openinverter forum

Yesterday we went on a road trip to collect 10 x 250w solar panels kindly donated by a forum member bringing my collection of panels to 19 (approx 5.5kw) and thus the start of my gradual off grid home project. Initially, power from these panels will be stored in 8 x Valance 130ah lifepo4 batteries in a 48v configuration to drive a Victron 3kw inverter.

But that's all a bit small and boring to the plan is to build a DIY 15kw 3 phase inverter and tie in my 3 cars for use as energy storage when not in use. This project will focus on low cost, upcycling and DIY so should be reachable by many. And of course opensource and ripping off as much of Johannes's work as possible so I can look sexy, make big $$$ and retire to Lanzarote.

lolsarote. Good man. I'm slowly increasing my solar too. got two arrays one 4.6kw of 23 kioto 200w watt panels on the garage and kitchen roof, then 6x 8.33 265w panels that currently are leant again my garage awaiting me to build my wife a pergola onto which they will go and lastly I have 6x 100w fuji 317v roll up cells which I am looking to tie into a 3rd inverter.

For battery storage I have some silicone sla 12v batteries 6 of 68ah (were that) and 25 blue 0.3c lifepo4 calb 60ah cells which I will try to get going with the Stuart Pittaway v4 bms, I also have a lot of 40v mower batteries for ebikes and a custom 10s7p amtech battery too to use. Looking to use some of johannes' work with the soyosource inverter but used a shelly EM to do the monitoring of the house main live out. Tied it all into home assistant on a rpi3 (which I retired from octoprint duties as it kept corrupting its sd card when it lost power). I hoping multiple soyosource inverters will place nice along side each other one for the sla and one for the lifepo4.

I will also be dumping the rest of the power into our 2011 muxsan'd leaf and our 2014 outlander. Hopefully one day I will get around to a fully diy ev but for now this solar/grid battery stuff is getting priority.

I am looking forward to the next load of Damien's shenanigans.

....aaannnd we are off grid...

Nice! I finally caved to a commercial install of solar to my house, but got an inverter that is "battery ready" so I can potentially utilize my EV conversion project as a home battery when I'm not driving it for days on end.

Time for a little update. The victron decided to blow one mosfet leg about a week ago. Ordered replacements from Ali. In the meantime I got lucky and picked up this "Easun" 5.5kw hybrid inverter second hand locally. Literally just threw some panels down in the field and have been running off grid since. Charged the goose today totally from solar as there was nowhere else for the energy to go as the house battery was full Very impressed with this cheap little inverter. Also running 2 x 600 soladin grid tie inverters into the "local grid" created by the easun. It detects the gtis trying to raise the ac voltage and pumps it back into the batteries if there is not enough demand from loads. The solar thermal is heating the water to between 40 and 50c everyday as a bonus.

No Damien, you're doing it wrong!

You need to be a slave to the grid. Dependent on the network. Pay bills every month just to survive!

You keep doing stuff like this and it's going to catch on!

I have been running my own home built off grid inverter for 6 years now, runs at up to 8KW continuos with a 48V 775AH forklift battery. Also have 2 grid tie inverters connected to it so most of the day the off grid inverter is running backwards charging the battery from the GTI's. I also have a Arduino powered controller with IGBT's to reduce the power to the GTI's when the battery gets to Absorb and float.

No power bills for over 6 years now.

Although I have been thinking a Tesla model 3 batteries and a Prius inverter to run my house might be a good project for the future.

Here is an interesting way to charge your car.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-02/ ... /101394840

nice setup, how cold does it get inte vinter?

linda.ljungdahl wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 9:52 am nice setup, how cold does it get inte vinter?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland#Climate

Great job! You could even plant some potatoes below the panels (if you set them up a bit higher). A study once showed you can acheive higher total output (of potateos) than without panels, which provide some shade. If that sounds fun ^^