Working toward off grid
 

Creeky

That's nice, neat work and interesting that your friend is meeting his energy requirements.

I have managed a few photos of the assembly of the Dynoraxx racking, very nice system.

My boy is having his hand into the assembly as he is putting the rails on and pinning them.

The view over-head of the solar pergola (4 kw)

As for the 2 phase inverter the micro processing board is assembled and some testing is complete. hopefully I will have a battery pack within the next week.

Randen

A young lad not afraid of work. Can I borrow him. Smile.

Look forward to your inverter build.

working toward off grid
 

The big push is on. Winter weather is on its way and yours truly doesn't like working in the cold. The panels are locked in and the ballast was placed into the mounts.

A battery pack from a Chevy volt became available and is now in the shop ready to be reassigned to providing power to the house. We may include another after we prove out the inverter as this would provide a buffer for 2 -3 days of electrical supply to the house. The ultimate is a Tesla pack but that's a few more bucks then can be liberated at this time. However after the Model 3 has been out for a while I'm sure the price for a used pack will come down. The battery enclosure we have in the garage will actually hold 2 tesla packs, that's about 180 kws or more than 2 weeks of reserve power

Randen

That's a lot of planned (180kWh) battery storage. I LIKE IT!

That would be okay for more than a week for me in the summer, because my usage is low and easier tamed during the summer. In the winter, not so much since I converted to an electric heat pump. Our house is efficient, but 360 kWh to cover 4 weeks in February (or other cold weather months) just ain't happening at my house. We use nearly 1400 kWh's in the depth of winter on a 31 day month.

Gasstingy
Like you our winter power usages balloon. In the depth off winter with wind and cold our heat pump operates almost non stop. That in itself would account for 35kw alone. If we received a full sunny day the placarded production of PV would be about 60 kw. So that would provide a net gain so some portion of charge would be gained to use the next day. As you maybe aware we have solar hot water heating that is quite effective so we may have one days heat plus a full battery for the following day. It’s going to really depend on conditions

Just like my electric truck project it’s all an educated guess as to how far you can go. Add more batteries or in the home situation more solar or maybe for my local, wind

My first brush with the calculations the system will make a huge reduction in the cost of electrical energy. So far my journey to reduce my energy costs have proved very effective. The heat pumps have reduced costs by almost half and now driving electric vehicles another sizable reduction in energy expenditures

Let’s wait and see what the next few months will teach me

Randen

I'm having my well serviced.
The local well service remove the vertical shaft irrigation pump on there now then bale brush the well, flush, acid clean, flow test this week.
Not having to rely on the man for water, definitely off grid.

Today some progress was made, well for the future. There happens to be some area available for extra 3.5 kw of solar panel. The conduit was still open from pulling in 3 pairs for the three strings. What's one to do, Yes. pulled in another pair for the future 4th string of panels, so we would be sporting a total of 14.5 kws of solar. Maybe in the spring.??

The forecast for tonight is 15 cm of the white stuff. Just finished tightening the terminals for all the solar panel strings and the wind had intensified and sleet had begun.

Yesterday two ground rods had been driven in because that stainless pergola would be a fabulous lightning rod as well as all the panels on the roof LETS get those grounded as well.

Some progress has also been made on the 20 kw inverter but I will leave that for another post with some photos.

Randen

I've been living with wells for quite some time but I don't understand all the extras you got.

Around here the well driller comes in, drills until he has water, then puts in 6" well pipe. 20 years ago I might have 'shocked' the well with bleach but only if there seemed to be an e-coli or other bacteria problem.

Personally I don't trust the water anymore. Some people have springs but a dead animal 20 feet upstream pretty much cancels water testing the day before the animal died. Farmers pouring glyphosate on fields that migrate into streams also jeopardize water.

I filter my water down to 1 micron, then run it through osmosis to take out arsenic, etc. so basically whatever happens to the water before purification never gets to my faucet.

This isn't easy east coast water.
My well is a 40 to 50 year old 16 inch bore diameter irrigation well that used to easily feed a 400 to 500gpm 20hp 10 turbine 6 inch pump.
That well had 40' of water in it at one time, now it's got 12.

NM isn't a great place for water but any location can be tough. My neighbor had to go down 1,200 feet to get 2.5 gpm. I went down 175, wells are crap shoots.

The irrigation well you're using isn't supplying anyone else, is it? Because there is no need for that kind of power in a shallow well supplying one or two houses.

Cisterns and shallow wells are easy to tap.