Basically made a really sturdy pergola and then mounted solar panels to it. Ran that wiring to the MPPT, batteries and inverter in the garage. Put in a new small breaker box right next to the existing one, which made it real easy to just grab the wires for the critical loads and run them over to the new panel.
Comment on Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them
clif@lemmy.world 23 hours agoOut of curiosity, how do you have that setup (at a high level)?
I’ve got a bluetti system for emergency power (12kWh, 6kW AC output) but I need to plug things directly into it. It’d be nice to feed it directly to my house wiring but … selectively. That is, I wouldn’t want to power the HVAC but it would be nice to not have to shuffle the fridge/freezer plugs from the wall to the inverter.
Dedicated circuit(s) with a manual switch from mains to inverter, I’m guessing? But then we get into all the extras required to do that safely and avoid back feeding the grid.
Granted, they have systems/setups specifically for whole house power but I don’t want to feed the whole house, just the important circuits/appliances.
artyom@piefed.social 22 hours ago
clif@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Aha, the separate breaker box is the part I wasn’t thinking about. I’ll need to do some thinking on how I could make that work for me. Thank you for the info.
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
Kent?
artyom@piefed.social 9 hours ago
No but he sounds like a cool guy
Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
He is, colleague of mine has a very similar setup lol
agile_squirrel@lemmy.ml 18 hours ago
I don’t understand the parallel part. Do you mean independent, so the critical stuff can only get power from the solar circuit?
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
You could plug the bluetti into wall power and while there is wall power it runs off that like a UPS.
That setup I believe would also use solar while it was producing, but the moment solar was gone it’d switch to the house power.
If the overall load is more than house power can give via an outlet (you coupd add a beefier outlet) it’d start draining the battery.
I dont know if bluettis software says use solar / battery only until battery is 10% kinda thing so this might not be optimized to use solar properly.
artyom@piefed.social 18 hours ago
I mean the 2 systems are not connected in any way. They’re completely independent.
If it stays cloudy for a few days, or I am anticipating a potential outage, I can plug in a battery charger to the grid.
My batts are 48V EG4 units. But I would go the “DIY” route if I were to do it again, they are considerably less expensive.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 6 hours ago
That’s how one of the hospitals I worked at did it. Probably wasn’t a manual switch though.