This post was on the old forum, but it's quite informational so I went ahead and copied it over.
So one of the issues that Will had mentioned is that sheds aren't very strong and have a hard time lasting for years. Why not use a shipping container? They are steel which will last a long time, and you can get them in various sizes from 12' x 8' all the way up to monster 40' long by 8 foot wide by 9 1/2 feet tall.
It's actually exactly what I did. I took a 40 foot shipping container, and framed in the back 20 feet with 2x4 studs, then insulated it with R16? insulation (It's the insulation designed for 2x6 framing, it fits into the highs and lows of the container walls). After that I put up plywood sheeting and painted it white. I then installed some lights and went crazy with the Off-Grid setup. In hindsight it would have been a good idea to put fire rated drywall over the plywood so that the plywood acted as a backing instead so that mounting things still worked nice.
Boy was I in for an adventure.
So I installed 2 outback FM80s, a 40 space load center, a 12kw sigineer "Low Frequency" inverter (Scope proves they actually aren't low frequency, but that's a video I have in progress. It's the type with the big heavy transformer.) and some shelving units from Costco to provide support for my batteries. For batteries I went with some size
flooded lead acid deep cycle batteries. Big Mistake. More on this later. I then tied all the batteries together and made sure they all had equal length cable to the inverter/chargers and went wild. For a backup generator, I only had a couple of 2000 watt honda inverter generators, but those only output 120 volts, so I also had a step up transformer making 240 volts to feed the battery charger in the sigineer inverter. This was a very lossy process.
Here is a video of what this setup looked like after I first started in the world of Off-Grid.
So what was the weakest link in the system....Everything. Batteries, Inverter, load center, generators, solar panels, you name it.
Let's stop for a moment and talk about what the purpose of this system is...This setup was built to run all of our electrical needs on our 40 acre property that had zero utilities. When we first moved to the property, we were living in a fifth wheel toy hauler, so the main goal was to have more reliable power than the inverter in the rv and the 4 100 watt solar panels. Mom works from home on the computer so we really needed to keep the trailer cool as well as run her computer for work.
I had incorperated PLC control into the system and was getting things to be more automated. I pretty much rebuilt the whole electrical room and if you check out my channel you can see the whole series on rebuilding that. Meanwhile I moved from my parent's ranch to North Idaho, so the need to have the system run itself was very desirable.
So fast forward about 12 months. Slowly but surely I started having cell failures on the lead acid batteries. These batteries did not last one bit. Living in Idaho, it was impossible for me to keep up on battery upkeep. This is about the time that I found Will's channel and started learning about lithium. So anyway I replaced "2000" amp hours @ 48v of lead acid with 100ah of calb cells.
27 of those 32 batteries are sitting out back on pallets because they have failed. Call me crazy but the 100 amp calb LiFePO4 cells perform WAY better than all those lead acid batteries for half the cost. Very impressed with these new cells. Video on them below.
https://youtu.be/EQZOCH6_3g8
https://youtu.be/Bmbz5_3SBgo
So here I am. The system is pretty sweet and the YouTube following has inspired me to keep adding awesome stuff. I even added an air conditioner to the shipping container the other day and tied it into the PLC touch screen panel so that I can keep the room nice and cool in the summer time.
Let me know what you guys think - How exactly you would go about making this a system that you could install to your home that has existing wiring, I am not sure. We are working through getting our house built and have a few more steps to make this system run the house properly, but like I said earlier this is just running my parents living in a trailer and the laundry room and the shop (Shop is also a shipping container!)