DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
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DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
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Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#2Will Prose seems like a really great person. If you’re interested in what you see on this site, check out his YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/WillProwse
Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#3This is super awesome! I do some overlanding/longer roadtrips in backcountry but have yet to gather the courage to install a solar system. Certainly bookmarking this for future reference :D
Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#4Buy this, buy that and oh! don't DIY because my stuff is more awesome and everything. Since when we get ads at top of HN?. I flagged this crap.
Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#5This is super awesome! I do some overlanding/longer roadtrips in backcountry but have yet to gather the courage to install a solar system. Certainly bookmarking this for future reference :D
If you're going to do solar on an RV, you really should read Handy Bob Solar too [0]. The site formatting sucks, it's very much wall-o-text, and he's absolutely right in everything he says and rants about regarding RV solar.
Far too many solar installers just treat a system as the entry to people coming back for more, when the problem is that they don't know enough to adjust it properly for the stuff that was installed in the first place.
[0]: https://handybobsolar.wordpress.com/
//EDIT: So, apparently, a site that's been static since 2011 and I've linked quite a lot over the years was updated again in 2020 with some ranting about Covid. You can safely ignore that, and read his older writings on solar installs, because just about everything he says about that is correct, at a "Spend five years hands on with solar and you'll eventually come to agree with him, no matter how loony he sounds about some of it when you start in."
Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#6This is super awesome! I do some overlanding/longer roadtrips in backcountry but have yet to gather the courage to install a solar system. Certainly bookmarking this for future reference :D
If you're going to do solar on an RV, you really should read Handy Bob Solar too [0]. The site formatting sucks, it's very much wall-o-text, and he's absolutely right in everything he says and rants about regarding RV solar. Far too many solar installers just treat a system as the entry to people coming back for more, when the problem is that they don't know enough to adjust it properly for the stuff that was install…
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Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#7Will Prose seems like a really great person. If you’re interested in what you see on this site, check out his YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/WillProwse
The problem with him, and people like him on YouTube, is that about 90% of what they say is fine, and 10% ranges from "iffy" to "This is a good way to burn your house down - at some unknown point in the future." The average viewer of that sort of material can't tell the difference, and by the time you can, you're not in need of handwaving entry level information, because you can read the design documents, spec sheets, NEC, and do things yourself.
YouTube is simply the wrong medium to try to teach detailed, "can kill you" things like electricity. It's especially wrong when you try to make it about personality, humor, etc moreso than hard technical truths.
Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#8I recently set up my own off grid solar system in a tiny cabin that I designed and had built.
I used the Solar Controller+Inverter Combos recommended on this site (Growatt) but ultimately switched to ones by Renogy. The Growatt one I purchased has a wifi adapter and app - wifi requirement was a deal breaker when remote. The renogy one has a Bluetooth adapter and app, plus feels better designed (though actually I think the internals are all pretty similar).
There are a couple surprise gotchas I didn’t know:
1) These Controller+Inverter combo units require a battery to turn on. This means: if your battery runs completely out of charge, you have to get electricity from somewhere to charge your battery a bit before the Controller+Inverter will turn on and charge your battery again. I was pretty annoyed at how not “off grid” this felt.
2) Temperatures below freezing are bad for batteries. I purchased a Renogy 48v smart battery with self heating. Unfortunately less sun in winter means less energy, and heat production is energy intensive. I’m not at the cabin 100% of the time so I have to take the battery with me when I leave to avoid spoiling/freezing it. Still not sure how I’ll ultimately get around this.
Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going to do solar on an RV, you really should read Handy Bob Solar too [0]. The site formatting sucks, it's very much wall-o-text, and he's absolutely right in everything he says and rants about regarding RV solar. Far too many solar installers just treat a system as the entry to people coming back for more, when the problem is that they don't know enough to adjust it properly for the stuff that was install…
Quoted post unavailable.
Read the rest about solar, I actually just grabbed it from my bookmarks and didn't realize he'd posted anything new since 2011. Ignore the first few posts and carry on reading his rants about solar, batteries, wire gauge, charge controller location, charging voltage, panel placement, shading, etc.
Re: DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Read the rest about solar, I actually just grabbed it from my bookmarks and didn't realize he'd posted anything new since 2011. Ignore the first few posts and carry on reading his rants about solar, batteries, wire gauge, charge controller location, charging voltage, panel placement, shading, etc.
No post body was provided.