[Jrgunn5150]

I wish I had room for this at my home where it would be more useful, but selling power back into the grid works as well.

This is 50 250w panels from Santan Solar I paid 70 bucks a piece plus shipping for, so 3500 plus 150, 3650.

Coupled with two 7500w grid tie inverters, these were 1600 each.

I have no battery bank at this time, power just ebbs and flows in and out of the grid like the tide, and usage at my shop is basically nothing, so I get a check for 180-200 bucks a month. This includes charging my Chevy Bolt at 2-3 times a week. Consumers requires a fairly complex series of steps to get set up to sell power into the grid, but once it's set up it just goes.

All in, with lumber, mounts, screws, blah blah blah, I probably have 8k into this whole setup. I also have a Nissan Leaf 24kw battery I'll configure to give myself battery backup so I can keep some of the power in reserve.

 

[SHARPMACHINE]

So, do you figure payback is about 3 to 4 years?

Nice set up!! My neighbor has something similar, except she is off the grid. Did it because it was gonna be close to 10k to run power to her house.

 

[Jrgunn5150]

So, do you figure payback is about 3 to 4 years?

Nice set up!! My neighbor has something similar, except she is off the grid. Did it because it was gonna be close to 10k to run power to her house.

Realistically probably 5, there's not as much sunlight in the winter, plus I keep adding things lol.

My cabin in Ontonagon has the same issue, power would be stupid expensive to run, so we just have 600w of panels and a forklift battery lol.

 

[whiterhino]

I would be all over this is I had the room - but I don't. Good for you.

 

[Jrgunn5150]

My shop is about 1/4 mile from my home, so I get the benefit of selling the power, but not the full, eff you grid power I wish I had as well.

One day I'll consolidate the 2 though.

 

[wrath]

What is the structure to hold the panels up? When I was researching solar again I noticed that the rails you can buy are almost as expensive as Chinese solar panels.

 

[Jrgunn5150]

It's galvanized fence posts lol.

 

[wrath]

That looks pretty expensive. So did you use the commercially available rails also?

 

[Jrgunn5150]

It's all fence posts, literal chainlink fence posts I got from the steel yard for 1.00 a piece.

There's little L tabs on the crossbars and 1/4-20 hardware clamping it.

 

[hondadirtracer]

That's awesome consumers will pay you. Dte limits your array size so you don't over produce too much and they give you account credits that go toward your bill.

 

[JohnnyJ]

Nice work hippy

 

[Jrgunn5150]

I have a schmedium gasifier and I've thought about running my generator on it and backfeeding to see what I get out of that.

Might be a project for the spring time.

 

[9T4YJ]

That's a nice setup. I looked into a few companies that install systems, what a rip off. One place wanted 35K for an 14kW system, and the other placed wanted 24k for a 12.5kW system, slightly better, but still BS. I'm like, the hardware should be 7-8 grand, what's with the ridiculous installation cost?

I still want to put something together eventually, but I don't have a very good south facing roof surface to mount, and most of the yard is in tree shade I can't do anything about. The good part of the yard is already garden.

 

[Jrgunn5150]

As usual, when the government get's involved to help, they just drive costs up and screw everything up lol.

Most of those companies exist to grab cash and tax incentives, and the consumers don't care because they're shopping monthly payment, not cost.

 

[Ajdemello]

I was looking into solar last year. Consumers stupid time and half summer rate is killing me. This has me thinking about it again. The stuff I was looking at was way more money. 5 years to pay back dont seem bad at all! I would put it at my house so maybe I could break even quicker then that. Looks good!

 

[Jrgunn5150]

People can DIY a system pretty easily if they wanted to.

Especially if you pieced it together over time.

People are their own worst enemies where they want literally everything all at once up front right now with no effort on their part, so then they get hit with some huge cost and wind up doing nothing.

 

[wave_crusher]

People can DIY a system pretty easily if they wanted to.

Especially if you pieced it together over time.

People are their own worst enemies where they want literally everything all at once up front right now with no effort on their part, so then they get hit with some huge cost and wind up doing nothing.

Agree. Solar systems are not that hard to build even if you have no idea what you are doing. Start small and learn as you go, slowly build the system as you get knowledge.

How our system at camp started out, super simple and IMO was a junk setup lol! It's a much better system now, a little bigger but nothing like yours. At least now we have a good charge controller, not a cheap $10 amazon one, good batteries and good cabling. Biggest thing we upgraded was the inverter.

 

[Jrgunn5150]

My first system was a 75 dollar 100w panel and a couple golf cart batteries lol.

Ran our truck camper for years though. Still have it as a matter of fact lol.

 

[wave_crusher]

My first system was a 75 dollar 100w panel and a couple golf cart batteries lol.

Ran our truck camper for years though. Still have it as a matter of fact lol.

View attachment 282662

Yep; When we park our camper at our lake lot that's all I have it connected to.I just have a single 100w panel connected to a cheap PWM charge controller just to keep the camper battery topped off. I'll probably never get anything different because we don't need anything more, we only really use the lights

Cheap smaller systems have their place for sure

 

[Jrgunn5150]

I'm going to start purchasing these server rack batteries for my backup, they're pretty affordable.

5 would give you 20kwh of power, which is what my house uses per day running like everything is fine.

All in this would push my cost to near 15k, but, I'd be able to actually have power after dark rather than just dumping it into the grid, which is the ultimate goal.

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