DIY 3.6kW bifacial ground mount system

Your system and mine are similar in size and setup before you do any more expansion. I probably won't get much larger than it is now, small things maybe. I'm completely off grid and am 120v only, like you. No future plans for split phase although I almost went that route. The equipment is all Victron and happy with it. All backed up with 7.5kw generator which gives me split phase when needed for tools ect.

The ground mount racking is made by Uni-Rack using their ULA system. It is all based on 2" schedule 40 piping (installer supplied) with all their brackets and rails and clamps to assemble it together. Assembly is very straight forward. Cost is expensive for all the parts but is rock solid and will last indefinitely and no worries about the panels blowing off the ridge into the nether regions.

Recently have decided to take the the plunge into DIY battery replacing two Renogy 200ah batteries which over the past year have run fine but it's just not enough. Bought three Seplos 24v boxes to assemble a 21.5kwh bank. The cells will be here in a couple of weeks. Wish me luck!
It will be sometime this summer when all is completed I'll post it up when it's worthy.

That tree you ask about wasn't here in Appalachia we don't have anything that monstrous around here either. It was in southern New Jersey where I retired from (got the hell out and went to Tenn). The tree was a grand old maple. It grew along the edge of what used to be my wife's family farm and she tells a story of her young father climbing it as a child. The farm has since been sold off and now contains a hundred or so homes. She owns a house on the outside edge of what used to be the farm and the tree was threatening the home. It had some heavy disease attacking it and had to come down before a catastrophe happened. Kind of a sad story. Bought that big saw a few years before for a job I had on another monster maple at a friends place. It fell and crushed his garage, It was a bitch getting it out.

I burned every bit of both of those trees fire pit and heat.

You really have a beauty of a system there. Keep us updated please

Thanks for the reply. Yes keep us updated on your DIY battery build. I've watched a few videos of folks building those Seplos kits, like Andy on off grid garage. What size are the cells? Hope they work out for you. I had considered doing a DIY battery, but I really don't have the room in my solar/clothes closet for something like that. So that's why I went with the rack mount batteries.

Yeah your ground mount sounds like it will be solid. I would have preferred metal, but it was too expensive, so I went with wood. We'll see how long it lasts. But like I said maybe the next mount will be metal.

That's a wild story about that big old maple. I'm sure it provided plenty of firewood. We have a few big red and sugar maples on our property, but not enough to harvest. They do provide some nice fall foliage, tho.

We are lucky to have decent south exposure where we're at, so we get about 8-9 hours of sun before it disappears behind the screen of trees on our west hillside. Our little battery bank usually doesn't drop below 60% before dawn, so it's usually charged back up before noon. Sometimes I have to charge via the grid if we have lots of clouds or rain on consecutive days.

My bro in law is in NE Tenn, not far from Middlesboro, KY, so he might not be that far from you. I've never been in that part of TN but heard it's really nice.

The cells are going to be the Eve 280k. Each pack of three will provide about 7.168kwh to the system. Hoping it's good for about 3 days running with inclement weather. My power needs are modest overall. The ground mount will be in a wide open area facing any direction without shading, lucky on that.
Your bro in law is north of Knoxville about an hour away (not far). I'm south east of that In the Morristown/Rogersville area. Firmly believe I have a slice of heaven here. Cringe when the need arises to return to NJ

OK. Look forward to seeing your battery set up. Victron is a solid platform, you shouldn't have any issues with it. My EG4 had a couple hiccups, but overall it's been pretty solid after putting out about 1.25MWh in a little over a year. I just added the batteries in Nov and March.

My other in-laws go to Gatlinburg often, but we've never been down there. I'm somewhat familiar with West TN as we would take I-40 back and forth to the Dallas area. We moved up here ten years ago, it's her family farm. It's been theirs for like 200 years. It's pretty remote, not a lot of folks where we live but good people.

We both work at a local university, which is about a 25 mile commute. It was a bit of culture shock for me being in the big city for over 30 years. But I like the 4 seasons we get, clean air, lots of land to grow our own fruits and veggies. Only drawback is we're so far from the big stores we're used to (Lowe's, Kroger, Walmart, etc). But that's the price of rural living I guess.

Not many folks around us have solar, there's one place nearby that has a 40 panel ground mount you can see from the road. But I don't know any more about it than that. I've been tempted to knock on their door to ask about, but don't want to be too nosey.

Other than them, not many folks really seems to be interested in it here. I was considering it when we moved here ten years ago but it was way too expensive then, now it's become more affordable.

Was curious how you keep warm and cool, do you use wood heat? We have electric heat which is insanely power hungry. We had to keep it around 65 in the winter or our electric bill would be well over $200/mo. We have a split AC unit which only uses 3KW, but I'd like to get something that uses less power. Might get one of those Midea AC window units, it's supposed to be super efficient. Would like to use it as a power dump for the solar during the summer, and spare using the big unit.

Using propane heat. I don't spend too much time in the winter here. Just head back north to my honeys place.

No cooling and that's about to change when the new array and batteries are complete. I see a small mini-split in my future....

Very rural here also but located just 12mi from the county seat (Walmart and a few other stores including food shopping)
If I want to spend some money and need the big box stuff I go to Mooristown (35mi) and they have it all. So not really inconvenienced by great distance here.

Solar is non-existant around here also.....all my neighbors stop in and gawk at the measly two panels I have up now.

Edit: AND like you all my neighbors are fantastic people. They will tell you they don't care for any Yankee's...but somehow I've been adopted in as a transplant. Have another group up the road (transplants) and they are not so lucky. Everybody knows everybody a really great thing and how it used to be where I'm from.

I'm not a Yankee, born and raised in OK and worked in Texas for 30 years, but have fit in well here. I just try to treat people the way I'd want to be treated, that goes a long ways anywhere. People are a bit guarded here, but have a similar world view to mine, so that helps.

Living here for ten years I've kind of forgotten how nice it is here, we're in a hilly area, but live in a small valley. We're on an eastern facing hillside so we get lots of morning and afternoon sun. It can get pretty cold here, not something I like, but I've gotten somewhat used to it. I'd say it's more uncomfortable here in the summer compared to back in TX, it gets so humid. I know it's never hit 100 here, but it doesn't have to as muggy as it gets.

Here's a few pics I just took outside, it's really greening up here, the trees are almost fully leafed out, plus the fruit trees and flowers have and are blooming. Best time of the year here.

@timselectric, @RV10flyer, since it's Derby Day, did you have your Hot Brown today?? We just did..

Got our latest electric bill, we only used about 300kwh for the last month, so our bill was low, only $52! Lowest ever for both since last month. Our system generated just over 150kwh this month, first time we cracked that level, too.

I like those trends..