Yup that’s how you got interested I just wanted to power an outdoor tv setup in the middle of the woods didn’t think it would work as good as it did simple two panel 200 watt charging a 12 volt 100 ah battery even with the canopy it was enough to charge the battery and run the tv all day since then I added twenty more panels and batteries can’t beat free energy
Discussion
What brand of battery did you use? I’ve read that solar panels are more or less a commodity now and the difference between them isn’t staggering. But with batteries I wasn’t sure. I bought a kepworth battery off Amazon and was thinking about picking up another one before the tariffs make the price go way up.
I bought a few batteries renogy 12 100 ah then I decided to try making one using 3.7v 18650 batteries linking them in series you can build a much bigger battery for the price of those already made batteries FYI
I watched a few videos on that and it seems a little more involved which I’m not afraid of in theory. The only thing that makes me want to buy the $200 dollar premade batteries is it seems like the individual cells you Link are Li-ion vs the LiFePo4 with the renogy/ speed queen batteries
Yes agreed definitely involved but very easy to add or repair when you build your own. The premade batteries are great nothing against them but the price I would love to get my hands on a powerwall 3 by Tesla damn thing is so much
Looks like aprox 12k usd for 13.5 kWh. Not too bad just a big upfront investment. Would be very nice tho. My setup will probably only include Charging batteries rather than hooking up to my elect panel. I’m renting and I don’t want to get into permitting projects. I’m able to do around 1000w standalone solar panel setups. My neighborhood gets power shutoff for wind fairly regularly so it would mainly be used to offset that and maybe power some appliances during peak hours.
That’s still a pretty decent setup tinkering with the free energy is so much fun it only grows from there wait till your in a more permanent home is the right idea I did the same
Would I be crazy to assume with the 1000w limit that means per system? If they are separate I probably have room for 2 or 3kwh total. I mean separate lol
Depending on the how much sun hours you get and direct sunlight but the 1000 watt system is 1 KWh with 4-6 hours of sunlight you can generate 4-6 KWh you just need to capture that energy or use it. I found that my 1000 watt system since in a shaded wooded canopy I never reach 1000 watts usually around 750 - 900 watts an hour is what I can grab but still a lot of energy to store
I’d love to live somewhere shaded. I’m in an area with a lot of sun year round so I guess I should at least make the most of it. Trying to figure out how to set up battery enclosures with fans. Was looking at case fans for pc’s for the summer time.
Yes those work well you can even get a smaller solar fan separate from the main solar array to run during the peak sunlight they work vary good for smaller enclosures