouldn't last long enough for what I needed it to do. Like you, I found myself kind of stressed out that the solar was working so well, charging the battery to full and then the rest of the potential was being lost. I found myself trying to find ways to use up more power so I wasn't wasting the incoming solar. Such a strange dichotomy and something most of us never give ANY thought to, when using grid power, although we probably should.
I thought there was something wrong with you folks, here it was my computer that was the problem. I wasn't getting any notifications from your channel and it had been turned off somehow. Got it figured out I hope so I have some catching up to do. Stay safe and keep things going on. OLD DAWG DREAMING Fred.
Impressive piece of work. I kept waiting for your eyes to light up ever time you put your hard in the panel.
Super vidéos séries! Been watching for a few yrs and …really impressed. Glad to see that Canadian “stuff” is being used by “wise individuals” thus improving your lifestyle. Keep it up! 🇨🇦👍👏
You might want to double check with your power grid about “selling back” your power. Here in New Mexico we can’t “sell” our excess power. If we produce extra power it goes to a “power bank”. What that means is when we need to draw from the grid we use what is in the “power bank” first then we go to the grid. There is never money generated from our solar system it basically just saves us money which is fine with us.
@1:49, Miss Maggie!🙂💕
I've never seen the trick with the Walmart bag and vacuum to pull string to pull power lines thanks for the info. I've always used semi light wire to pull string
👍👍👍👍👍👌Great video with excellent presentation of how your grid tied system will benefit you over time thanks for sharing!!!
Great job Evan! That's a lot of knowledge and work!!!
Wow! 🤩 That is a neat trick with the vac and plastic bag. I’ll definitely be using that in the future.
Love watching. You make it sound so easy.
Good clean install. I’ve been off grid for almost thirty years. It’s been a series of steps but nowhere near as difficult as some would make it seem. With most fair sized systems making more power than needed is common. In addition to PV I’ve built my own solar hot water system that supplies 100% of my domestic hot water. Hot water is said to be the second highest load on residential energy use. Now I’m toying with the idea of using hot water for heat. Either that or a mini split.
You sir will not have any problem passing inspection, as a matter of fact, the inspector will probably come away from your home learning something.
I can hear thunder rolling my way. I may have to finish watching later. Cheers from Canada. ~ulrich
Great job. I am looking to get a rural property and your journey has been an inspiration to me.
Evan looks wonderful! So happy for you both!
When we ran the generator hook up, we had to remove out porch deck boards too, not any other way to get into the basement breaker box. Good job on the entire solar system, I'm impressed. Good luck on the inspection, I'm sure you will pass with flying colors, or shocking results, ha! Thanks Evan, I hope you have a nice week and Memorial Day too.
Happy Memorial Day weekend. Love your videos. Good luck with the inspection.
Pretty cool, Evan. Leave it to Rebeka to put 'er to the test! Wait until the hair dryer kicks in!🤪
Cant wait to see the ROI for this. Awesome Job!!!!
That concept of banked power to be used in wintertime seems like a really good way of keeping energy costs fairly low. Over-all if living long time under these supplemental energy sources, it will pay back in spades.
Great system. Got to have a wicked smart brain to do what you have done with your solar and electrical.
I've got solar as well.
The whole net metering you mentioned - if 'they' were to to a 1:1, when giving back, I have to believe more people would do what you've done. I get a fraction of a penny on the dollar for what I give back to the system.
Solar is great, but too many hands in the cookie jar for the average consumer to see actual reason - wonder when 'they' will make it less of a headache for people to use/benefit from solar.
No electricity company would do that 1:1 now. Especially NEM3.0 in CA.You can only get a meager amount of money when selling back to grid.
Glad to see it all hooked up! What a great system. A lower electric bill would be wonderful and to have critical function during a power outage. Will you figure a break even cost analysis when all set? That would be interesting to me. Thanks for taking us along.
Right now the solar is still being limited. Once we start selling back, I should be able to figure up the cost and how long to break even.
Another name you may want to consider for the bulls is "Shadow"
Thanks for sharing all the knowledge. Great job.
Great video Evan! I’m looking forward to the breakdown of all costs and how much it is saving you on your power bill as well as how much you make selling back your excess power.
Pretty smart pulling those wires I am sure someone. , some where , gave you a tip
I have showed the same trick in previous videos. We do it at work quite frequently.
Very impressive, and the moreso because you designed it yourself. Well done!
💝🙏🙏🙏 Praying all goes well and it really benefits you and your wife well ❣
Bet you are glad to have everything working, it's a very interesting system to me. Looking forward to seeing the video about how much everything costs. Thanks for sharing, hope everything went smoothly with the hay. Keep up the good work
Baling hay seems to never go smooth. But it is done.
@@CountryViewAcres yeah, that's unfortunate. But at least it's done.
@@CountryViewAcres is there any haying video's coming up? I rather enjoy watching them. Pete just started cutting his hay on Just a Few Acres Farms channel.
I just finished hay baling Friday. They will be the next videos.
Great video. It’s such a clean set up. Great work 😊
I am shure you will be approved. Job well done
Will be interesting to see the results! Glad to see things labeled - it's often an adventure game to see how breaker panels are labeled and to decipher the handwriting!
Looks Great as Usual, it seemed like the wires pulled easily, that's nice..
The conduit was oversized, so that helps a lot.
Hah...plastic bag and vacuum to pull string through conduit...how CLEVER is that?!! 😀😀God bless.
Evan, I see we use the same sawhorses! Lightweight and durable.
Hi Evan,your solar project is so awesome
Crazy cool System Evan.........I'm Impressed. Is there a Better box or transfer switch that can be used to feed the main house panel rather than back feeding through the Breaker? So basically you have the EP cube hooked up to the Grid in the Barn and you could eliminate the main Grid tie in the house....If you wanted? I like it. EP cube contacted us to do a video and I was happy to see you are working with them as well.
Wonderful progress Evan! Well done.
I have an elderly friend whose son-in-law gave him a used golf cart so he would have a way to run around the neighborhood and go to his mail box. well, after nine months the batteries died and he found that to replace them it would cost him almost $3000. He told his son-in-law to come an get the cart!
W. Moore
Its a great system!! Great video!!
If they are buying it so cheak maybe you need to find ways to use ut more. Eg. Powering your farm equipment or a vehicle with your own power.
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An important Sticker is still missing , a sticker that warns of the many stickers , caution too many stickers can lead to confusion , greetings from Europe .
Maybe Stihl will sponsor you and send you a weedeater lol.
👍👍 great stuff
Hi when you gonna work on your tractor again I'm Paul Bland from South Africa I love your show
If UT ever slows down around here, it will work on the Allis Chalmers. Just been too busy lately
Great job Evan, I’m sure you will pass with flying colors.
Loved it. Who's that little doggie wandering around you?
That is Maggie she is 14 years old. Mostly sleeps in the recliner.
You might check on your power company peak loads that’s when you pay the most money for your power and then maybe set your unit up to turn on during the peak load hours and not the overnight hours where are you? Pay the absolutely less for your power I know mine on the coast of North Carolina, my peak hours in the winter time. Summertime is six to 10 at night in the summer and from 5 AM to 9 AM in the winter so I do most of my heavy usage at night like running the dishwasher or washing laundry.
I don't believe we have variable rates. Right now running everything. The battery lasts till midnight. Switches back to solar around 8am.
Great, really neat and tidy system. Thanks for posting. It's really inspiring. I was looking for something about the EP Cube and came across this. Have you considered time shifting some of your heavy usage items? It seems like you might be using the grid at peak load times and then selling back for peanuts at other times. If you are able to monitor your usage and production, you might be able to balance out those curves.
I for one, am looking to use my utility company as an emergency backup. I'm done with playing their games!
Right now I am buying about 15 kilowatt hours of electricity a day. At $0.14 a kw-hour, that's about $2.10 a day. I am planning to add 2 more batteries and 3800 watts more solar. Hopefully, that will get me closer to buying almost nothing from the power company in the summer.
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Really enjoy your videos and the thorough walkthroughs. Does this still lack the option to disable feeding back to the grid?
Needs more labels.
Nice work! I love watching your videos and you do an awesome job of creating them. I know you have been very busy but I was wondering if you have a video of your recent hay cutting and baling. Keep those projects and videos coming; your audience is eagerly awaiting! Hope all is well with you and your family.
The next video will be hay cutting
What I find difficult is when you have a 400 amp service. At least for me it has my brain tired lol
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IOWA DAD JOKE of the day
[Q] what is the most distinctive characteristic, of the DOGWOOD TREE?
[A] why its BARK,of course
make 1984 FICTION AGAIN
Are you using a BMS computer/software system for solar/battery use control maintenance ?
I see on a few of the ocean cruising sailboat , Bluewater sailors, who use solar, wind, generator and shore-power with the newer LiPo battery banks with a company designed computer BMS systems. Interesting the way they get all to work together.
Electric EMP shield for solar power system check it out online and great idea
One of my neighbors uses the extra electricity to make fuel pellets during certain hours of the day. Not a bad idea to put the otherwise unusable electricity to earn money. I don't know why he cant sell it back to the utility company.
Looks like a sunny day is the time to recharge all the tool batteries for free. Might be interesting to see what happens when you are in the workshop using the electrical equipment you have in there.
Ep cube is powering the workshop also. It back feeds power to zero the electric meter usage. And any time you power a tool it sends power backwards to power that tool. Really everything at the house and workshop is on the EP Cube system. Only when the grid goes down, it stops back feeding the workshop and only powers the critical loads.
@@CountryViewAcres My gasp is flabbered!
Evan, I know there's a cost involved, but would it not be more beneficial to add two or three additional batteries to your system, that is if it can handle them. This way you should have enough battery power to last throughout the night no matter what load is put on the system. Then if you have a cloudy day or days then you can pull from the grid as needed. These are just my thoughts, I have enjoyed watching, because I've learned a lot from this and I'm an old man of 72. You and Rebecca have a great Memorial Day weekend. Good luck on the inspection!
I am planning to add 2 more batteries, since there is plenty if solar to charge them.
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Depending on how it works out for you all we may do the same thing. Do any of the equipment manufacturer’s you used give any type of discounts? Enjoying the channel. Tks for sharing.
These are sold on signature solars website. I believe they were on sale a few weeks ago.
Absolutely ingenious how you sucked that line through the conduit. I would not have used a Walmart bag though. Too many wierdos shopped there with the exception of you of coarse🙂
Once all is completed will you be running a power-down solar test like you did with the batteries?
🌹🌹❤🌹🌹
Another fantastic vid sir.. looking forward to all the calculations 😅.😮. Do you not fancy expanding the capacity of the batterys as well? Stay safe 🏴
Yes, I am planning to add 2 more batteries.
Evan you should paint your electrical conduit running up your shop black to match your pole barn.
Evan, do you have any ventilation in your battery room?
Not yet. The room hasn't heated so far.
More batteries
I think the co-op power company would encourage this opportunity allowing themselves to purchase from members and not from the big companies. The only reason they wouldn't , because of hurting their relationship with big companies supplying the power.
The co-op makes it easy to add 10kw on AC power generation. It's a $300 application. Anything over 10kw of AC power generation requires a $5000 engineering study. So they only encourage small systems.
well to me it sound should get some more battery added to the system
Yes I am adding 2 more batteries.
I have a Generac solar system
Could you add extra batteries to utilize the extra solar. It would be more to your benefit than selling to the power company at a reduced rate
Yes I am planning to add 2 more batteries.
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I hope they think the same way. more batteries just saying
Yes, I am adding 2 more batteries.
Will you have some sort of alarm to let you know if the grid power fails? That way you wouldn't blissfully run your system dead when outside power fails.
I have requested a notification be added to the app to alert the owner of the power outage. I got a positive response fro canadian solar, and I believe it will be added
Would adding to your battery bank be a good use for that extra solar? This is an interesting topic for me. Thanks for the video.
Yes I am planning to add 2 more batteries.
Great job! Im curious how your system will handle shorter days (winter).
I plan on adding 2 more batteries. And the additional 12 solar panels I have to the system. After that, it should sized to power my critical loads during winter. About 20 kilowatt hours. So in summer it will make excess power winter it will make about half our total power needs.
I have a couple of questions for you. You have your main panel breaker in the off position so that more of your loads can be met by your solar/battery setup. How do you provide grid AC power to your inverter? Do you do this via your shop main panel that you ran a separate AC line from the road? Also, how are you compliant with the NEC 120% rule. What breaker size do you have going from your critical load panel back feeding to your house main electrical panel? I'm also assuming that you will sell excess solar power back to your electrical company via your shop panel since the solar power room is located in the shop.
So why not have more batteries, so you can storage more power for later.
I am planning to add more batteries
A very good video as usual. How much has it cost you to set the system up?
been hearing insurance companies wont cover solar converted homes
I have already hanged the insurance. We added the replacement cost of the solar equipment. And increased liability to 1 million dollars. My annual cost increased was $450. I didn't think that was terrible.
you are doing a grate job can I ask what type of batteries are you using.
They are lithium iron phosphate. They are specific batteries made for the EP cube.
Should have just run your cable as you were laying your underground pipe, 😂
Just wondering if you have notified your insurance company of the solar installation. Our local news just had a story of several people installing solar power with battery backup and the insurance company cancelled their policy and refused to cover the home at all. Also how about using the excess solar to power your water heater? Great job on the installation. Thanks for taking the extra time to film and share it.
As a part of the agreement with the power company I had to have 1 million dollar liability insurance. So yes the insurance policy has changed. They added the replacement of the solar equipment and raised the liability. My annual cost increased around $450.
With low sell back prices, it is nice to heat water with some of your excess power and store it for the night. You could program that load to come on with a timer. Sol ark inverters have that function based on pv power and soc%. I find that 4 -50 gal water heaters with 1500 to 2000w elements in series do this well for a family of 4. They can give about 2 days of storage. Easily add water heaters in series in your basement. Scratch and dent places are about half the price of new. Its always going to be more cost effective to use your power over selling it with much less than 1 to 1 sell to buy price.
I do use a timer for a humidifier in my basement between 10am and 4pm to keep my basement humidity at 30%.