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Full time off grid over 20 years. My system is 1.4Kw solar and 800Ah of Lifepo4 batteries. That runs water pump, lights, laptop, 2 fridge/freezers, microwave, swamp cooler and lots of tools, gadgets and ebikes.
@@cleversolarpower I have been designing systems for off gridders for over 20 years. You need to use the right appliances and most off gridders use propane for OD water heater, cooking and heat. That eliminates a lot of the load and the rest does not take that much.
We have been off grid for almost 4 years now and we would never go back to using a grid connection even know the power poles are only 200’ away. We have 11,200 watts of panels (soon to double) mounted on dual axis trackers that are feeding into dual 6,500 watts 48v split phase inverters which powers the loads and charges our 64KWh 48v lithium battery storage system. We use the system to run a 3 ton air conditioning system along with lights, microwave and so on and we have propane for cooking and heating our water. The inverters are setup to power our loads first and charge batteries second but the batteries are usually charged by 3 PM from the previous nights consumption. We live in Central Texas so sun is not a problem during the summer when we have the biggest need for power due to the heat. The system averages around 52KWh (19,000 yearly or $4,200) a day in production but we have made as much as 76KWh when we have to run a third A/C for company. We have twin 3,500 watt generators hooked up parallel and this gives us 50amps of emergency power if needed (predator brand from Harbor Freight) which we used for about 1,700 hours each while we built the new solar system. We also have a 13,500 watt generator which is used only for charging the batteries using a 5120 watt/100amp battery charger. Over the 4 year period of being off grid we average about 20KWh of battery usage during the short summer nights mainly due to running the A\C but since we heat with propane that drops to around 15KWh in the winter. The cost of solar has really decreased since we built our first system out in the deserts of Texas, that system has worked flawlessly except for the computers that run the dual axis trackers. The controllers only last about a year but, luckily they only cost about $60 so we keep spares. The first system cost was about 40% more than the system we just built at our farm. Panels and inverters have come way down and batteries are following in price decreases. Payback on my new system will be around 4.5 years maybe closer to 6 with the extra panels and inverters I’m fixing to order. We are increasing are panels to 32,000 watts and increasing the inverters to 4 -6,500 watts in parallel, not sure about more batteries, I think we will wait and see where the pricing goes.
I bet you're not running even one 1,500watt space heater during winter with that set up. You'll only get about 90minutes of usage maximum. But yeah, you can boil some water and charge a phone every couple of days. 😂
@@JerryCalvert-x9u Stupid to use electricity for heat. Propane and wood stove. I also have no house payments and no utility bills, run an online business and retired at 49. anything else, troll?
30kwh a day is just such an insanely high number which reminds me of why efficiency is just as an important consideration as the size of a battery and solar system....
Unfortunately most American homes and residents are not as efficient as they could be. 30 kWh is AVERAGE; it can even be much higher for big homes. However, I will say ‘insanely high’ is a bit of an exaggeration, in my opinion. The video showed a UL listed and market-available battery cabinet product of 30 kWh.
@@bluezcluez315 It all relative to your experience, I went from living in a regular house to a tiny house by myself with only 2kw of solar and 9kw of batteries which I can supply 100% of my needs but its a struggle in winter. While I would not expect your average person to live so meagerly it shows what is possible and if I were to double my system size I would not have to conserve energy use at all.
In the Philippines, on a sunny day, my solar panels produce around 80 kWh. With 30 kWh of LiFePO4 batteries, I have enough power from 6 PM to 6 AM, even with the air conditioner running all night. I also have extra power from 12 PM to 3 PM to recharge my EV. I only use utility power when I have Airbnb guests, as I rent out 3 rooms. I prefer adding more solar panels rather than batteries since 12 hours of autonomy is sufficient, and solar panels are cheaper ($90 for 550W) and more durable than batteries. Even on rainy days, I still produce 30 to 40 kWh. I plan to add more panels to ensure at least 60 kWh per day, even in cloudy or rainy weather.
One correction I suggest - You can not completely drain a battery. So the "real" available storage is probably only 80% of the rated capacity unless the 5kWh mention already compensates for the lower drain limit that the OEM does not permit you to exceed.
Short answer:you can never have enough.Especially lead acid which you try to keep above 75%.Due to hot weather some local suppliers refuse to sell anything lithium. But it is excellent video about biggest concern about solar power: capacity of batteries.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. We appreciate your time and effort on enlightening our minds on how to make a good solar set up. You're like a wizard in this endeavor. ❤
I have 10.6kw of panels 20kw of batteries running through a Sol-Ark 15k. I'm still connected to the grid, but I don't feed back. My monthly bill never goes above $10. I'm producing and using a MW a month and run 1 EV. I'm so happy and proud to be repaying the planet for my previous abuse of her.
A typical home in Arizona in the summer. Will you use between 40 and 100 kilowest per day? You're estimation of 10 kW. Hours a day is very small for Arizona.
There is another way to calculate your battery needed if your mindful of the solar setup. I built my solar several years ago. Back then I could get solar pretty cheap. But batteries were very expensive. My two biggest power draws was my Bolt electric car, and my AC which cools the downstairs only. So I bought 15.4 kWh of LiFePO4 batteries, and a 15kW solar panels. I keep the load down on my batteries by pointing half my solar sun up, and the other half sun down. I then have a Alexa smart switch set to turn on at 7AM and off at 7PM each day for my car charger (ie: charge the car only when solar panels are running). Solar panels split this way provides enough power to run the AC, and charges my car during the daylight hours while leaving some decent extra power for charging my batteries. Then at night when it's cooler the batteries keep the AC going which is not a heavy load. So if your smart on solar array setup you can reduce battery load during the day which will increase your battery life. If I wanted to charge my car at night? I would need a bigger bank of batteries which may become a option as prices continue to fall.
If you want solar off grid forever one of the first steps is getting your central to geothermal. Super efficient compared. If you have land you can rent a backhoe and dig out the trenches yourself to save a ton of the costs.
Depends on where you live, I was debating doing it this year but my ground temps are in the low 70°'s at 10-15 feet. Not cold enough to do a good job with humidity, I would have to run a dehumidifier so I might as well put central. I could do water source heat pump but haven't decided yet, lots of wasted water.
Please upload a video teaching how long or when will you get the return of investment by using solar with GRID-TIE , and TOTAL OFF GRID. Like how many months or years without completely replacing a component or with a damaged or faulty component . thank you
That's an interesting idea. Thanks for mentioning it. I will put it on the list. Generally I would not recommend getting a lot of batteries when you are grid tied. The grid will be cheaper.
@cleversolarpower have you done a video showing that the grid is cheaper?
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In my experience and opinion there is no solid way to determine a breakeven point and it is mostly guesswork.. How efficient you are in using the generated power, how rough you are with the inverter, the weather in your area that can cause damage and so on.. We developed a routine where we let the solar charge the batteries to almost full then take showers, heat the hot water tank, do laundry and so on while the solar panels are in peak production.. It averages out to about $900 a year in our own electricity being used but you have to add in things like appliances and electronics that did not get damaged from brown outs or surges that you didn't have to replace.. Before we had solar we lost a deep freeze, 2 refrigerators, 2 washers 2 dryers, 3 computer power supplies 2 TV sets, a well pump and plenty of odd and end small electronics from brown outs in 25 years.. So if you add in the cost of all that not needing replaced your pay off day gets a lot closer in a hurry.. So far I have not had any component failures/breakdowns other than the lowered storage of my aging L16 lead acid batteries that mow only hold about 5kwh instead of the close to the 8+ they used to.. My new 30 kwh LiFePo4 battery bank cost about the same as those lead batteries 6 years ago but have 3x the storage and 3x the lifespan so they should be the last batteries I will ever need although I do plan to add another 30kwh just because I can..
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@@cleversolarpower The cost of our grid electric has more than doubled in the past 4 years alone and tripled in the past 10 so by the time I hit breakeven day who knows what it will cost.. Every time it goes up and I ride through brownouts without having any electronics damaged the faster that day will come.. Our bill is $80 to $90 a month now with the price increases so I figure it would be close to $200 a month without the solar.. If your power is as crummy as mine is in Ohio with lake clouds sometimes for days that cut solar production I would think 30kwh is a minimum and 60kwh a maximum but a small 3 to 7kw generator certainly does allow for a much smaller battery bank and is a far cheaper way in the long run to make your system feel bigger.. As a side note for people with no backup who get brown outs randomly that damage thing you can buy a device that goes in line with your main 240v line which disconnects when you have low damaging voltage..
You can need one battery or 100 batteries because they come in multiple different sizes, capacities and configurations. Where I live, the majority of people have 2 batteries, one too power their home while the other is recharging but they actually only need one, having redundancy built in is the safest option and by switching batteries the lifespan of the batteries is increased and you have a backup just in case something goes wrong. The average commercial house battery can provide power for the average family for 5 days. This is going by what is available where I live, but we do have laws regarding the energy efficiency of electric household appliances.
Hi Nick I'm thinking about .05 discharge rate on eve cells as apposed to 0.2 for a campervan, they are more readily available at decent prices even with a bms, cheers this was a good one.
Unfortunately for me I would need 35 of those 5kw batteries to have whole home backup for one day in July & August. It's just critical loads on my backup system .😢
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In your case a generator for random outage needs would be the most economical..
You only need to think of your overnight usage for your battery storage since during the day your loads are powered directly from the panels through your inverter. We use on average close to 60KWh a day but only 20 of those are at night when it comes from the batteries the other 40KWh’s is supplied by the panels during the day.
My 14kwh battery only lasts until 8:30-9 pm after I lose the pv. I need one more 14khw battery to make it through the night on the critical loads panel alone.
I am on full Offgrid the 4th year now. Started parallel testing 6 years ago and disconnected from Synergy 4 years ago. Running 16x 400w Sunpower Maxeon 3 panels coupled with 18x 120Ah LFP batteries providing a 28.5kwh power reserve. Running Victron system with Lynx 1000A busbar and Shunt, 500A custom flexible busbars for 4x battery banks. 6x Victron 50/100 and 2x Victron 150/100 controllers integrated with Cerbo GX running Node Red. I program Node Red for monitoring and control. Check controller status when PV voltage exceeds a certain threshold and controller still asleep to reset the controller. There is a firmware bug in the 50/100 family that occasionally fail to wake up the controller in the morning. Reported to Victron but they couldn't fix it. Eventually after implementing my Node Red solution, issue was completely resolved. Each time Node Red intervenes, it logs an entry in event log for reference. Working really well! The major milestone is achieving 100% full charge even during crappy rainy winter days. Finally achieved this during this winter. My LFP batteries cycle between 89% to 100% daily in winter.
Nice system write-up. Do you mind sharing your general location (US state?)? And what is the approximate grid electricity cost per kWh? How frequent were outages? And is your 89%-100% daily cycling accurate? LFP can cycle to 20% without much degradation.
@@bluezcluez315 I am located in Western Australia. The grid electricity cost here is 31.5823 cents per kwh with a supply charge of 113.22c per day. The average bill for typical small 2 bedroom x 1 bathroom household is around AUD212 and medium 4 bedroom x 2 bathroom is around AUD332 and 5 bedrooms x 3 bathroom household around AUD491. Outages is quite frequent because a large part of the supply network is not underground. It can be affected by severe weather and even shorting out of the transformer upon first rain after a dry spell. The supply network is also struggling to cope with the solar feedback from households during peak solar output hours, as it is not designed to handle this load. My system runs mostly Victron components, with Cerbo GX and VRM setup to log data and consumption. It is one of the most accurate in the market. In addition, on my battery system, i have 400A hall-effect power meter monitoring the SoC and current flow into each of the 4x battery banks. This serves as secondary reference. LFP lifespan actual is a function of DoD Depth of discharge. You can study the curve. The lower your depth of discharge the longer the lifespan. And the function is Exponential, not linear.
Thank you for sharing your system here. A real inspiration for other people. The firmware bug is weird, i have never heard it before. Charging that much for energy when you have frequent outages is outrageous 😐
@@cleversolarpower The strangest aspect is, the sleepy controller syndrome only happens to the Victron SmartSolar 100/50. And it is pretty much random amongst the 6x units i have, so it doesn't sound like a hardware issue, more so a firmware issue. None of my Victron SmartSolar 150/100 had this issue, so I didn't have to code Node Red to check for this condition and provide remedy. Victron is one of the best options out there currently, especially for full Offgrid solar. But even the best can have flaws, just like many things in life 😅 Instead of complaining, i prefer understand, embracing and learning how to live with these "features". I suspect the issue is more likely to surface when many Victron units are connected in one system In my setup there are 8x controllers. I seldom see others connecting that many SmartSolar controllers together. Even Andy from Offgrid garage don't have that many Victron units. I have pretty much maxed out all VE Direct connections on the Victron Cerbo GX and have to use USB hub connections for the rest. Luckily the 2x 150/100 runs on CAN bus. I also have BMV712 BMS and other voltage sensors as well. I have a software engineering background, so the mere fact that Victron units have firmware that already caters for Node Red customisation is a big win for me. It literally opens up the door to infinite possibilities with the Victron system. 🤓👌 This is actually the second iteration of my solar build. In the 4 years living full Offgrid, pretty much anything that can go wrong, did go wrong. And i have learnt from these lessons. In my first build, i just build to the specs. Now i have learnt, this is not a wise approach. Instead, it is far better to over build, with massive redundancies and over capacity. Also, since Victron components are quite expensive, it is a complete waste to have them only serving a stationary set up, instead design your system to be modular, portable and mobile. This way if you go on a camping trip, you can quickly bring one or two modules with you on the go. Just add folding panels and a few LFPs are you are in business. With this concept in mind, my second iteration of solar build, features multiple Victron units group into modular units, with each module having between 2x or 3x Victron SmartSolar units. Each unit is built around an aluminium space frame with handle. So the unit can be transported easily. Each unit has its own DC circuit breaker for the solar input and the battery output for each Victron unit. In addition it also features a 300A flexible busbar system to interface with external. When it is at home, it docks to the Victron Lynx 1000A busbar system via twin 175A Anderson connectors. The reason why i always run twin Anderson is both me and my friend have experienced failing Anderson plugs. The culprit is actually the pressure spring responsible for maintaining contact pressure between the silver plated connectors. When there is insufficient contact pressure, the connector heats up to the point it melts the plastic shell and fuses two Anderson connectors together. We had to use cutter and screw driver to pry them apart. Only saw this twice on 50A Anderson. We have moved away from 50A Anderson since. We now only use 125A and 175A Anderson plugs. The 125A for solar input and 175A for battery end connections. The beauty with dual connection is, should the connector start to fail, internal resistance will build up. As current will always find the least resistance path, the current will be shunt away from the high resistance path and be redirected towards the healthy connection. The is automatic fault tolerance and redundancy in action. I use FLIR thermo imaging regularly to check abnormal temperature on connector, busbars and conductors. Also, the design of the 300A flexible busbar is inspired by Victron Lynx 1000A busbar cascading design, with fuse implemented for each connection. And not only is staggered in height to ease connection, but offset slightly between the positive and negative to make connections slightly easier for the thick gauge cables than the Lynx design. This is where we learn and improve 😅. The aluminium frame also serves as thermal mass as a giant heat sink. We have incorporated multiple indium metal contact points, together with heat sink paste and high thermal conductivity pads to provide excellent passive cooling to the units. We mounted rows of copper heat sink with fins along the inner vertical struts of the supporting structure and even install thermal sensors with a fan controller with temperature display, powering a Noctua cooling fan that modulates the fan speed based on the extra cooling required. Convection draws in cold air from the bottom, this air flow rises to cool both the Victron heat sink and the copper heat sink and fins. Forced air induction occurs when Noctua injects additional cold air into this airflow. As a result of this passive + active cooling system, the Victron unit runs extremely cool, very close to room temperature even at peak output. We need this extra cooling efficiency as our ambient temperature in summer can reach 45C. With Victron Lynx main busbar system, we have 3x Power In modules, modified to accept fuse, providing a massive 12x point input connection. Then the Lynx shunt is connected to another 1x Power In module, modified to accept fuse, providing 4x point output to the 4x parallel battery bank, each having its 400A Industrial Circuit breaker with remote disconnect, its own 400A Power meter with hall effect sensor and Bluetooth connectivity, its own custom 500A flexible busbar with 4x to 6x 120Ah LFP in service. Each 120Ah LFP (having its own BMS) capable of accepting 100A charging current and maintaining 150A constant output. This massive parallelism not only allows one or more subsystem to be taken offline for maintenance without impacting the service, but most importantly supports rapid energy recovery. This is important, because in winter, we don't get much continuous sun. Whatever sun we have, we want to capture this and transfer full energy into the battery system. Having a battery system, capable of accepting this high current is vital to the success. 4x 500A busbar theoretically now supports 2000A charging. But currently the bottleneck is actually the 1000A limitation on the Victron Lynx 😅 Not that we foresee to have hit this limit yet. But having the extra high current design and capacity means all our cable and connectors runs super cool. Even the solar cables are over sized to further reduce any voltage drop during transmission. Too bad BMV712 is only capable of 500A. We installed this one one of the battery bank system as secondary reference. So we have in total 3x independent BMS monitoring system, the primary is the Victron Lynx 1000A shunt, secondary the 500A BMV712 and finally 4x independent 400A Bluetooth power meter monitoring the 500A busbar of each battery bank, via hall effect sensors.
@@bluezcluez315 We are located in Western Australia. Power interruption occurs frequently, since most of the power supply lines are overhead. They are starting to go underground, but in its early stages. Since WA is one of the most windy cities on earth, when we get a bad storm front coming through, we can expect widespread power outage. Even on very hot days, should there be a first rain after a long drought, this can cause the power transformer to blow up due to short circuiting caused by the accumulation of dry dust and a bit of moisture. Our red dirt is simply too mineral and iron rich... with BHP iron export being one of the primary industries 😅👌 The biggest problem is, government is providing so much incentive for households to go solar, but when there is a power outage, their grid connected solar system is being shutdown for safety. Don't want to cause a electrical shock for the repair staffs... so what's the point of having solar as backup. Offgrid is the only way to go 🤣🤣🤣🤭 In addition, the power grid is not designed to handle massive solar input from the ever increasing solar adoption. Power companies are cutting the feed back rates for the excess solar feed to discourage power feed into the grid during midday when solar output is at maximum. There are talks now with the new installation, the power company can send signal to shutdown the system if there is too much solar output. And there is even a discussion about charging households for feeding power into the grid. So battery is the only way to go. Plus the power company pays peanuts during the day for your solar power and at night charges you back full fees for the energy you use. What a rip off 🤣🤣🤣 Power charges in WA is as follows : Supply charges : 113.23 cents per day Electricity charges : 31.5823 cents per kWh Electricity net export at peak times between 3pm to 9pm: earnings 10 cents per kWh All other times 2 cents per kWh 🤣🤭
In January in Canada you would need more than 500kWh of storage but does not include the two EV's (at 100kWhrs each x 3 days) so add another 600kWhr = 1.1MWhr!!!!!! Total cost (after all carbon taxes are added) is $2.2M or $3.0M Cdn!!!!!
94 A-grade EVE x 105Ah (31.5kWh) x 35 eur = 3300 eur. That's it. Extra 5000 eur go to a manufacturer's and distributor's pockets .. or 30 x 314Ah (30kWh) x 85 eur even 2550 eur (but higher currents)
I had a lightning strike near my home that destroyed my power inverter and wifi router. What can be done to protect these devices that you recommend?
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Plenty of articles on this topic but they make surge arrestors for AC and DC that should be placed on the solar combiner outside, your grid AC main panel and at your inverter and charge controller.. I also used ceramic MOV's at the input to each solar panel string breaker to capture any spikes and shunt them to ground.. I believe they were rated for 20 amps at 200 volts because each of my strings is 10 amps at 125 volts.. The short they create catching a spike should also trip the breaker and the larger arrester should prevent anything that gets by running down the wire to the GFCI/arc fault breakers that are before the charge controllers..
It's very hard to protect from a lightning strike. Maybe near-lightning strikes. It's a very complex case. I don't know enough of it to make a video about it yet.
Your best bet is to have your phone alert you to l severe storms and to disconnect your system as the storm passes and run your refrigerator and lighting on battery backup.
Also think about putting in a soft start system on your air conditioning. It'll act as a fuse to protect your ac. Wife and I just put in a $18k system 5 ton ac unit. Damn straight it's protected.
Central EU: 3kwh per day usage and maybe another 2kwh IF I use my 4070TI Super Gaming PC. Normal pc usage is in the 3kwh. The PC heats my home in the winter. I hardly ever heat the whole condo. Your aircon power needs are insane. (Your insulation inexistant?.) Also we have a high price of 0.35 and a night/weekend price of 0.27. Its gone up 20% since the beginning of the Ukraine war. We pay 12$ for the service but no other charges. To see all the diferent little charges on that bill make me sick. Land of the free and scammed. That should be illegal. I also pay like 15$ for 1Gb/s downstream and 100Mb/s up. Same here. No bs service fees. Only 15$ charged from my account.
My house is paid for. Yes I could sell it, but the next house would be very expensive and most likely would not have inverter appliances in it. How about just putting the system in you need and as time goes along change out to inverter technology.
There used to be a lot of older diesel engine boats that were 36 volts, mostly European and South Pacific.. This seems to be a holdover like positive ground 6v and 12v cars, 60v systems are another example of this.. Most of the world now has standardized the 12-24-48vdc electronics.. That being said my Outback Radian inverters are 48v and have a maximum input of 65vdc and I run 17 cell LiFePo4 batteries at 60 volt top charge..
I really do not understand why you discuss lead acid batteries. Only some fossil fuel cars have them but for a home battery it does not make any sense. I have a if I would buy now it probably be a salt battery. Is there any place in the world where lead acid is used for home battery systems?
Some people still like using lead acid because they are familiar with it. I recommend using lifepo4 as well. Salt batteries are not yet commercially available.
The only thing is: When you are on the grid, you do not go by how long the power was out in the past. You go by how long it may be out in the future. And so you plan for natural disasters and wars. In 2021, the power was out all over Texas for 17 days. So that is your minimum. And you cannot say it is a one-time event. In the 2024 flood in Houston, the power was out for, I do not have the figure, but at least a week and a half. What you need is a standardized minimum autonomy based upon natural disasters in advanced countries around the world.
That's true. However, if you plan to size your system for 17 days, then you will pay a lot. Except if you are going to downsize your consumption significantly. A better option is getting a generator to recharge the batteries in case there is a very long outage. It's going to be more cost effective. If you size for disasters, you are more in the 'prepping zone', which is very different than backup power. But i do agree that we should size larger, it always comes down to cost in the end.
How many batteries- well… just one. How big is the question. ;) Battery voltage should equal consumption voltage. As much equipment as possible should run directly at battery voltage, at least for the off grid system. In other words, ditch the obsession with AC (used to transmit power over long distance to on grid properties). Inverters are expensive and waste a lot of energy. This is beyond the capability of the vast majority, but it is something that those with technical know how should be considering. A lot of equipment can run on 115 volts direct current, or can be modified to do so. For things that must be furnished with AC, small inverters built into or adjacent to the equipment would be used. 48 volts is way too low.
Don't give email details. I haven't received free diagrams. Maybe he is selling to private guys but not sending free diagrams. Tried many times with different emails but none work.
So, nice try; but your first assumption is wrong. Why is the Offgrid owner using less, using your own calculation, than the onGrid homeowner? Second check where kWh stands for. Use your reality bill figures and figure out what each device is using. Take then the worst days of a year when you use the most. If someone is using 10kWh a day, but on worst day’s 12kWh use the latter. Why; you don’t know Murphy? For tree days is that 36kWh. Check how much, how low a battery may get discharged. For example till 20%, then your battery need is 36kWh + the 20% = ~44kWh. Extra, using the same periode as your worst days, calculate how long it, thé batteries, takes with N pv-panels to get fully loaded.
@rvamerongen It may depend on the size of your system. If you built in overcapacity, it may not be an issue for you. But I know of off-grid people who are cautious of their usage and are careful to turn off every light that they are not using. Until I can afford to expand my system, my window airconditioner is limited to 7 hours a day. And the maximum cooling I get with 5000 btu is a 9° drop from ambient temperature. On a 95° day, I run a fan in the house to enhance the cooling.
Opting for a 48v system to save on wiring seems a bit strange. A 48v bank will need twice as many cells as a 24v bank. The cost of wiring a 24v system is negligible compared to the cost of those extra cells. And I'd love to see where you are getting LiFePo4 batteries for less than a lead acid. I've seen BMS for similar prices to a cheap lead acid.
Please check the video I have attached to see the difference between 12, 24, and 48V systems. You will see that charge controllers, chargers, and cables will be cheaper because they have to convert and carry less current. Checkout the batteries I have linked in the description. They are $1,250 for 5kwh usable power. I would like to see a lead acid battery that's cheaper. You would need a 10kwh battery to get the same power capacity. And that's just the purchasing price alone, not talking about cycle life and charge/discharge C ratings. Please check my linked video where I compare lead acid and lithium.
@@cleversolarpower I think I understand but you're still going to need 16 cells for a 48V battery as opposed to 8 for a 24V battery, unless there are 6.4V cells out there that I don't know of. And I don't think a 75 Ah cell is only half the price of a 150 Ah cell.
I've been thinking 🤔 I quess I'm just an amp lover. 48v cuts your amps by 1/4 and so on. I thought the more amps the more punch you have in your electricity 🤔. I'm in a unique situation where I get to see how much I can really get out of 12v. And to be honest I'm really surprised.
@@cleversolarpower but how does amps work into this?
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@@stevewhite9813 Watts are a representation of how much work that can be produced , his example shows you that at a higher voltage but the same amps the 48 volt example does 4 times the work.. The higher the volts the lower the amps to do the same work.. So if you need a #0 wire to move 100 amps at 12 v and a #6 wire can move 25 amps at 48 volts and they both do the exact same amount of work with the higher voltage producing a little less heat thus being more efficient.. This is why big systems like mine that make 20+ kilowatt hours of power a day use the higher voltage.. amps times volts = watts/kilowatts.. This is the easiest way to directly compare different voltage and amperage electronics.. I use #2 wire to move the solar output from the combiner box at 125vdc 55 amps.. if this was at 12 volts it would be 560 amps and the wire would have to be as thick as your wrist to not start glowing and catching fire.. With copper wire becoming outrageously priced because copper is like $3+ a pound you can only imagine the cost per foot for cable goes way up with its thickness..
Yhea I'm just mad because l bought everything to do my solar years ago maybe over 5. Finally got my house remodeled and now money is really tight like really really tight 😑 all I need is a 48v inverter but the one I want is low frequency and about $800 so it will have to wait a bit longer.... Are there any benefits from having a 12v system?
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@@stevewhite9813 Yes if you only plan to have a very small system of something like 2 panels and a 3kw 120v inverter then 12 volts is the way to go.. If you run a lot of 12 volt stuff like ham radio small camper with 12 volt water pump, TV and such you can tap directly into the 12v battery and save on the inverter losses making 120vac.. But this will only be adequate for running a few lights or power tools or fridge and if you ever decide to go bigger you have to upgrade later on.. I always knew I was going pretty big with 7.2KW of panels and a 4kw 120/240v inverter that I should have gone with the 8kw version and 6 years later ended up upgrading it anyway so for me it was a no brainer.. I also went high end with solar world panels and Outback Radian electronics, but it took me several years to save up the money and I figured they would last a long time..
You can if you quit dining out, buying a new car every five years or less and taking $5000 vacations one to three times per year. Start eating beans and rice.
@@USA-GreedyMenOfNoIntegrity Lmao. That's what i do!!! Haha. Not everyone is in the same place buddy. I drive a 20 year old car, am building my own house and am literrally living off grid. I know what you're saying though. It's just much easier to access those things in the USA.
@@cleversolarpower I just bought three 10.55 kWh batteries for $4800 incl. taxes and shipping from China. Grade A cells, Pace BMS, very solid build quality.
The falacy is that you stop wasting electricity when it becomes expensive. ie Don't charge the EV batteries or bake a cake when there is no sunshine making cheap electricity for you.
It makes no sense that you switch the standard(measuring stick) in the middle of your equation, and then don’t even complete your analysis. Why did you change the rules before answering the grid side?
I don't know what you mean Nate. Are you referring to 10,300kWh yearly? That's an average in the US, and i said monthly, but it had to be yearly (i adjusted it in text). So the total daily consumption is: 10,300kWh/365days=28.2kWh/day ~ 30kWh/day.
3 місяці тому
@@cleversolarpower That is pretty much exactly wat my average used to be before we went with all LED bulbs, high efficiency appliances, new TV and other electronics over several years to bring it down by 1/3.. I then added the solar and dropped that in half again but the cost of grid electric went way up over the past ten years and I am paying the same dollar amount now as I did back then around $90 a month.. I would be paying closer to $180 a month without changing and adding solar.. This sped up my break even day approach dramatically and I went from 16 years to 9 and it is still accelerating even with the battery and inverter upgrades..
@@cleversolarpower close enough !!! you know your history dont you? Belgium was part of the netherlands.. but people these days know nothing its why they defend Ukraine LOL
@@USA-GreedyMenOfNoIntegrity ~ third edit and how much would a 90HKWH battery cost there? cause a 20KWH battery here is 15 grand... (australia) a 20 kwh battery would cover 24 hours for us with no charging.
A 5kwh server rack battery costs you $1,200. So you will need 90/5=18 of these for a total of: 18x$1,200=$21.600 but why would a household need 90kWh? I suggest watching the video again.
People, check your math. If you use 10,300 kWh in a (Year +/-) that means you are using approx. 900 watts in a (Month +/-) which is approx. 275 to 300 in a (Day +/-), not 30kWh a day. Remember that it take 1000 watt hours to make the 1kWh. I just sat down with my last electric bill and only used 906 watts) and I am in Arizona at 113-117 degree temps, using electric water heater and electric stove top.
Somewhere a 2nd grade teacher cries 😂. Make a habit for yourself and when you feel like talking, ALWAYS assume that you are dumb and you are wrong. It will be easier on others 😜
The microwave use 1400 watts no all day wbat are you talking about
3 місяці тому
It works out to 24+ watts a minute and there is a bit of a surge when it starts up so for just a microwave running 1/2 hour total a day you would want a 3,000w+ inverter and a 5kwh battery to safely run it for two days or maybe 3 at 30 minutes a day.. Inverter efficiency and such will make this vary wildly and I have always found that things run down the batteries faster than they do in theory..
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The United States' single-family home is the least energy efficient type of home.
Been there with 12volt, 48 volt is waaay better, everything runs cooler and longer life for the batteries. Good informative vid.
Yep, go big or go home.. Smaller wires and higher efficiency means less heat..
Full time off grid over 20 years. My system is 1.4Kw solar and 800Ah of Lifepo4 batteries. That runs water pump, lights, laptop, 2 fridge/freezers, microwave, swamp cooler and lots of tools, gadgets and ebikes.
Thanks for sharing your system. Your loads must be quite small. Do you have an estimate of daily power consumption?
@@cleversolarpower I have been designing systems for off gridders for over 20 years. You need to use the right appliances and most off gridders use propane for OD water heater, cooking and heat. That eliminates a lot of the load and the rest does not take that much.
We have been off grid for almost 4 years now and we would never go back to using a grid connection even know the power poles are only 200’ away. We have 11,200 watts of panels (soon to double) mounted on dual axis trackers that are feeding into dual 6,500 watts 48v split phase inverters which powers the loads and charges our 64KWh 48v lithium battery storage system. We use the system to run a 3 ton air conditioning system along with lights, microwave and so on and we have propane for cooking and heating our water. The inverters are setup to power our loads first and charge batteries second but the batteries are usually charged by 3 PM from the previous nights consumption. We live in Central Texas so sun is not a problem during the summer when we have the biggest need for power due to the heat. The system averages around 52KWh (19,000 yearly or $4,200) a day in production but we have made as much as 76KWh when we have to run a third A/C for company. We have twin 3,500 watt generators hooked up parallel and this gives us 50amps of emergency power if needed (predator brand from Harbor Freight) which we used for about 1,700 hours each while we built the new solar system. We also have a 13,500 watt generator which is used only for charging the batteries using a 5120 watt/100amp battery charger.
Over the 4 year period of being off grid we average about 20KWh of battery usage during the short summer nights mainly due to running the A\C but since we heat with propane that drops to around 15KWh in the winter.
The cost of solar has really decreased since we built our first system out in the deserts of Texas, that system has worked flawlessly except for the computers that run the dual axis trackers. The controllers only last about a year but, luckily they only cost about $60 so we keep spares. The first system cost was about 40% more than the system we just built at our farm. Panels and inverters have come way down and batteries are following in price decreases. Payback on my new system will be around 4.5 years maybe closer to 6 with the extra panels and inverters I’m fixing to order. We are increasing are panels to 32,000 watts and increasing the inverters to 4 -6,500 watts in parallel, not sure about more batteries, I think we will wait and see where the pricing goes.
I bet you're not running even one 1,500watt space heater during winter with that set up. You'll only get about 90minutes of usage maximum.
But yeah, you can boil some water and charge a phone every couple of days. 😂
@@JerryCalvert-x9u Stupid to use electricity for heat. Propane and wood stove. I also have no house payments and no utility bills, run an online business and retired at 49. anything else, troll?
Nick, I love how you break things down so they're easy to understand. Great job on this video, and thank you!
Thanks for your comment Matthew. Glad it was helpful!
30kwh a day is just such an insanely high number which reminds me of why efficiency is just as an important consideration as the size of a battery and solar system....
Americaaaaa fk yeahhhhh
30Kw is not a high number when you think about it. A 20A a/c pulls 4800W x 12 hours run time that's 57kw
@@seandevine9846 are you cooling the outside? A well isolated house should not use that much power
Unfortunately most American homes and residents are not as efficient as they could be. 30 kWh is AVERAGE; it can even be much higher for big homes. However, I will say ‘insanely high’ is a bit of an exaggeration, in my opinion. The video showed a UL listed and market-available battery cabinet product of 30 kWh.
@@bluezcluez315 It all relative to your experience, I went from living in a regular house to a tiny house by myself with only 2kw of solar and 9kw of batteries which I can supply 100% of my needs but its a struggle in winter. While I would not expect your average person to live so meagerly it shows what is possible and if I were to double my system size I would not have to conserve energy use at all.
Hi Nick!
Excellent as usual
Hey, thanks!
In the Philippines, on a sunny day, my solar panels produce around 80 kWh. With 30 kWh of LiFePO4 batteries, I have enough power from 6 PM to 6 AM, even with the air conditioner running all night. I also have extra power from 12 PM to 3 PM to recharge my EV. I only use utility power when I have Airbnb guests, as I rent out 3 rooms. I prefer adding more solar panels rather than batteries since 12 hours of autonomy is sufficient, and solar panels are cheaper ($90 for 550W) and more durable than batteries. Even on rainy days, I still produce 30 to 40 kWh. I plan to add more panels to ensure at least 60 kWh per day, even in cloudy or rainy weather.
One correction I suggest - You can not completely drain a battery. So the "real" available storage is probably only 80% of the rated capacity unless the 5kWh mention already compensates for the lower drain limit that the OEM does not permit you to exceed.
You can with lifepo4
Lifepo4=100% depth of discharge
My battery's protection software cuts supply off at 10% and only reconnects when the charge has exceeded 15%. So it may be vendor dependent.
Short answer:you can never have enough.Especially lead acid which you try to keep above 75%.Due to hot weather some local suppliers refuse to sell anything lithium.
But it is excellent video about biggest concern about solar power: capacity of batteries.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. We appreciate your time and effort on enlightening our minds on how to make a good solar set up. You're like a wizard in this endeavor. ❤
He is completely wrong.
Please tell me where i went wrong in your opinion.
@@rvamerongenBS. Stop trolling. Make a video countering his argument. Of course you won't because you're a putz.
Good very short complete details and not boring
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's a very clever video.
Thanks for the share and take care of yourself.
I would have mentioned depth of discharge, and how they should oversize their battery bank by 20% to improve the batteries' usuable life.
I have 10.6kw of panels 20kw of batteries running through a Sol-Ark 15k.
I'm still connected to the grid, but I don't feed back. My monthly bill never goes above $10. I'm producing and using a MW a month and run 1 EV.
I'm so happy and proud to be repaying the planet for my previous abuse of her.
Really liked this - would be nice to throw a smart panel into the mix to shed load automatically
A typical home in Arizona in the summer. Will you use between 40 and 100 kilowest per day? You're estimation of 10 kW. Hours a day is very small for Arizona.
Not everyone lives in Arizona 😉. In the eu it's normal to use 10kwh with a family of 4. If you want to know for 30kwh, multiply by 3.
There is another way to calculate your battery needed if your mindful of the solar setup. I built my solar several years ago. Back then I could get solar pretty cheap. But batteries were very expensive. My two biggest power draws was my Bolt electric car, and my AC which cools the downstairs only. So I bought 15.4 kWh of LiFePO4 batteries, and a 15kW solar panels. I keep the load down on my batteries by pointing half my solar sun up, and the other half sun down. I then have a Alexa smart switch set to turn on at 7AM and off at 7PM each day for my car charger (ie: charge the car only when solar panels are running). Solar panels split this way provides enough power to run the AC, and charges my car during the daylight hours while leaving some decent extra power for charging my batteries. Then at night when it's cooler the batteries keep the AC going which is not a heavy load. So if your smart on solar array setup you can reduce battery load during the day which will increase your battery life. If I wanted to charge my car at night? I would need a bigger bank of batteries which may become a option as prices continue to fall.
Yes, timed charging will work as well.
If you want solar off grid forever one of the first steps is getting your central to geothermal. Super efficient compared. If you have land you can rent a backhoe and dig out the trenches yourself to save a ton of the costs.
Depends on where you live, I was debating doing it this year but my ground temps are in the low 70°'s at 10-15 feet. Not cold enough to do a good job with humidity, I would have to run a dehumidifier so I might as well put central. I could do water source heat pump but haven't decided yet, lots of wasted water.
Please upload a video teaching how long or when will you get the return of investment by using solar with GRID-TIE , and TOTAL OFF GRID.
Like how many months or years without completely replacing a component or with a damaged or faulty component . thank you
That's an interesting idea. Thanks for mentioning it. I will put it on the list. Generally I would not recommend getting a lot of batteries when you are grid tied. The grid will be cheaper.
@cleversolarpower have you done a video showing that the grid is cheaper?
In my experience and opinion there is no solid way to determine a breakeven point and it is mostly guesswork.. How efficient you are in using the generated power, how rough you are with the inverter, the weather in your area that can cause damage and so on.. We developed a routine where we let the solar charge the batteries to almost full then take showers, heat the hot water tank, do laundry and so on while the solar panels are in peak production.. It averages out to about $900 a year in our own electricity being used but you have to add in things like appliances and electronics that did not get damaged from brown outs or surges that you didn't have to replace.. Before we had solar we lost a deep freeze, 2 refrigerators, 2 washers 2 dryers, 3 computer power supplies 2 TV sets, a well pump and plenty of odd and end small electronics from brown outs in 25 years.. So if you add in the cost of all that not needing replaced your pay off day gets a lot closer in a hurry.. So far I have not had any component failures/breakdowns other than the lowered storage of my aging L16 lead acid batteries that mow only hold about 5kwh instead of the close to the 8+ they used to.. My new 30 kwh LiFePo4 battery bank cost about the same as those lead batteries 6 years ago but have 3x the storage and 3x the lifespan so they should be the last batteries I will ever need although I do plan to add another 30kwh just because I can..
@@cleversolarpower The cost of our grid electric has more than doubled in the past 4 years alone and tripled in the past 10 so by the time I hit breakeven day who knows what it will cost.. Every time it goes up and I ride through brownouts without having any electronics damaged the faster that day will come.. Our bill is $80 to $90 a month now with the price increases so I figure it would be close to $200 a month without the solar.. If your power is as crummy as mine is in Ohio with lake clouds sometimes for days that cut solar production I would think 30kwh is a minimum and 60kwh a maximum but a small 3 to 7kw generator certainly does allow for a much smaller battery bank and is a far cheaper way in the long run to make your system feel bigger.. As a side note for people with no backup who get brown outs randomly that damage thing you can buy a device that goes in line with your main 240v line which disconnects when you have low damaging voltage..
Great job!
You can need one battery or 100 batteries because they come in multiple different sizes, capacities and configurations.
Where I live, the majority of people have 2 batteries, one too power their home while the other is recharging but they actually only need one, having redundancy built in is the safest option and by switching batteries the lifespan of the batteries is increased and you have a backup just in case something goes wrong.
The average commercial house battery can provide power for the average family for 5 days. This is going by what is available where I live, but we do have laws regarding the energy efficiency of electric household appliances.
Hi Nick I'm thinking about .05 discharge rate on eve cells as apposed to 0.2 for a campervan, they are more readily available at decent prices even with a bms, cheers this was a good one.
Why 0.05C? They can handle 1C at least.
Unfortunately for me I would need 35 of those 5kw batteries to have whole home backup for one day in July & August. It's just critical loads on my backup system .😢
In your case a generator for random outage needs would be the most economical..
Already wired in !
You only need to think of your overnight usage for your battery storage since during the day your loads are powered directly from the panels through your inverter. We use on average close to 60KWh a day but only 20 of those are at night when it comes from the batteries the other 40KWh’s is supplied by the panels during the day.
My 14kwh battery only lasts until 8:30-9 pm after I lose the pv.
I need one more 14khw battery to make it through the night on the critical loads panel alone.
@@randya9143 is a 12v or 48v system?
I am on full Offgrid the 4th year now. Started parallel testing 6 years ago and disconnected from Synergy 4 years ago. Running 16x 400w Sunpower Maxeon 3 panels coupled with 18x 120Ah LFP batteries providing a 28.5kwh power reserve. Running Victron system with Lynx 1000A busbar and Shunt, 500A custom flexible busbars for 4x battery banks. 6x Victron 50/100 and 2x Victron 150/100 controllers integrated with Cerbo GX running Node Red. I program Node Red for monitoring and control. Check controller status when PV voltage exceeds a certain threshold and controller still asleep to reset the controller. There is a firmware bug in the 50/100 family that occasionally fail to wake up the controller in the morning. Reported to Victron but they couldn't fix it. Eventually after implementing my Node Red solution, issue was completely resolved. Each time Node Red intervenes, it logs an entry in event log for reference. Working really well!
The major milestone is achieving 100% full charge even during crappy rainy winter days. Finally achieved this during this winter.
My LFP batteries cycle between 89% to 100% daily in winter.
Nice system write-up.
Do you mind sharing your general location (US state?)?
And what is the approximate grid electricity cost per kWh? How frequent were outages?
And is your 89%-100% daily cycling accurate? LFP can cycle to 20% without much degradation.
@@bluezcluez315 I am located in Western Australia. The grid electricity cost here is 31.5823 cents per kwh with a supply charge of 113.22c per day. The average bill for typical small 2 bedroom x 1 bathroom household is around AUD212 and medium 4 bedroom x 2 bathroom is around AUD332 and 5 bedrooms x 3 bathroom household around AUD491.
Outages is quite frequent because a large part of the supply network is not underground. It can be affected by severe weather and even shorting out of the transformer upon first rain after a dry spell. The supply network is also struggling to cope with the solar feedback from households during peak solar output hours, as it is not designed to handle this load.
My system runs mostly Victron components, with Cerbo GX and VRM setup to log data and consumption. It is one of the most accurate in the market. In addition, on my battery system, i have 400A hall-effect power meter monitoring the SoC and current flow into each of the 4x battery banks. This serves as secondary reference.
LFP lifespan actual is a function of DoD Depth of discharge. You can study the curve. The lower your depth of discharge the longer the lifespan. And the function is Exponential, not linear.
Thank you for sharing your system here. A real inspiration for other people. The firmware bug is weird, i have never heard it before. Charging that much for energy when you have frequent outages is outrageous 😐
@@cleversolarpower The strangest aspect is, the sleepy controller syndrome only happens to the Victron SmartSolar 100/50. And it is pretty much random amongst the 6x units i have, so it doesn't sound like a hardware issue, more so a firmware issue. None of my Victron SmartSolar 150/100 had this issue, so I didn't have to code Node Red to check for this condition and provide remedy.
Victron is one of the best options out there currently, especially for full Offgrid solar. But even the best can have flaws, just like many things in life 😅 Instead of complaining, i prefer understand, embracing and learning how to live with these "features".
I suspect the issue is more likely to surface when many Victron units are connected in one system
In my setup there are 8x controllers. I seldom see others connecting that many SmartSolar controllers together. Even Andy from Offgrid garage don't have that many Victron units. I have pretty much maxed out all VE Direct connections on the Victron Cerbo GX and have to use USB hub connections for the rest. Luckily the 2x 150/100 runs on CAN bus.
I also have BMV712 BMS and other voltage sensors as well.
I have a software engineering background, so the mere fact that Victron units have firmware that already caters for Node Red customisation is a big win for me. It literally opens up the door to infinite possibilities with the Victron system. 🤓👌
This is actually the second iteration of my solar build. In the 4 years living full Offgrid, pretty much anything that can go wrong, did go wrong. And i have learnt from these lessons.
In my first build, i just build to the specs.
Now i have learnt, this is not a wise approach.
Instead, it is far better to over build, with massive redundancies and over capacity.
Also, since Victron components are quite expensive, it is a complete waste to have them only serving a stationary set up, instead design your system to be modular, portable and mobile.
This way if you go on a camping trip, you can quickly bring one or two modules with you on the go. Just add folding panels and a few LFPs are you are in business.
With this concept in mind, my second iteration of solar build, features multiple Victron units group into modular units, with each module having between 2x or 3x Victron SmartSolar units. Each unit is built around an aluminium space frame with handle. So the unit can be transported easily. Each unit has its own DC circuit breaker for the solar input and the battery output for each Victron unit. In addition it also features a 300A flexible busbar system to interface with external. When it is at home, it docks to the Victron Lynx 1000A busbar system via twin 175A Anderson connectors. The reason why i always run twin Anderson is both me and my friend have experienced failing Anderson plugs. The culprit is actually the pressure spring responsible for maintaining contact pressure between the silver plated connectors. When there is insufficient contact pressure, the connector heats up to the point it melts the plastic shell and fuses two Anderson connectors together. We had to use cutter and screw driver to pry them apart. Only saw this twice on 50A Anderson. We have moved away from 50A Anderson since. We now only use 125A and 175A Anderson plugs. The 125A for solar input and 175A for battery end connections. The beauty with dual connection is, should the connector start to fail, internal resistance will build up. As current will always find the least resistance path, the current will be shunt away from the high resistance path and be redirected towards the healthy connection. The is automatic fault tolerance and redundancy in action. I use FLIR thermo imaging regularly to check abnormal temperature on connector, busbars and conductors. Also, the design of the 300A flexible busbar is inspired by Victron Lynx 1000A busbar cascading design, with fuse implemented for each connection. And not only is staggered in height to ease connection, but offset slightly between the positive and negative to make connections slightly easier for the thick gauge cables than the Lynx design. This is where we learn and improve 😅.
The aluminium frame also serves as thermal mass as a giant heat sink. We have incorporated multiple indium metal contact points, together with heat sink paste and high thermal conductivity pads to provide excellent passive cooling to the units. We mounted rows of copper heat sink with fins along the inner vertical struts of the supporting structure and even install thermal sensors with a fan controller with temperature display, powering a Noctua cooling fan that modulates the fan speed based on the extra cooling required. Convection draws in cold air from the bottom, this air flow rises to cool both the Victron heat sink and the copper heat sink and fins. Forced air induction occurs when Noctua injects additional cold air into this airflow. As a result of this passive + active cooling system, the Victron unit runs extremely cool, very close to room temperature even at peak output. We need this extra cooling efficiency as our ambient temperature in summer can reach 45C.
With Victron Lynx main busbar system, we have 3x Power In modules, modified to accept fuse, providing a massive 12x point input connection. Then the Lynx shunt is connected to another 1x Power In module, modified to accept fuse, providing 4x point output to the 4x parallel battery bank, each having its 400A Industrial Circuit breaker with remote disconnect, its own 400A Power meter with hall effect sensor and Bluetooth connectivity, its own custom 500A flexible busbar with 4x to 6x 120Ah LFP in service. Each 120Ah LFP (having its own BMS) capable of accepting 100A charging current and maintaining 150A constant output. This massive parallelism not only allows one or more subsystem to be taken offline for maintenance without impacting the service, but most importantly supports rapid energy recovery. This is important, because in winter, we don't get much continuous sun. Whatever sun we have, we want to capture this and transfer full energy into the battery system. Having a battery system, capable of accepting this high current is vital to the success. 4x 500A busbar theoretically now supports 2000A charging. But currently the bottleneck is actually the 1000A limitation on the Victron Lynx 😅 Not that we foresee to have hit this limit yet. But having the extra high current design and capacity means all our cable and connectors runs super cool. Even the solar cables are over sized to further reduce any voltage drop during transmission.
Too bad BMV712 is only capable of 500A. We installed this one one of the battery bank system as secondary reference.
So we have in total 3x independent BMS monitoring system, the primary is the Victron Lynx 1000A shunt, secondary the 500A BMV712 and finally 4x independent 400A Bluetooth power meter monitoring the 500A busbar of each battery bank, via hall effect sensors.
@@bluezcluez315 We are located in Western Australia.
Power interruption occurs frequently, since most of the power supply lines are overhead. They are starting to go underground, but in its early stages. Since WA is one of the most windy cities on earth, when we get a bad storm front coming through, we can expect widespread power outage. Even on very hot days, should there be a first rain after a long drought, this can cause the power transformer to blow up due to short circuiting caused by the accumulation of dry dust and a bit of moisture. Our red dirt is simply too mineral and iron rich... with BHP iron export being one of the primary industries 😅👌 The biggest problem is, government is providing so much incentive for households to go solar, but when there is a power outage, their grid connected solar system is being shutdown for safety. Don't want to cause a electrical shock for the repair staffs... so what's the point of having solar as backup. Offgrid is the only way to go 🤣🤣🤣🤭
In addition, the power grid is not designed to handle massive solar input from the ever increasing solar adoption. Power companies are cutting the feed back rates for the excess solar feed to discourage power feed into the grid during midday when solar output is at maximum. There are talks now with the new installation, the power company can send signal to shutdown the system if there is too much solar output. And there is even a discussion about charging households for feeding power into the grid. So battery is the only way to go. Plus the power company pays peanuts during the day for your solar power and at night charges you back full fees for the energy you use. What a rip off 🤣🤣🤣
Power charges in WA is as follows :
Supply charges : 113.23 cents per day
Electricity charges : 31.5823 cents per kWh
Electricity net export at peak times between 3pm to 9pm:
earnings 10 cents per kWh
All other times 2 cents per kWh 🤣🤭
Hello i planning to install 12kw hybrid inverter with 30kwh battery. Do you have online or you tube video on how to install it. Thanks 🙏
No, but i have several videos showing diagrams and how to size the system.
Good info.
Long time no see! thanks!
Greetings to you boss..... Can you explain how to parallel 2 or more solar hybrid inverters.
Your manual is your best bet. It's very different for different brands. Make sure they can actually work in parallel. Some cannot.
In January in Canada you would need more than 500kWh of storage but does not include the two EV's (at 100kWhrs each x 3 days) so add another 600kWhr = 1.1MWhr!!!!!! Total cost (after all carbon taxes are added) is $2.2M or $3.0M Cdn!!!!!
Are you using 166kwh per day? Time to reconsider your energy usage 😬
94 A-grade EVE x 105Ah (31.5kWh) x 35 eur = 3300 eur. That's it. Extra 5000 eur go to a manufacturer's and distributor's pockets
.. or 30 x 314Ah (30kWh) x 85 eur even 2550 eur (but higher currents)
Realisticaly 120m^2 house you need around 10kw/h a day. For everything, including dishwasher, laundry, cooking, and all the electronics.
Best upload!
Up to 2000VA inverter for 12V battery, 3000 - 4000VA for 24V and 4000VA and above 48V
I had a lightning strike near my home that destroyed my power inverter and wifi router. What can be done to protect these devices that you recommend?
Plenty of articles on this topic but they make surge arrestors for AC and DC that should be placed on the solar combiner outside, your grid AC main panel and at your inverter and charge controller.. I also used ceramic MOV's at the input to each solar panel string breaker to capture any spikes and shunt them to ground.. I believe they were rated for 20 amps at 200 volts because each of my strings is 10 amps at 125 volts.. The short they create catching a spike should also trip the breaker and the larger arrester should prevent anything that gets by running down the wire to the GFCI/arc fault breakers that are before the charge controllers..
Actually, there isn't that many articles on this. You provided more info here than I've found watching many videos. Thanks.
It's very hard to protect from a lightning strike. Maybe near-lightning strikes. It's a very complex case. I don't know enough of it to make a video about it yet.
Your best bet is to have your phone alert you to l severe storms and to disconnect your system as the storm passes and run your refrigerator and lighting on battery backup.
Also think about putting in a soft start system on your air conditioning. It'll act as a fuse to protect your ac.
Wife and I just put in a $18k system 5 ton ac unit. Damn straight it's protected.
Holy crap, that is crazy! I only use about 6kWh a day. What the heck are Americans doing?!
Haha, yeah America uses a lot of energy. Here in Europe we use about 14kWh per day.
47kw a day. Need a power plant.
Central EU: 3kwh per day usage and maybe another 2kwh IF I use my 4070TI Super Gaming PC. Normal pc usage is in the 3kwh. The PC heats my home in the winter. I hardly ever heat the whole condo. Your aircon power needs are insane. (Your insulation inexistant?.) Also we have a high price of 0.35 and a night/weekend price of 0.27. Its gone up 20% since the beginning of the Ukraine war.
We pay 12$ for the service but no other charges. To see all the diferent little charges on that bill make me sick. Land of the free and scammed. That should be illegal.
I also pay like 15$ for 1Gb/s downstream and 100Mb/s up. Same here. No bs service fees. Only 15$ charged from my account.
Cheers
2 used 100kWh tesla batteries cost about 16k where i live .... I go for that
You did not any aircondition in your calculations?
20 x 200ah lead acid batteries
Everyone wants to run many appliances when downsizing and being realistic would make more sense. Ynless you have money to burn.
My house is paid for. Yes I could sell it, but the next house would be very expensive and most likely would not have inverter appliances in it. How about just putting the system in you need and as time goes along change out to inverter technology.
Why there's no 36 v systems but your charge controller supports 36v.
There are very few inverters who support 36V.
There used to be a lot of older diesel engine boats that were 36 volts, mostly European and South Pacific.. This seems to be a holdover like positive ground 6v and 12v cars, 60v systems are another example of this.. Most of the world now has standardized the 12-24-48vdc electronics.. That being said my Outback Radian inverters are 48v and have a maximum input of 65vdc and I run 17 cell LiFePo4 batteries at 60 volt top charge..
I really do not understand why you discuss lead acid batteries. Only some fossil fuel cars have them but for a home battery it does not make any sense. I have a if I would buy now it probably be a salt battery.
Is there any place in the world where lead acid is used for home battery systems?
Some people still like using lead acid because they are familiar with it. I recommend using lifepo4 as well. Salt batteries are not yet commercially available.
The only thing is:
When you are on the grid, you do not go by how long the power was out in the past. You go by how long it may be out in the future. And so you plan for natural disasters and wars.
In 2021, the power was out all over Texas for 17 days. So that is your minimum.
And you cannot say it is a one-time event. In the 2024 flood in Houston, the power was out for, I do not have the figure, but at least a week and a half.
What you need is a standardized minimum autonomy based upon natural disasters in advanced countries around the world.
That's true. However, if you plan to size your system for 17 days, then you will pay a lot. Except if you are going to downsize your consumption significantly. A better option is getting a generator to recharge the batteries in case there is a very long outage. It's going to be more cost effective. If you size for disasters, you are more in the 'prepping zone', which is very different than backup power. But i do agree that we should size larger, it always comes down to cost in the end.
@@cleversolarpower People have had running generators stolen during emergency situations.
@@cleversolarpower17 days? That's an easy $150k system.
Start with 90kWh.
How many batteries- well… just one. How big is the question. ;)
Battery voltage should equal consumption voltage. As much equipment as possible should run directly at battery voltage, at least for the off grid system. In other words, ditch the obsession with AC (used to transmit power over long distance to on grid properties). Inverters are expensive and waste a lot of energy. This is beyond the capability of the vast majority, but it is something that those with technical know how should be considering. A lot of equipment can run on 115 volts direct current, or can be modified to do so. For things that must be furnished with AC, small inverters built into or adjacent to the equipment would be used.
48 volts is way too low.
Don't give email details. I haven't received free diagrams. Maybe he is selling to private guys but not sending free diagrams. Tried many times with different emails but none work.
Did you check your email spam folder? Most likely they ended up there. Send me an email on my contact page and I will send it to you.
Why would he do a spreadsheet? Just look at your bms or watt meter over a few days lol
Then you already built a system. We have to design it first 😉
So, nice try; but your first assumption is wrong. Why is the Offgrid owner using less, using your own calculation, than the onGrid homeowner? Second check where kWh stands for. Use your reality bill figures and figure out what each device is using. Take then the worst days of a year when you use the most. If someone is using 10kWh a day, but on worst day’s 12kWh use the latter. Why; you don’t know Murphy? For tree days is that 36kWh. Check how much, how low a battery may get discharged. For example till 20%, then your battery need is 36kWh + the 20% = ~44kWh. Extra, using the same periode as your worst days, calculate how long it, thé batteries, takes with N pv-panels to get fully loaded.
People using off-grid choose smaller appliances than grid people.
Exactly, good answer.
@@Matthew_Loutner never heard of that. I am offgrid am using almost the same as average. Actualy a little more.
@rvamerongen It may depend on the size of your system. If you built in overcapacity, it may not be an issue for you. But I know of off-grid people who are cautious of their usage and are careful to turn off every light that they are not using.
Until I can afford to expand my system, my window airconditioner is limited to 7 hours a day. And the maximum cooling I get with 5000 btu is a 9° drop from ambient temperature. On a 95° day, I run a fan in the house to enhance the cooling.
Truth panels and inverter power grid interface ....ok storage never pencils out!
My question would be, why is the one guy using 3 times the power of the other guy?
Off-grid generally uses less power. It's just a more realistic figure.
Opting for a 48v system to save on wiring seems a bit strange. A 48v bank will need twice as many cells as a 24v bank. The cost of wiring a 24v system is negligible compared to the cost of those extra cells. And I'd love to see where you are getting LiFePo4 batteries for less than a lead acid. I've seen BMS for similar prices to a cheap lead acid.
24 or 48 volt system with equal power capacity use the same amount of cell.
Benefits at 48v are half current, hence half cable diameter....
Please check the video I have attached to see the difference between 12, 24, and 48V systems. You will see that charge controllers, chargers, and cables will be cheaper because they have to convert and carry less current.
Checkout the batteries I have linked in the description. They are $1,250 for 5kwh usable power. I would like to see a lead acid battery that's cheaper. You would need a 10kwh battery to get the same power capacity. And that's just the purchasing price alone, not talking about cycle life and charge/discharge C ratings. Please check my linked video where I compare lead acid and lithium.
@@cleversolarpowerELECTRODACUS charge controllers are less than $40 and can control numerous panels and heat up your water.
@@cleversolarpower I think I understand but you're still going to need 16 cells for a 48V battery as opposed to 8 for a 24V battery, unless there are 6.4V cells out there that I don't know of. And I don't think a 75 Ah cell is only half the price of a 150 Ah cell.
@@sonjakavalut A 24V battery uses 8 cells, and 48 would use 16.
"you need to know how much power you are consuming daily", you don't understand difference between power and energy.
Thanks for your constructive feedback 😄
I've been thinking 🤔 I quess I'm just an amp lover. 48v cuts your amps by 1/4 and so on. I thought the more amps the more punch you have in your electricity 🤔. I'm in a unique situation where I get to see how much I can really get out of 12v. And to be honest I'm really surprised.
It's the power that matters. 100A at 12V = 1200W, while 100A at 48V = 4800W. Power gets things moving, not current alone.
@@cleversolarpower but how does amps work into this?
@@stevewhite9813 Watts are a representation of how much work that can be produced , his example shows you that at a higher voltage but the same amps the 48 volt example does 4 times the work.. The higher the volts the lower the amps to do the same work.. So if you need a #0 wire to move 100 amps at 12 v and a #6 wire can move 25 amps at 48 volts and they both do the exact same amount of work with the higher voltage producing a little less heat thus being more efficient.. This is why big systems like mine that make 20+ kilowatt hours of power a day use the higher voltage.. amps times volts = watts/kilowatts.. This is the easiest way to directly compare different voltage and amperage electronics.. I use #2 wire to move the solar output from the combiner box at 125vdc 55 amps.. if this was at 12 volts it would be 560 amps and the wire would have to be as thick as your wrist to not start glowing and catching fire.. With copper wire becoming outrageously priced because copper is like $3+ a pound you can only imagine the cost per foot for cable goes way up with its thickness..
Yhea I'm just mad because l bought everything to do my solar years ago maybe over 5. Finally got my house remodeled and now money is really tight like really really tight 😑 all I need is a 48v inverter but the one I want is low frequency and about $800 so it will have to wait a bit longer.... Are there any benefits from having a 12v system?
@@stevewhite9813 Yes if you only plan to have a very small system of something like 2 panels and a 3kw 120v inverter then 12 volts is the way to go.. If you run a lot of 12 volt stuff like ham radio small camper with 12 volt water pump, TV and such you can tap directly into the 12v battery and save on the inverter losses making 120vac.. But this will only be adequate for running a few lights or power tools or fridge and if you ever decide to go bigger you have to upgrade later on.. I always knew I was going pretty big with 7.2KW of panels and a 4kw 120/240v inverter that I should have gone with the 8kw version and 6 years later ended up upgrading it anyway so for me it was a no brainer.. I also went high end with solar world panels and Outback Radian electronics, but it took me several years to save up the money and I figured they would last a long time..
Lithium ion is only cheaper rich people it seems. I'm here trying to buy one and believe me, I cannot afford it 😅
You are looking in the wrong places 😀
@@cleversolarpower Most sellers do not ship them here :/ Trinidad
You can if you quit dining out, buying a new car every five years or less and taking $5000 vacations one to three times per year. Start eating beans and rice.
@@USA-GreedyMenOfNoIntegrity Lmao. That's what i do!!! Haha. Not everyone is in the same place buddy. I drive a 20 year old car, am building my own house and am literrally living off grid. I know what you're saying though. It's just much easier to access those things in the USA.
You are right. I took out a bank loan to buy one lithium o4. When that loan pays out, I will take out another bank loan and buy one more.
Your battery price seems to be very outdated. 30 kWh of batteries should cost no more than $5000.
If you build them yourself, yes. But most people don't do that.
@@cleversolarpower I just bought three 10.55 kWh batteries for $4800 incl. taxes and shipping from China. Grade A cells, Pace BMS, very solid build quality.
The United States' single-family home is the least energy efficient type of home.
The falacy is that you stop wasting electricity when it becomes expensive. ie Don't charge the EV batteries or bake a cake when there is no sunshine making cheap electricity for you.
10,300kwh a Year... Like wot?
Not my numbers, official from the department of energy. And they are average 😬
Dude put freeze and fridge as 8 hours instead of 24 😂 basic examples 😂
A fridge has a duty cycle of 30%. So that is 8 hours a day of running time.
@@cleversolarpower valid enough forgot it’s just checking temps and turning on when below a threshold
It makes no sense that you switch the standard(measuring stick) in the middle of your equation, and then don’t even complete your analysis. Why did you change the rules before answering the grid side?
I don't know what you mean Nate. Are you referring to 10,300kWh yearly? That's an average in the US, and i said monthly, but it had to be yearly (i adjusted it in text). So the total daily consumption is: 10,300kWh/365days=28.2kWh/day ~ 30kWh/day.
@@cleversolarpower That is pretty much exactly wat my average used to be before we went with all LED bulbs, high efficiency appliances, new TV and other electronics over several years to bring it down by 1/3.. I then added the solar and dropped that in half again but the cost of grid electric went way up over the past ten years and I am paying the same dollar amount now as I did back then around $90 a month.. I would be paying closer to $180 a month without changing and adding solar.. This sped up my break even day approach dramatically and I went from 16 years to 9 and it is still accelerating even with the battery and inverter upgrades..
Are you Dutch? asking for me LOL...
I'm from Belgium, but nice try!
@@cleversolarpower close enough !!! you know your history dont you? Belgium was part of the netherlands..
but people these days know nothing its why they defend Ukraine LOL
I'd start at least a 20KW battery.
Battery capacity is kilowatt hours not kilowatts. The average home will need 90 kWh of capacity.
@@USA-GreedyMenOfNoIntegrity
~ third edit and how much would a 90HKWH battery cost there? cause a 20KWH battery here is 15 grand...
(australia)
a 20 kwh battery would cover 24 hours for us with no charging.
$us tesla battery, 13.5 KWH $11,500
so 6 + so 70 grand? for just under 90KWH... this seems a little.. unattainable for "the average household"
A 5kwh server rack battery costs you $1,200. So you will need 90/5=18 of these for a total of: 18x$1,200=$21.600 but why would a household need 90kWh? I suggest watching the video again.
@@John-gm8ty stop going through a middleman. Guess where they get it? The same place everyone else does. Our good friends in China.
this video is so wrong on so many sides
Please tell us why.
The terrifying thing is when you start calculating the thermal runaway energy if one of those cells gets sufficiently damaged.
They are one of the safest chemistries around unlike lithium-ion. Thermal runaway doesn't happen, it does de-gas.
Are all (or practically all) home battery banks currently using LiFePO4 cells now? That would be a very good thing.
@@Bob-cx4zeyes, most(99%) use lifepo4 unless it's a really small one like a 300wh powerstation
That always scares me about gasoline, the amount of easily flammable energy people just drive around with high speeds
People, check your math. If you use 10,300 kWh in a (Year +/-) that means you are using approx. 900 watts in a (Month +/-) which is approx. 275 to 300 in a (Day +/-), not 30kWh a day. Remember that it take 1000 watt hours to make the 1kWh. I just sat down with my last electric bill and only used 906 watts) and I am in Arizona at 113-117 degree temps, using electric water heater and electric stove top.
10,300kwh/365=28kwh/day. Your electricity bill does not show watts. It shows kWh. I suggest doing the math again 😉
Dude, you don’t know what the k stands for. That’s 10 million watt hours. So, 28,000 watt hours a day.
Somewhere a 2nd grade teacher cries 😂. Make a habit for yourself and when you feel like talking, ALWAYS assume that you are dumb and you are wrong. It will be easier on others 😜
Not sure what you are saying.
My refrigerator uses 1300 watts daily and my window airconditioner uses 3500.
@@silviannistorIf I assume I am dumb, that would be disingenuous . . .
The microwave use 1400 watts no all day wbat are you talking about
It works out to 24+ watts a minute and there is a bit of a surge when it starts up so for just a microwave running 1/2 hour total a day you would want a 3,000w+ inverter and a 5kwh battery to safely run it for two days or maybe 3 at 30 minutes a day.. Inverter efficiency and such will make this vary wildly and I have always found that things run down the batteries faster than they do in theory..
Exactly.