Congrats on making a sweet stride in your journey to being more self reliant! Good things come to those who plan and have the patience to wait it out. It won't be long and you'll be able to be 100% grid free and enjoy your AC too. You found the same weakness I did in the chicken tractor/coop and the same fix. 😁👍 It's nice to see Dance Partner happy with her chickens and no doubt things will only get better! Heres to the kids enjoying their summer and making memories that last a lifetime 🌞 🏊♂️ 🚲 🧭 ⛺️ 🛶
Curiosity : Are your batteries lithium iron or lithium iron phosphate? I was very relieved to see they were going inside with your garage not being insulated/conditioned.
Nice Dan! Happy to see you got that in. Looking forward to seeing how it works for you. I just picked up the parts for our system the other day so I can work on installation as I get to it. Nice peace of mind even to just have the parts & supplies on hand so if we need them, we aren’t totally up a creek without a panel. 😉
Congrats, Dan! I'm a little jealous, we'll be 100% off grid when we build on ours but the costs right now have me pretty intimidated. Good job on the reinforcements to thr "tractor." I have to agree with someone else's comment; the coop company seemed to have taken a static tractor design and used flimsy materials to try making it mobile. Good call on pulling out of endorsements.
The chicken tractor looks like they took the cheap omnipresent design for a basic stationairy coop, added 2 wheels and a pullbar and called it moveable. I hope it works for Dancepartner with these modifications though
Great job! Glad to see you on your way to energy resilience. Have you considered looking at a grid-tie inverter? This would allow you to use all of the energy from the solar panels all the time, and any extra needed would come from the grid. Using the solar system only as a back means you are throwing all of the extra energy from the sun away every single day that your batteries are fully charged.
Solid recommendation there Mary 🙂👍 Will has been an excellent fountain of knowledge in all things solar; panels, cables, controllers, inverters, batteries, you name it. One of my favorite things about it is that he isn't beholden to anyone and is a straight shooter. Even more so is that there are a number of companies who take his input/feedback and then use it to improve their products.
Congratulations for being a solar power owner.. With more people being aware of EMP, are companies installing EMP protection to their equipment or is it still on the customer to take the extra step?
That is awesome!! A great idea to start out with the freezers and smaller appliances. Did the installers instruct you on what to do with the panels in case of severe storms?
It was very expensive. I saved up for it a bought it in phases. Those lithium batteries are the majority of the cost. If you look at AGM batteries, you can get a more affordable system.
Just to get our system usable right off the bat with the budget we had, I went old school with “open” (non-AGM) lead acid batteries and will put them in an insulated box and monitor its temperature. Over time I’d love to upgrade to better batteries, perhaps by the time these wear out. That’s something that really helped me make decisions on how big a system to go for, starting out: I wanted a system that would fill our most basic requirements, but be complete and functional from day one. And I sized the components and wiring so we can always add more solar panels and batteries over time, or upgrade to higher quality components. But at least we got SOMETHING going. Things to think about for those just getting started or thinking about it.
