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I've had 3 out of 4 victron 150/100's go bad on me so far. They replaced 2 of them but wouldn't on the 3rd, said it was wired wrong which is bullshit so I'm ditching their crap & trying out these Growatt mppt chargers. About the size of a shoebox, screw terminal lugs, better warranty than...

If your system got in on the tax incentives, that might pay for itself eventually but an off gridder like me doesn't enjoy those tax savings so my scraped together little by little 22kw system, 10,000 watts on 2 inverters & 35kw in batteries ran me about 30k. Being I'm 65 now & with the gov't...

Got my 1st lith bank up & running. Doing a capacity test now to start, then have to swap my 60 amp epever with my 100 amp victron now that I have more a/hr capacity on my back up bank then the main. Used some tube washers to make some space behind the bms it so it'll cool off better & made use...

I'll always be building DIY banks. It's just far cheaper going that route as long as I can depend on access to a quality supply of cells. With the rack mounts, they're real nice looking but say a bms goes out, even if it's in warranty, you gotta likely do a complicated teardown to replace it...

If you're building a large storage capacity, DIY will save you big bux! But if it's small, the convenience of a prebuilt outweighs the savings.

I have summer & winter heaters. The summer heater in the 1st pic is on a hinge hooked to a hoist above it then to a winch for tracking the sun. It's done with pex pipe & I can easily get a tank of 150 degree water from it late spring to early fall but in the winter the suns angle is too steep to...

My 1st solar furnace is doing so good, I made a 2nd 1 for my shed I just finished & put online today. 50 degrees right now @ 1pm & the box temp is maintaining a steady 97 degrees with the blower running non stop. Once I got the shed up to temp with my heaters, it's holding a temp inside my 10x20...

Many of the posts about Genetry are valid concerns. As an off gridder & owner of 2 of their inverters this is my experience with them. Sean forgets about some of his customers orders, mine of which both were custom mods & had annoying delays sending them. I had an issue with the 1st with my...

I can't make out what you're trying to accomplish. Personally I don't use or like combiner boxes adding many strings together at the panels just requires using heavier wire for a run to the charger. I bring each string right to the charger then use a ground buss bar to combine all the strings so...

I've been having a back & forth with the engineer about the issue of my washing machine not working on his inverter & the distortion on my camera monitor & it looks like a solution was found. He had me put a 10uf capacitor on the output & that solved those issues so that was a simple cheap fix...

I have pretty much the same thoughts, the filtering caps are likely dried up just for starts but I thought Trace's had good sine wave ouput.

A bit over a year ago I built a 6 panel tracking array as an experiment to see how well it would hold up & it's held up perfect so far, so I just got finished erecting my 2nd tracking array. I got some video's of my 1st & new array's up on the tube @

I made a carport out of solar panels, just 4x4's & 2x4's, doesn't have to be prefab mounts.

63 is marginal. I have 75 & eventually will be 83 300+ watt panels & need every bit of it for just my tiny house & 10x20 shed. It's more than I need for on demand power but it's sure nice to have them all on bleak days & still get plenty of power where I'd otherwise be taxing the batteries heavy.

The growatts are good for only 100v input @ 24v, the sigineer will take 150v @ 24v. They also claim you can overpanel their gear without worry of frying them. This brand seems to be a great choice for solar chargers. I just ordered a sigineer 48120 & hope it's as good as the growatt chargers I'm...

I've had good service from them as well. A bms mysteriously quit working & they replaced it no ?'s asked.

Yeah sure, they're using pex, the 1st smaller pivoting collector is 6 1/2x3 ft, the bigger stationary is 4x13ft. Using tempered glass on them. Is getting pumped into a standard 30 gallon tank heater. I have some video's up on them to find out more @

This is what I believe toasted your epever. A charger with no lithium support or 1 with support but using it in user mode will fry it. As most know the correct hook up procedure is to 1st hook up the batteries then the panels. For whatever reason, a non lithium charger requires an active load of...

I'm about to get my next batch of 304's from apexium with a US warehouse so quick delivery if they got 'em in stock. They go fast when they come in. I got my last batch from Docan, best set I've got yet but rarely have any in their US warehouse anymore. A guy on youtube said he's getting good...

I wouldn't sink that kinda $$$ on an inverter that old. It may work fine initially but old inverters are likely to have near dried up capacitors that will likely fail before too long. I'd look at a 6kw growatt with a built in 5kw charger. I've seen them as low as $1200 & they have a 5 year...

Very similar to my builds. I'm using diagonal connections too, Looks a whole lot cleaner & diagonal connections don't stress as much if the cells shift a bit.

I made a scraper out of a long 2x2 for the handle then screwed a 3 ft 2x4 to the end of that. Takes the snow off pretty good but there'll be an snowey icey layer on the surface so I hose it down to turn it to clear ice which allows the sun to penetrate to the dark surface that quickly heats up...

I'm with you exactly, doing the same here. Like a hot rodder sinking all his hard earned cash into a hobby with no real return except the satisfaction of getting it done. But I'm aiming for getting enough where I can call the power company & say bye bye, cut me loose. Will call you if I need ya...

You're right but if 1 of those cells goes sour, it'll drag down the other & throw the whole pack out of balance.

The main reason for the diagonal buss bars is if there's any movement in the cells there would be less stress on the posts than if done in the more common way & it looks pretty slick to boot.

Another note... Since the ideal charging voltage is nearly the same for both, 28.8v agm's & 29.0v lith's, using the agm charge settings doesn't bring the lith's to a full top off but many say it isn't good on the cycle life for lith's to do a full charge or discharge so there's no real down side...

1st day firing up my sheds solar furnace. Walk thru video.

no protection at the moment, still testing it, when it goes permanent in the system, there'll be a breaker on it.

I didn't see what the voltages of the 2 set were. If they are the same or very close then you can tie them together. If they are different then you should use separate chargers of if you have an all in 1 with separate inputs.

Wow! Thx Steve, that's a bundle of info & looks like everything I need to know. Very helpful of you!