Home made Solar power System

Here is a quick video tour of my home made solar back up power system. It can be done pretty cheaply. I would guess I have about 1600 bucks invested in these 2 systems and they do what I need if the power goes out. Also its handy in the garage to just plug in your garage door and pop it open when the power is out without having to pull the release. If anyone has any questions or ideas for improvement, feel free to post away!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Solar power
• Emergency power
• disaster preparedness
• backup power

[99melissalynn]

Awesome. What did this cost, approx to do?

[Iridium242]

@99melissalynn Probably in the range of 500 to 600 bucks.. but the panels I got cheap from a group buy a few years ago on another site.

[w7mag]

Nice!

Remember, You can't have too much battery if you are going for a part time/emergency type system. If you are going for a full time use system then the dynamics change quite a bit. I'm guessing those are mod sine wave inverters?

[Iridium242]

@w7mag Yup.. they are mod sine wave. I wasn't going to spend a fortune on Pure Sine Wave inverters for a backup system :) I may be adding batteries soon, but then I plan on putting in a pos and neg buss bar and setting it up a bit different.

[Schweizer135]

Can you show how you have it wired up, exactly. It's hard to follow.  How can the small charge controller have just 2 wires to it? Thanks.

[Iridium242]

@Schweizer135 Yeah I can do a hookup video as well.. btw the small charge control.. if you pause the video you can see that each "wire" that is there, is a red and black wire. One side connects to the panel and the other to the batteries. Its hard to see since the wires are kind of stuck together but each side has a red and black.

[MacOSJoey]

I love the high voltage sign. I have the same on my system. Kind of a novelty...

[sirmasterpimp]

Nice setup man, how long does it take to charge the smaller system ?

[w7mag]

@Iridium242 Excellent. Keep us posted as we are looking forward to seeing how this evolves. :-)

[Iridium242]

@delta69alpha Cool, glad you liked it. Its grown some since I first put it in with one 25 watt panel and one deep cycle battery :) But it really comes in handy out here when the power goes down. Also since we work at home, it allows a computer or 2 to run when the power is out so work keeps on going.