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RE: D.I.Y. SOLAR POWER SYSTEM BY @davethediyguy BEING ENERGY INDEPENDENT Part 2
There are a few points I see problems with - or I dont understand them correctly.
- The battery pack. The way its wired that will cause a mega short. Its connected as a full circle.
Another thing - why 6V batteries? For 24V, car or truck batteries would be the cheapest. Although ladd/acid batteries are not optimal for this. LiPo would be better, but costly at that size. - The panel are wire to 72V in 2 parallel rows. Does the charging regulator need that voltage? Because in line would be better, as in 144V at the main breaker.
Generally, this gives you or 48V - what are you planning to power with that? Best would be to reach the mains voltage in your country, so all the stuff you have in the house can run on that (converted to DC).
Well, just a suggestion.
Hi beatminister. Thanks for the comment. The way it is wired doesn't cause a short. I have 4 24vt banks wired just like this. I'll have a upcoming video soon on how to wire the batteries. I use 6 volt batteries to get more power amps. You can't use a vehicle battery on a solar power system because a car battery discharges all at once unlike solar batteries or golf cart batteries. Solar batteries and golf cart batteries discharge slowly. I wired my solar panels in three tandem which produces 72vt to 98vt when the sun is shining directly on them. Some controllers like the midnight solar can overload the volts. My house is running off 120vt and 240vt AC power pure sine wave at 60 hertz. My system is a 8.5 kw running a 3 bedroom house with inground pool. We don't us DC power to power our homes in the US that's why the power inverter is needed. The solar panels and battery bank are all DC power. Hope this answers your questions. Stay tuned for more in depth videos.
Thank you for the info, I must apologize - I shouldn't write about this stuff late in the night.
First, I meant to say AC for the mains power, of course.
With the batteries, yeah, that could work as well, being 2 parallel banks. Only, parallel hardwired batteries can be a problem on charging.
The thing is, here in Germany people usually dont build solar panels for self supply. Because of some weird regulations here, that would be silly to do. If you feed power into the main power grid, you get about 40 cent per kw/h from the electricity company - if you draw a kw/h from the mains, it only costs 25 cent.
Because of that, people feed all power they produce into the mains, and what they need in their house they draw from the mains again.
So nobody (well, almost nobody) bothers to install batteries, since thats expensive and you'd hardly ever need them.
The solar panels are usualy wired to output higher voltages, 240V or even 480V. Then there are synchroniser units which turn that into AC and feed it into the mains. And - most important - count how much you have been feeding in, so you can get payed for it.
That's awesome. We don't sell the excess power back to the power company because they only give a fraction of what they charge here. Most systems are grid tide here but the problem is that the power goes out a lot from storms for days or at night time. Contractors are installing systems here and charging between $30,000 to $60,000 without a battery bank. Not very cost effective. That's why I'm trying to teach people how to do it themselves. Most states and counties fight people that try to put up panels or turbines. Its a big ordeal. The power companies are a huge monopoly here. Our power bills are as high as our house payments. They want $700 to just put in the meter to feed back to grid.
Wow. Thats interesting to hear. Certainly very different here. Blackouts are no issue in Germany. Its been many years that I seen one here, cant even remember when. And if it happens its just for 10 minutes or so.
The refunding system was not the idea of the power companies, of course. At first, they tried to make it as difficult as possible to put up solar panels or wind turbines. But when the Green Party was in the government coalition, 10 years ago or so, they installed the Renewable Energy Act, a law that was made to promote - take a guess - renewable energy.
It all has a downside as well, though. To fund the extra money that is payed to producers of renewable energy, all customers of the power companies have to pay a additional few cent per kw/h - except the industrial customers.
This has caused a lot of debate already. Also, because a solar energy installation has become a lot cheaper than it was when the law was made.
The wind turbines are a different subject. Its not something you can do in your garden anymore. A professional wind turbine costs about 1.5 mio Euro. And its 150m high, with a 75m rotor. They can only be erected in the county side, as a proper commercial investment. One of those alone can supply a small village with power. And the construction of those things has created a entire new industry, with tenthousands of jobs.
Interesting. We have smaller turbines. Some of them are very small. Where they put a whole slew of them on the roofs. They have spent billions on commercial turbine wind farms across the country and most are just sitting and not spinning. Our power goes out all the time in storms or if someone crashes a car into a electric pole. Lightning hits the transformers a lot. We're in Florida by the Gulf of Mexico. We just had a big lightning storm and monsoon rain. The commercial wind farms didn't really help the consumers. They charge the consumer to fund them and their just sitting. It hasn't lowered anyone's bill yet only made it more. Big business. The only thing that seems to benefit the consumer here is to make your own. My goal is to eliminate all bills possible. Our place in Colorado the whole community was off grid. It was isolated winters were tough. No mail man or power lines.
Well, we are fortunate that after WW2, when everything was destroyed and had to be rebuild, they put all power lines underground. Except for the very large high voltage overland lines. So the local power lines are not exposed to weather, or to road accidents. Only if they dig a hole in the road without reading the blue prints properly, they can get damaged. But thats rare and only affects a few blocks. The transformers are also more centralised, not many small ones for just a few houses.
The wind turbines (the latest generation) are really enormous. Late at night they transport the parts for them over the highways, when there is little other traffic. They have special transport trucks for that. One single rotor blade is over 30m long, like a wing of a large passenger airplane. And the cone that covers the hub is over 4m in diameter. With its arced openings for the blades it looks like a igloo for giants.
But storm is not good for them, its not "the more wind, the better". If the wind speed is too high, they have to adjust the pitch of the blades to avoid that the thing starts running wild. There are videos on YT showing what happens if that doesn't work. They spin up until the generator starts burning and the whole thing flies apart.
As I said, also here it just brought higher electricity prices for the majority of people. But for some farmers it is a lucrative new income source. As its getting harder and harder to make a living for farmers with smaller farms, many have used their fields to erect wind turbines. Well, and they can still grow crops around the turbines.
That's interesting. They are starting to put the power lines in the ground in the new developments but its still a small amount.