The ONE thing that is the hold-up for most people is: GET STARTED!
You have a good-to-great choice of batteries, the heart of any/most RE systems. I think I'm not over-stepping my experience in saying: get started on your battery bank. You can always use them for your 12v applications you mentioned. Of course, it's always best to buy your battery bank all at once, but some cannot do that. If you are ready to get started on any system though, it will never hurt to buy just the batteries all at once if you can. Even if you don't have any other way to convert to 110v, or a way to charge them as yet. The first step is get started! You'll find many ways to start using the 12v power it seems. Even if you need to keep a few seperate for some 24v applications, you won't have that option if you don't get the batteries, will you?
If it takes even a year before you put those batteries into a more complex system, you can always keep them in tip-top shape with a small "wall-wart". A small 1-2amp charger that is.
Looking forward to seeing how you progress, and WELCOME!Rural McG
Yes, get started, gently, with almost anything, and you'll learn a lot.
I have a very small off-grid system, originally 20Wp PV and now several times that size and with a little wind on the side too. I slightly wish that I'd bought the 100Ah battery that I was offered rather than 'cunningly' economising with a 40Ah, but never mind.
But it gave me the confidence to commission and install a grid-tie PV system 10x even the new, inflated off-grid system's size, and I intend to triple the size of my off-grid system this year given my positive experience.
I'm not addicted. I can stop any time I want to. Really. B^>
Rgds
Damon[ Parent ]
As I mentioned in another post, the primary reason I even wandered into this particular field was due to power outages. Last winter I sat in the dark and cold for two days because I didn't have an independed means of powering things. Never again!
I've already started somewhat small. I bought one of the Harbor Freight 45W kits, and currently have the panels in a temporary frame sitting on the roof, keeping a 100AH AGM battery charged on the ham bench. I have to be careful how much I use, of course, as the HF panels will only put back around 9AH per day, but the past couple of weeks I've been running my radios and an RV fluorescent light a few hours in the evenings.
But I've had to seriously modify my operating habits to keep within that meager 9AH, thus the desire to step up the system size. Also, the 100AH battery won't run much in an outage.
My end-game would be a whole-house system (including A/C if I want to really dream, but that adds an insane amount to the power budget) but I need to make a firm decision I'm going to stay here long-term before I go that far. There's a part of me that wants to move out of town and get 10-20 acres so I have room to do some bigger things, but I also dislike long commutes so...! I also won't do loans so it'll take a few years to save up to the whole-house price tag. [ Parent ]
