Best price ever.
 

After searching CL for a couple years I finally found the deal that hit my price criteria. They don't get much less expensive than this. Bought 10 JinKo solar 310 watt panels for $500. So 3100 watts. Originally he was asking $75/panel and I just decided to throw out what I considered a nonsense number. Could not believe it when he said yes. They are a couple years old but almost unused as they were originally intended for a large solar installation. They all had minor flaws. Mostly cosmetic but a couple panels have scraped surfaces that I think should buff out easily. Apparently they were headed to the trash bin and the guy I got them from saved them from death.

Now the problem. I hadn't planned on doing anything with solar electric until next year as I'm working on solar heat this year. Don't really want to connect up to the local utility in the near future so I think the next step will be to start searching for either a Leaf or Volt battery pack to tear down. I plan on building a couple electric velomobiles over the next year so I can use the panels to charge the battery packs for the velos. I do have 1kwh of LifePo4's laying around right now so I could just turn those into a couple 500 whr packs also. Sorry for the rambling. You probably won't see much else from me in this post for a while as I already have too much on my plate. Just excited to share the price level on the panels.
JJ

That’s a great deal.
I would look at installing them right away grid tied for now.
The sooner the better.
Solar is great but it makes a few dollars a day and it just takes time to add up.
The sooner they start making money the better.
Go to PV watts and see how much money you are losing each day they are not making power for you.

That's around half the lowest price I normally see for panels like that.

Yes. Very fortunate on this buy. That's why I bought before I was really ready for them.

"Solar is great but it makes a few dollars a day and it just takes time to add up.
The sooner they start making money the better.
Go to PV watts and see how much money you are losing each day they are not making power for you."

I average less than $30/month for electric(and that is split between two people). I know it would pay a portion back but then I would have to follow someone else's rules to connect up to the utility. I know enough about electricity to build a safe and usable standalone system when the time comes. Also there is still the minimum monthly fee of about $20/mo as far as I know. But I should double check and see if that's true if I have solar installed. Thanks for the thought though.
JJ

Finally getting ready to do something with all the clutter laying around. I talked about the Volt battery I bought in a different post. Now I have separated it into 8 x 48 volt, 2 kwh battery packs. I already have a Victron charge controller. Most of what I need now is the electrical equipment to put everything together. That would be circuit breakers, enclosures, wiring etc. However I am still trying to choose an inverter. Do any of you guys have experience with Aims or Sigineer? I have read great reviews and terrible reviews about the Aims inverters including that they are not true sine wave. I've seen people say that the Sigineer is just a repackaged Aims. Any thoughts?

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/membe...embled-48v.jpg

Eight pack of Volt cells.

JJ

buy solar panels from china
 

Is anybody interested to buy solar panels from China? Leeka corp. is the best choice.

Are you still working on this jj?

For the Volt packs I would recommend using a basic inverter. I like the CNBOU line. And then use a programmable charger or power supply to charge the batteries if necessary.

In a budget install it would save some trouble.

And with a pack of 8 modules. Do the BMS. The price is dropping for reliable equipment.

Yep, I'm still slowly working on this project. I bought a super cheap Chinese 3Kw inverter just to play with until I decide to buy enough equipment to be able to go off grid completely. Found an old steel box on CL to use as a battery box for $30. Currently building a cabinet for the electronics. If I got real busy on it I probably could finish up in just a few days. But I'm leaving on vacation in two days so it's not a priority at the moment. I'll update photos and the build when I finally complete it.
JJ

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=374

Hey! I'm back. Well screwed around taking my time on this for months and finally got it more or less done. Installed the panels I think back in December. There are 8- 310 watt panels so if needed they could provide around 2500 watts of power max.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=368

Found this steel box to house my batteries on CL for $30. It was kind of beat up with a fair amount of surface rust but none too deep. Sooo..

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=367

A $10 can of Rustoleum and she's good as new.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=366

The Volt batteries fit nicely and leave enough room for cabling and circuit breakers. Eventually I'll
strap those batteries down.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=369
And now they are wired up.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=372

Well all those wires had to go somewhere and here it is before the wire run. The charge controller is a Victron that can handle up to 5800 watts with a 48 volt output to match up the the 48 volt Chevy Volt battery packs. I over sized it on purpose because next year I expect to double the size of the system.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=373

Here is what it looks like all wired up. The smaller wires coming in from the top left are ten gauge from the panels and they get combined through the three breakers on the left. Max voltage can be a bit over 200 v. The larger 2 gauge wires on the lower left go to and from the battery pack. The breaker on the right of the din rail is the shutoff coming from the batteries going to the inverter. This is just a cheap $300/3000 watt inverter for the time being because that is all I really need at this time.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=370

The cable run between the battery box and the control box was really simple. Inch and a quarter pvc conduit and a couple LB's. However that was a pretty tight fit so next time I go up to at least inch and a half.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=371

For the first few days of testing I just ran an extension cord into the house which can be seen coming out the left side of the control box. Oh yeah,the control box was free too so no cost lost there. Except I do have to cut some wood for a front door for it. For a more permanent wire run into the house I used half inch emt shown coming out of the right side of the box. That goes into a pre-existing opening that I remove the outlet from and then placed a new outlet inside the house. We have pretty low electrical usage here at the house so I am only powering the high use appliances. In our case that would be the refrigerator(1.5-2.0 kwh/day), my television(.5 to 1 kwh/day) and the same with my room mates tv. Additionally I have begun doing all electrical cooking at the inverter location(coffee, blender, rotisserie, and veggie steamer. Our normal usage is between 7 and 9 kwh/day. Now that the solar is in use our utility usage is between 3 and 6 kwh/day.

If I hadn't mentioned it, this is a stealth off grid system. So, not feeding into the utility grid at all. I know that many people think that we should be grid tied so we can sell our excess power to the local utility but I am a fan of Jack Rickard (video link later) in this respect. I don't want to sell my energy to the power company at a rate they get to dictate. Our bill will be low enough that for the most part it will be below the minimum charge per month of around $20. For $20 per month I don't mind using the power company as an energy backup. Also in California the utilities have to give us some sort of climate change credit twice a year that will somewhat negate that $20/month fee. Our last climate credit was $53 and the one before that was around $70. It's due again in October.

Right now I probably have around $4000 into the build and by the time I get done it will likely be double that. But I expect to have 50 kwh of battery pack and a total of about 5 kw of panels. Then what I'll do is install a 200 amp manual transfer switch so I can turn off the utility power feed when I want. My guess is I wouldn't need them more than a few time a year. Then again, I might just get a backup generator and go off grid completely. Back to economics. I know I will never get the cash back that I have put into this thing. I simply manage our energy usage well enough that our bills here are extremely low in the first place. But everybody needs a hobby and one of my hobbies is taking money away from the utility companies. Hell, I've spent more money on my bicycles in the past ten years than I will have total on the solar install by the time I'm done. How much do you guys spend on your other hobbies?

The Jack Rickard video link.

https://youtu.be/98YDEbgLs2A







__________________
JJ

Very nice! Thanks for catching us up on the project.

It finally happened. The grid went down over about a ten square mile area this morning. However my fridge continued humming away using the battery pack and I could still make a fresh pot of coffee just as though there was no problem at all. The only concession I made was to switch the fish tank over from grid power to solar power so the little fishies could stay swimming. Power was only down a couple hours but it made me chuckle to see all the solar homes in the area that were without power because they are grid tied. Humorously enough(at least to me), one of my neighbors is having additional grid tied solar installed on his house right at this moment.
JJ

Little Update.

Been a couple months now since I brought the system online. Things of note. My 2500 watt system has output in excess of 2600 watts a couple times. While I am not getting maximum use out of the system, it is getting a good workout. As I’ve said before all components are outside of the house. The temperature outside has been as high as 105F and I have had no failures yet.

The Victron controller which has no internal fan says it will output max power at 40C(104F) and below. I think it shuts down around 60C(140F). Early on I tested it with and without an external fan. In general, I have found that having a small external 20 watt fan blowing on the controller drops its temperature around 5C. I have to think keeping the temperature lower on any electronics will help extend its life. So far the controller shows a few hundred kwh output. That includes charging the batteries and powering whatever else happened to be running.

The cheap Reliable inverter has also performed without problems. Even when outputting over 2000 watts in 100F+ temps it did not shut down. Its internal fans were working hard though. This inverter is only supposed to be 85% efficient. The charge controller is supposed to be in excess of 90% efficient. So overall I would guess about a 75% efficient system. Doesn’t really matter right now as I’m producing more juice than I can use and don’t have enough storage for it all.

Just missed out on another Volt battery but they have been popping up more frequently. I’ll get another one or two eventually.

I’m one of those in California that is now subject to PG&E determined blackouts while trying to save themselves from further litigation. I am not in an area that would normally be shut down but if it did happen I have enough juice to run a few days without them even through a rainy period. My normal utility electrical idle usage is about 80W. So theoretically I could use less than 2kwh per day. So far, in reality, my lowest usage is 2.4kwh in one day.

The first photo is utility usage per day for the last couple weeks. You can see that most days were below 5 kwh per day. The higher usage days I was out of town and my room mate goes wild when that happens.

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=378

The second photo is of power provided by the solar array for the last thirty days. Today is the most I have used to date as I was testing a small ceramic heater to see if the inverter could handle it. It did. You'll see a couple of really low output days if you look closely. They were under 1 kwh days. For some reason my room mate decided to unplug the solar for extended periods of time(again while I was out of town).

https://ecorenovator.org/forum/pictu...&pictureid=376

So I'm pretty happy. Averaging around 4 kwh per day so far for this month from the grid and using 4 to 5 kwh per day from the solar setup.

JJ

Hi JJ, thanks for this link, really spending a few days looking into the thinking of this guy!

==============

The Jack Rickard video link.

/youtu.be/98YDEbgLs2A







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JJ[/QUOTE]

I'm amazed you managed to get the idle usage down to a mere 80W... If I can get mine under 500W, I feel like I've accomplished a lot!!

Funny thing is that I don't know where most of it is going. I know my security system uses about ten watts. Probably a couple watts each on computers when they are in sleep mode even though the Kill-A-Watt meter doesn't measure anything. Printers are turned off when not in use. There are three digital clocks that pull a few milliwatts each and the garage door opener circuit is always running but I can't imagine it pulling more than a few watts. I guess the central air/heating circuit probably pulls a little also but still can't be that much. So that leaves me with about 60 watts of usage that I haven't tracked down...yet. I'll figure it out.
JJ

Oops. Forgot about cable modem and router. That's probably ten or fifteen watts 24/7. Have to measure that.

It's been a full year now since this system was put online so I guess it's about time for an update. First off, I've had zero problems with the system since installation. That's a great thing. Never got a BMS for the batteries but I check them every couple weeks and they all are maintaining balance. I have harvested almost 2500 KWh of energy in the first year. Funny, to me anyway, that most of that energy was obtained in the winter and spring as I was powering a small electric space heater for extra heat in the house. My max daily solar output was right at 16 kwh in one day.

For the summer I had planned to buy a small window air conditioning unit but so far it has been a really mild summer for Sacramento. I've used 14 kwh total on the central air and the last time that happened was on June 4th. Our temps have mostly been in the low to upper 90's this summer with a couple short foray's over 100. So why no air conditioning? Well I live in an area that has low humidity most of the time and the area also receives a nice cool 55 to 60 degree breeze on most nights coming in from the Pacific ocean even though we are 80 or 90 miles away from the ocean. Locally that is known as the Delta Breeze. So open all the windows at night, cools the house down to the low to mid 60's, shut it up in the morning before the temps go up. The warmest it has been in the house since June is about 84 degrees and that was on a day when the outside temps reached 104. The last few days it has been no higher than 95 outside and 75 inside.

I have a video security system that I don't monitor that often but I connected a monitor to it the other day and the video on all four cameras was very ugly and unusable. I haven't determined whether the cause is the camera's power supply or if it is the video feed from the recording unit but since it wasn't working I unplugged it. Turns out the system pulls about 20 watts. My cable modem and router are in the same vicinity as the security system so I was thinking about them being powered 24/7. I will sit in front of this silly computer up to 6 hours a day and waste an enormous amount of time but the other say 18 hours those two things just sit there wasting electrons. So I went ahead and shut the router and modem down too. So the end result of this long ramble is that I am now able to get my idle power usage down to 33 watts at least when the roomie is not around. She is gone this weekend so I expect to have my first couple of days in which I use just slightly over/under 1 kwh for an entire 24 hour period. Man that's going to piss off PGE. Yay!
JJ

I don't know what it's like there but in the UK switching a modem/router off each night will result in slowly reduce your internet speeds as the system assumes that the connection is too poor to handle the higher speed. It takes quite a while for the speed to come back up again as well. I am guessing it will be the same for you.

Updating this old thread. It finally happened. After three and a half years the gubberment figured out that I had an "UNPERMITTED" solar installation. Someone(PG&E) had complained that I had an unpermitted solar installation. Well I knew it wouldn't pass code, and it was such a small system so after notification from said gubberment to remove the system by such and such a date, I did remove it. Here's where it gets funny. I contacted the gubberment to let them know that the system had been removed. They replied that I needed a permit to remove the system. I told them that it was already gone. Well sir, you still need a permit and an inspection to verify this. So I got the permit and had an inspector look at where the system was installed and all was well. Only cost $80. Could have been worse I suppose. You know...fines, liens, etc.

So during the time the system was installed I generated 12,000 useable kwh. Never did install a bms but did check the battery packs regularly. They never went more than a few tenths of a volt out of balance. At our $0.33/kwh, the system basically paid for itself over the three and a half year period. I have since sold off a few of the panels for a small profit over what i paid for them. I kept the batteries and the inverter and will make a backup battery for the house just large enough to run a fridge in case of power outages. I will have to charge it from the grid though. Oh well.

jj