OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
A little over a year ago I got started on my four step plan to go PV battery offgrid for my homestead.
What follows are the steps in the plan and where I am am at so far with it.
A bit of background to set the stage, my wife and I bought 30 acres about 30-mintues drive outside a small northern City 21 years ago. We raised our children and saw them through an education and they are moved on now.
We have a good deep drilled well, septic, large garden, poultry/turkeys/rabbits/hogs/sometimes ducks too.
We heat the house and workshops with wood we cut off our own land, and we have a wood pellet furnace for back-up and so we can go away for short trips.
We have a bandsaw mill and a typical tree will have the lower sections run through the mill, with slabs and edgins going to kindling, and the upper parts going directly to a fire wood processor we built ourselves.
We are surrounded by lakes and public lands open for hunting and fishing, we have two freezers and two refrigerators and we store potatoes/root veggies in a cold room in the workshop, and can other items from the garden. We learned our own meat processing and we vacuum seal this every season. we get fresh eggs every day from "the girls" and we have three acres of pasture for free ranging, which we do every day during spring-summer-fall until the snow comes.
So for us, we had water, wastewater, food and heat all covered.
What was lacking for a very long time was solar so we would not be reliant upon the grid - which living rural goes off line on a regular basis, and more so during winter storms.
The Plan:
We decided that 'going solar' may best (for us) be done in planned stages so we could self finance the equipment, have the time to install everything ourselves, and (most importantly) learn to use it, and what it can and can't do as we built and expanded the system. Since the work shop is 60 feet from the house and has a large roof facing the right way, we decided that is where the PV system should go, and if it didn't look perfect, or ever caught fire, we are a good safe distance away.
Stage One (was done Spring 2021)
First MPP Solar 6048, First Signature Solar 100Ahr 48 volt LiFePO4 battery 100A subpanel - no solar panels.
We did this in February 2021 and used the grid (off peak as we have time of use power at half price off peak) to charge the one battery each night and then used the system to run about half the shop area 'stuff' but no large motor loads, just lights hand electric tools and such. The MPP 6048 with just one unit gave us 120 and 240 volt supply, but we were limited to 3000W per leg and the battery at 100A x 51.2Vdc limited combined loads to about 5000W (yes less than the inverter) but this was a great learning experience. We ran this system through the fall and winter, and did some insulation upgrades so the shop was more easily kept above freezing as this is required for the battery to run properly.
Stage Two (this year)
We installed a second MPP 6048, got our second 100Ahr rack battery (not SS this time, there is a more local to us supplier) and put up 8- 440W PV panels on the south facing roof on a tiltable rack, so we can tilt them up for winter. It was very exciting to watch the incoming PV during those first days after installation, especially since we ran without Solar Panels last year. We added all the rest of the work shop loads to the off-grid panel and left only one utility breaker so we have utilty charging available but being summer, have not needed it once since the PV was up and connected to the invertes.
With the success of the PV we are currently running a 3C-6AWG cable to the house which will power a Reliance 306 unit so we can use all this excess PV power for some loads in the house (Well pump Fridge freezers etc) and this winter if (ok when) the power goes out, we can flip the Reliance MTS swtiches to supply loads frrom the workshop without dragging extension cords out like we ended up doing last winter during a few outages. We have two more 440 panels to go up, and we have 16 280Ahr EVE cells on order to build our own battery sometime in August (if the cells arrive as expected).
Stage Three 2023
The plan is to add more PV on the rest of the south roof and some on our West roof since East is blocked by very tall trees that we don't want to cut down.
We will plan another home made 280 Ahr EVE battery (14.3kW) if the first one works out well this August. As the seasons dictact we will put Reliance 306 loads permanantly on the solar off grid supply (likely not during Dec-Feb) once the solar input is high enough to supply it full time.
Stage Four 2024
A final 280 Ahr home made battery (if all is well with the first two)
and final PV on the west shop roof which will bring our total solar PV panels to 24 - 440W panels.
We are not half-way through the planned stages yet, however we have learned a lot and I thought it may help others to read what worked for us (or at least what we think is working well for us) and may assist others if you can work out a plan in stages that make the project more easily affordable, DIY-able, and learn a few things along the way as you go.
Robert.
What follows are the steps in the plan and where I am am at so far with it.
A bit of background to set the stage, my wife and I bought 30 acres about 30-mintues drive outside a small northern City 21 years ago. We raised our children and saw them through an education and they are moved on now.
We have a good deep drilled well, septic, large garden, poultry/turkeys/rabbits/hogs/sometimes ducks too.
We heat the house and workshops with wood we cut off our own land, and we have a wood pellet furnace for back-up and so we can go away for short trips.
We have a bandsaw mill and a typical tree will have the lower sections run through the mill, with slabs and edgins going to kindling, and the upper parts going directly to a fire wood processor we built ourselves.
We are surrounded by lakes and public lands open for hunting and fishing, we have two freezers and two refrigerators and we store potatoes/root veggies in a cold room in the workshop, and can other items from the garden. We learned our own meat processing and we vacuum seal this every season. we get fresh eggs every day from "the girls" and we have three acres of pasture for free ranging, which we do every day during spring-summer-fall until the snow comes.
So for us, we had water, wastewater, food and heat all covered.
What was lacking for a very long time was solar so we would not be reliant upon the grid - which living rural goes off line on a regular basis, and more so during winter storms.
The Plan:
We decided that 'going solar' may best (for us) be done in planned stages so we could self finance the equipment, have the time to install everything ourselves, and (most importantly) learn to use it, and what it can and can't do as we built and expanded the system. Since the work shop is 60 feet from the house and has a large roof facing the right way, we decided that is where the PV system should go, and if it didn't look perfect, or ever caught fire, we are a good safe distance away.
Stage One (was done Spring 2021)
First MPP Solar 6048, First Signature Solar 100Ahr 48 volt LiFePO4 battery 100A subpanel - no solar panels.
We did this in February 2021 and used the grid (off peak as we have time of use power at half price off peak) to charge the one battery each night and then used the system to run about half the shop area 'stuff' but no large motor loads, just lights hand electric tools and such. The MPP 6048 with just one unit gave us 120 and 240 volt supply, but we were limited to 3000W per leg and the battery at 100A x 51.2Vdc limited combined loads to about 5000W (yes less than the inverter) but this was a great learning experience. We ran this system through the fall and winter, and did some insulation upgrades so the shop was more easily kept above freezing as this is required for the battery to run properly.
Stage Two (this year)
We installed a second MPP 6048, got our second 100Ahr rack battery (not SS this time, there is a more local to us supplier) and put up 8- 440W PV panels on the south facing roof on a tiltable rack, so we can tilt them up for winter. It was very exciting to watch the incoming PV during those first days after installation, especially since we ran without Solar Panels last year. We added all the rest of the work shop loads to the off-grid panel and left only one utility breaker so we have utilty charging available but being summer, have not needed it once since the PV was up and connected to the invertes.
With the success of the PV we are currently running a 3C-6AWG cable to the house which will power a Reliance 306 unit so we can use all this excess PV power for some loads in the house (Well pump Fridge freezers etc) and this winter if (ok when) the power goes out, we can flip the Reliance MTS swtiches to supply loads frrom the workshop without dragging extension cords out like we ended up doing last winter during a few outages. We have two more 440 panels to go up, and we have 16 280Ahr EVE cells on order to build our own battery sometime in August (if the cells arrive as expected).
Stage Three 2023
The plan is to add more PV on the rest of the south roof and some on our West roof since East is blocked by very tall trees that we don't want to cut down.
We will plan another home made 280 Ahr EVE battery (14.3kW) if the first one works out well this August. As the seasons dictact we will put Reliance 306 loads permanantly on the solar off grid supply (likely not during Dec-Feb) once the solar input is high enough to supply it full time.
Stage Four 2024
A final 280 Ahr home made battery (if all is well with the first two)
and final PV on the west shop roof which will bring our total solar PV panels to 24 - 440W panels.
We are not half-way through the planned stages yet, however we have learned a lot and I thought it may help others to read what worked for us (or at least what we think is working well for us) and may assist others if you can work out a plan in stages that make the project more easily affordable, DIY-able, and learn a few things along the way as you go.
Robert.
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