$6000 off grid whole house Solar System

[flowerbug]

The thing I don’t understand is what happens for a hard freeze if you have pipes on the roof?.

up here you have to use a system that is more like a heat exchanger where the fluid in the system contains anti-freeze rated for the expected temperatures or you have what is called a drain back system which only runs when there is enough heat provided by the sun to make sure it doesn't freeze and the rest of the time it is empty so there is no risk of freezing damage. you could also probably have it set up so that there are heat sources that come on to keep it from freezing but that to me would use a lot more energy than you'd likely capture. we can go quite a long time here without any direct sunlight.

 

[mkirkpatrick6411]

Having just finish my 3 year solar install journey I would say the place to start is your electric bill We used an AVERAGE 56KWH per day. Your solar panels will give you 75-80 % of their rating on a very good day ... 1200 watts is not a realistic array size for an average home. I will post a picture of this week at my home. I was able to get our electricity under control and down to about 40-42 KWH / day by just making usage changes and more efficient light/appliances to start. But the moral is clouds kill solar production, location ( I am in Michigan not a spectacular sun spot ). Winter days and snow kill , and the furnace is hungry for electricity. I recommend the DIY Solar forum as a wealth of people and education ...

On the batteries - Lead acid is high maintenance and low life span - how many cycles since it will be used every day ... ? LiFePO4 is a popular chemistry for a reason - I made my own cells to keep the insane prices down and expect maybe 5000 cycles and NO Maintenance. ( 13-15 years ). I did not check out your video - I will - but did do a ton of research on power storage options and batteries in general ... I was (and am) skeptical on a 1600 ah AGM ( the whole bank maybe in parallel maybe ? ) . In general I feel solar is a waste of money without batteries - I have a large array 18K and some days it takes until late afternoon to recharge yesterdays usage ...

Just trying to share my real world these are some actual measures ... You can see the Actual wattage I get from my panels and how it varies on a rainy cloud week first picture second line - stare at that a bit it shows alot. On a sunny cloudless day batteries are filled in a couple hours other days ... not so much.

Last picture shows nicely how we have dropped "red" grid usage a whole bunch by running of the batteries when the sun goes down but this winter will tell me if I can recharge the batteries reliably when the drain is much larger - SAY 50% or 30kwh each day. Scale all of this for your own situation I have a big house and 2 furnace systems ( blower motors + circulator pumps ) that more than double my load in the winter but am frugal in other ways on electric consumption ...

Best of Luck !