Safety / fire hazard: Is it safe to have the batteries and inverters in the basement or garage or should they be housed away from the house in a separate area i.e. utility shed ?
I was way off. I originally thought that battery autonomy was about massive solar array and if you want more battery autonomy you need a larger solar array with more solar panels. I wasn’t focusing enough on total battery storage.
My planned cabin setup will average roughly around 4 kwh to 6 kwh daily output. I first thought that I needed over 40kw of solar array to get long battery life to keep the batteries charged before the diesel generator turned on.
I could be wrong but, from what I’ve been reading, around 12 kw solar array is more than sufficient, around 15 solar panels.
Also, I believe I’ll only need 4 Victron SmartSolar MPPT 250/100-Tr VE.Can now instead of 10. Saving thousands of dollars.
The NKON batteries are expensive.
I would like to have a 160kwh to 200kwh total battery storage though.
OSM Battery 10kWh Powerwall $990 per unit. 20 = $19,800
NKON ESS Pro 51.2V 32.15kWh $4,148 per unit. 6 = $24,888
I really don’t want 20 units.
I have a remote fly in location south of the ak range and my setup has about 4k pv with 820ah rolls lead acid batteries and a 55 48v inverter. My solar mount is adjustable from vertical to 90deg so i don’t have to sweep snow. I try not to take the batteries below 80%. The longest i have seen without charging is 6 days having either zero or .1kw of charging. That’s fog and or snow. My daily draw averages only 2.5kw without conserving. the biggest draw is a 22cf fridge at .9kw. i can go 3 days with no solar charging. Six days with no charging may only occur once a winter or not . I know I’m under paneled and plan to add solar but haven’t got to it yet. I haven’t run the generator since late January due to this long cold clear stretch we have had and generally from this time of year forward i don’t need it much anyway. Maybe a way to approach it would be with a smaller system initially that can be easily expanded that doesn’t require you to replace components outright that you already have.
I recently set up a small cabin with a Victron system thats unmanned in the winter. Its working great powering a very light load. The priority for winter is to keep the batteries alive so the low battery shutdown is high. It only uses 7 watts on standby for everything. Thats a Multiplus II, cerbo gx, mppt 150/85, and battey shunt. I love being able to adjust everything without taking a 1 hour snowmachine ride.
Interesting, thanks for sharing…
If it’s possible to try to guesstimate an off grid cabin in interior Alaska with a daily output of around 6 kwh, what would be a sufficient solar array in kw and a total battery storage in kwh that creates a battery autonomy of at least 2 weeks without having the backup diesel generator have to recharge the batteries ?
I’d love to create a solar system that can go from October 1st to April 1st with very little if any use of the backup generator so I can limit diesel fuel $$ as much as possible. I’m guessing a very large battery bank is needed, possibly at least 200 kwh total storage ?
i cant give you the specifics like the experts on this forum but in the bigger picture I know that through Dec to say Feb 1st to build a system for no generator time it would have to be ten times the size of one sized for Feb to November. A little generator time and fuel during Dec and Jan will save you alot. And put the panels at straight vertical, not 10 deg or you will be spending an hour a day sweeping any time it snows.