I live up near Duluth, Minnesota, and I set my panels flat on the roof thinking it'd collect snow better. Turned out they barely charged the batteries from November through January. Had to run a extension cord from my neighbor's garage just to keep my fridge going. Anyone else in northern areas figure out a good winter angle for their setup?
I finally switched my home gym's lighting and fan system to a 24V solar panel setup I pieced together for about $400. Before this, every time the power flickered during a session, I'd just pack it up early. Now I've got 4 deep cycle batteries hooked up and they kept the lights on through a 3 hour outage last Tuesday. Anyone else run a small business off grid like this and notice a big drop in your electric bill?
After three months of piecing together panels and a charge controller from eBay finds, I finally got my little shed setup to power my shop's security lights. Plugged in a 100 watt panel and a cheap PWM controller and the battery hit full charge by noon yesterday. Anyone else have a small project like this turn out smoother than you expected?
I've been running 400 watts of solar for 2 years now, but last month's winter storm taught me something. The panels stay covered in snow for days and my battery bank drained to 40% before I could clear them. Is it better to mount them steeper at 60 degrees and lose summer output, or stick with 30 degrees and deal with winter losses?
I was in St. Johnsbury visiting my cousin and he showed me this old farmhouse that runs entirely on a single 400 watt panel and a homemade battery bank from scrapped car batteries. They said it powers their lights, radio, and a small fridge with no issues for two years now. Has anyone else seen setups that tiny actually work long term?
I ran my shop on a lead-acid battery setup for about 4 years, and it was fine but heavy and slow. Last January I swapped to a lithium iron phosphate bank, same 48 volt system. After 8 months, my inverter logs show I get about 30 percent more usable power before the voltage drops off. Has anyone else seen that kind of gap between the two types, or did I just have crummy lead-acid batteries?
My neighbor Greg came over last week to borrow my post hole digger. He noticed my solar panels and asked what kind of batteries I was running. I told him I had four lead-acid deep cycles in the garage. He just nodded and said he switched to lithium iron phosphate last year. He showed me his setup, same number of panels as me, but he can run his fridge for three days straight with no sun. I paid $600 for my batteries two years ago and they're already showing wear. His cost him $900 but he says they'll last ten years easy. Makes me wonder if I should have just saved up longer instead of going cheap.
I ran a comparison on my 200 watt solar panel setup in Austin over two weeks. The PWM controller gave me maybe 8 amps to my battery bank on a sunny day, but the MPPT one pushed 11.5 amps consistently. That extra 30 percent juice is huge for charging my deep cycle batteries faster. Has anyone else seen that big a jump or was my PWM just garbage?