# Finally bought some property



## RobinD69 (Feb 8, 2010)

Ok I have finally bought a small piece of land, 2.5 acres, with a single-wide trailer on it. The trailer needs some massive cleaning and the grass needs cutting. I have a little slip of woods about 1/4 acre but the rest is clear and rather level. The reason I am posting here is because I don't want to hook to the grid. It already has everything needed to hook to the grid but I want solar and wind for my power. The trailer is a 14x78. 

I have a few harbor freight solar panels still in the box and a couple of marine batteries. One set of solar panels are a little beat up, got the out of the garbage.

Any suggestions or help will be appreciated.

Robin


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

1. Where do you live ? (that "location" box you skipped when you registered is actually quite helpful when you seek info like you are) Is wind even feasible ? It isn't for many.

2. How much power will you require ?

The typical household in the US uses about 900kwhrs per month. I live in east Tennessee. My solar setup produces 900kwhrs on average per month. It is 11,000 watts of solar. Those Harbor Freight panels are 15 watts each. I'd need 733 of them to produce what I do with 50 larger panels.

Starting to get some idea of the scale of what you're asking ?


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## RobinD69 (Feb 8, 2010)

Gaston, North Carolina. As for power I want to run the whole house. I see what you are saying but what kind of battery bank do you run?


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

RobinD69 said:


> As for power I want to run the whole house.


Yes, I get that....unfortunately, you'll have to learn to put *numbers *to that want. For example, how much power did you use this month in the place you live now ?

As I stated above, the 'average' household uses 900kwhrs/mo.....if you intend to be average, you're going to need a $25,000 system....probably more. See how cheap grid power looks now ? 

And you can pretty much forget wind. Unless you live on the top of the ridges in western NC, you don't have a wind site.

Now you can certainly move below 'average'....often well below, but that ain't cheap either. Electric things that heat are the biggest consumers of power. Gone are the electric stove, electric furnace, electric water heater, etc, all replaced with something else like gas, or wood in the case of space heating. Next is lighting....go all LED. IF you significantly lower your electrical use, you lower the size of the system required




RobinD69 said:


> I see what you are saying but what kind of battery bank do you run?


Mine is a 1200 amp/[email protected] set of AGM telecom batteries now, but previously, I used L16 wet cell batteries, 8 of them in 2 strings of 24v, for an 800amp/hr setup. Today, those would cost about $2200 for that set.

This set of telecom batteries in my trailer costs $15,000 new.










AND I'm not 'off grid'.....we back feed the grid our excess, and only go off grid when the grid is down for us. If I were off grid, my use would have to be a lot lower, or my battery bank a lot bigger to do the same use.


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## RobinD69 (Feb 8, 2010)

I appreciate your help, as you can obviously tell I am a newbie to solar and wind. I was raised with woodstoves and gas generators. Where I currently live we use a lot of power between 900 to 1500 per month but I really want to downsize for my new property. Like I said the few solar panels I do have and the batteries have not been used yet.


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## wanabefree (Aug 2, 2016)

It is simple to do the math and see if Solar is even viable. How much does your local utility charge per Kilowatt. Multiply that times your average estimated usage. Solar has a long term payoff and will generally take 15 to 20 years to pay for itself, You will have to put a lot of money upfront for the long term benefits. 
My suggestion is go ahead and play around with those Harbor freight panels and you will soon see they are really only good for limited use such as a light or two , maybe power your computer and charge your cellphones but not much else.
I used to live in Southern California where Edison charges a fortune for power. we averaged about 800 Kilowatts per month @ about .31cents per killowatt so our average bill was about $250.00 per month. We had a solar company come along and offer us a system that costs about $30,000.00 but instead we just signed a power purchase agreement @.15 cents a kilowatt so it cut out bill in half . Since then we moved to Northern California in Lassen County. Here our local power company only charges .15 cents per kilowatt so Solar would not save us anything.
The main thing to look at is how much power do your require and how much will it cost to generate it using solar vs just staying on the grid . In most cases I believe staying on the grid will work out cheaper in the long run and more dependable.


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## lynnemabry (Dec 28, 2013)

RobinD69 said:


> I appreciate your help, as you can obviously tell I am a newbie to solar and wind. I was raised with woodstoves and gas generators. Where I currently live we use a lot of power between 900 to 1500 per month but I really want to downsize for my new property. Like I said the few solar panels I do have and the batteries have not been used yet.



Are you talking dollars or watts. That is a lot to spend for power and is probably lots of kilowatts. 
You need a kill a watt device( about $25 at Home Depot.) this will let you know how much power your appliances use.
The guys on this board have a lot of skill and knowledge to answer design questions.
The thing you need to figure out is what you can live without. 
I have a very small system, 9 180 watt panels, 4 L16 batteries and a 2000 watt, 24 volt inverter. With all of this I can almost run my fridge, chest freezer, lights, Internet, tv, etc. No toaster, electric coffee maker, microwave, AC, dryer and the washer is run from the generator. Plus we have a back up generator and 24 volt charger. A guess is that we are about $7000 into this. Plus we will need to replace our battery bank soon$2000 since we did not care for it properly. 
It's not cheap, it's a lifestyle choice. For us we would have spent a lot more running power to the house.


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## RobinD69 (Feb 8, 2010)

Thanks both of you, I will take it one small step at a time.


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## Offgrid48 (Jul 28, 2016)

We setup a 32' travel trailer off grid while we were building our off grid cabin. First, those Harbor Freight Solar Panels aren't going to do you any good at 15 watts. You need at least 100 watt panels, the more the better. My suggestion is to first get a good battery bank and inverter. This is the most important part of your system as it generates your AC power. I would recommend a 12 or 24v system with 1000-2000 amps of battery. You can use a generator to charge the batteries quickly, we did this for first year or so and it worked well. We put a few solar panels up to trickle charge the batteries when we were gone as we didn't live there full time.

You can get a remote electric start generator for $300-$400 which you can use directly to run your AC, and to also charge your battery bank. Then run the Inverter at night and when you don't want to listen to the noise of the generator. use those harbor freight solar panels for trickle charge.

for water, we collected rain water and filtered and never had a water shortage.


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## RobinD69 (Feb 8, 2010)

Offgrid48 said:


> We setup a 32' travel trailer off grid while we were building our off grid cabin. First, those Harbor Freight Solar Panels aren't going to do you any good at 15 watts. You need at least 100 watt panels, the more the better. My suggestion is to first get a good battery bank and inverter. This is the most important part of your system as it generates your AC power. I would recommend a 12 or 24v system with 1000-2000 amps of battery. You can use a generator to charge the batteries quickly, we did this for first year or so and it worked well. We put a few solar panels up to trickle charge the batteries when we were gone as we didn't live there full time.
> 
> You can get a remote electric start generator for $300-$400 which you can use directly to run your AC, and to also charge your battery bank. Then run the Inverter at night and when you don't want to listen to the noise of the generator. use those harbor freight solar panels for trickle charge.
> 
> for water, we collected rain water and filtered and never had a water shortage.


Thank you, like I said earlier I am starting small so any and all suggestions are great.


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## samson (Jan 21, 2017)

I am posting here so as to maybe save those build systems from having any involvement with Fronius, I have 2 IG5100 that are 5 years old. One failed 6 months ago and the other one failed a month ago. I cannot get them to honor their 10 year warranty. There is no dealer with an hour and that one will not service the Fronius in-warranty unit. Fronius treats the end user with animosity. My second system had Sunny Boy -- go SMA, avoid Fronius at all costs.


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## samson (Jan 21, 2017)

We use a hybrid inverter made by Schneider Electric, Xantrex. Works with panels, battery and grid. XW 6848 is the current model, about $3750


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