This project has been a few years in the making, but now it is functional and providing almost all the buildings here on the farm with power. My friends from Alabama came back for a second time to get it all working, the first time we had some issues with the inverter I bought. So this time I got a Sol-Ark inverter and very happy with it.
With a battery bank I can dial in how I want to consume power. By charging up these batteries I can pull power any time I want without needing to dip into the grid power if the consumption is low enough. As of right now I have only pulled around 1000w-2000w from the batteries but that is a great start.
The red box by the batteries is a BMS (Battery management system) it keeps an eye on the cells and makes sure they do not over charge or get under charged. Those wires going to each battery monitor them.
Getting the inverter all wired up I left the job to them, but me and my foreman trenched the wires, set up the solar panels and put the batteries in place. So it was a mix of work between all of us.
Luckily we had a disconnect switch at the back of the home, otherwise I would have had the utility company pull the meter. But that did not need to be done for my house.
Going to have the wires cleaned up in the future, but for now its functional and I am glad.
Also going get a electrician to get those wires poking out of the wall property secured. For now we taped them up good and cut the power off at the disconnect switch for those wires. When I wire up a second Sol-Ark inverter I will need those grid wires but now for now we do not need them as everything is going through one service.
I have two distrubtion panels in my house, but only one inverter. So we joined them, but long term I plan on having it done properly with one panel and one inverter for each.
We also need to build a second solar array. Due to me only running two 6 guage DC wires to my house I can pull up to 5500W of power. Though my inverter supports up to 15,000W so I think I am going to add more panels in the future to make use of it all. The farm house is getting most of the power right now as that is how we ran all the wires going through that house. So all the panels are being used, but most of the power is going to a smaller house which is not ideal. My house is limited to one channel of PV, so 5500w is all I can get at the moment. But I will change that by adding more panels and running more PV lines to get the full amount of solar energy.
So lots to do on this still, but its working and helping to offset my power consumption from my utility.
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