Thanks. That is a good read.
evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 1 week ago
1st thing to do is to figure out what you need to power. Solar panels are way cheaper than charging and storage. Try to decide how much on-demand power during the dark part of the day you really need. If you can do most of what you need during the sunny part of the day, you can directly power stuff with no need for batteries. It may be that for your use case, you are better off buying 4 times as many solar panels, but no batteries.
Batteries account for 80-90% of total costs and energy invested in an off-grid solar system
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 week ago
czardestructo@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Listen to this guy, made a solar powered trailer/workshop and battery storage is the biggest limitation. If you get 3 days of bad weather the battery drains and you go offline. Or you spend tons of money over sizing the system and the batteries are wasted 95% time. Its a game of numbers and use cases.
evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 6 days ago
What kind of workshop are you running? I’ve been intrigued by direct solar applications since learning about this place on this low tech mag article.
…lowtechmagazine.com/…/direct-solar-power-off-gri…
czardestructo@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Its essentially my garage and workbench with tools. My home doesnt have a garage so I made one. I built a modest bench into the nose of the trailer and put the inverter, battery and equipment under it. There is a cell hotspot and raspberry pi that controls the vent fans, exterior lights, etc so its a fully self contained, mobile workshop I can take wherever. I usually park it way out back on my property.