Please watch this video so you don’t make the same costly mistakes in building your DIY solar panel system as I did. Hopefully this information will save you time, money and a whole lot of frustration. IMPORTANT LINKS: – Grape Solar 280-Watt Polycrystalline Solar Panel: www.amazon.com – MPPT Charge Controllers: www.amazon.com – Grape Solar 250-Watt Monocrystalline Solar Panel: www.homedepot.com – Sunforce 30-Amp Digital Charge Controller: www.homedepot.com – BackwoodsSolar.com
thank you
Harbor Freight is where you go to be penny wise pound foolish.
Sadder still is that now Northern Tool is selling the exact same lousy 45 watt kits in their catalog – but for $225 a piece. That’s even more than those crud kits retail for!
Yes, it would unless you had the batteries for backup. bummer, but still cool!
costco has a great price on their website too
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was really considering HF panels because they where inexpensive. Thanks to you I didn’t make that mistake!!
Awesome. I’d love to see and share a video of you showing what you have and what you had to do without or with less in order to make it all work. I think people need to understand you can’t really take a typical American home with all its big electrical appliances and go off grid very easily.
6V 215Ah (amp hour) golf car batteries I bought from Batteries Plus.I have them wired in 24V groups. I have a total of 12 batteries.
What type of battery setup do you use? Great Video- Thanks
We have had solar for about three years now. the grid tie works great but shuts off when the power goes off.. so far we are extremely pleased with out system
Thank you very much, I’ve been researching and planning for solar myself. This will help immensely.
The voltage of a system is really determined by the charge controller. If you want to go 24v or 48v you will not find the charge controller you need at home depot. I am using 12 v panels and using a 24 v controller and battery bank setup. I am very pleased with the outcome. I’ll have more details shortly in upcoming videos.
Great video and responses. I will be getting into solar soon and you are really helping me and I’m sure lots of other people as well.
Will the 250 watt Home Depot panel work on 12V or 24V or 48V systems? Just wondering if you have to use different solar panels or various voltage systems, or if the charge controller can handle everything for you? Thanks again!
Please keep commenting and videoing. Your information and experience is invaluable to those of us who are not where you are. Please share the path/experience/decisions/mistakes you made along the way and what you learned.
Also wanted to thank you for posting my video, LDSPrepper. I have put your many ideas to good use in our home. We bought the SOS solar oven and use it almost daily, as well as your food storage techniques. I hope I can be as helpful to you and fellow preppers in the alternative energy arena.
Awesome. Thank you. I look forward to seeing your video.
I bought all my components from SolarHome. You have to prety much know what you want, but I got the PV panels for 97c per watt, and everything else was pretty much comparatively dirt cheap. I used to have a World Windpower Whisper 1000 (got bought out by Southwest Windpower, etc, etc), and after all the loose bolts, thrown blades, chopped up birds, and sandblasted armatures and magnets, I decided to go solo solar. A wind generator spends most of it’s life in lower speeds anyway.
I will be up there again over labor day… I will also include the wood burning boiler that heats and supplies hot water to the houses even during -20 winters.. ps I have been a silent learker on your channel for a while great stuff… wish my bees were as productive as yours.. it has been a bad year here in utah
Awesome! I’d really, really love to see a video of your system. Maybe you could just do a walk through touching on the highlights. I’m sure many people would be interested. Thanks so much for sharing.
one final thing I recommend egauge dot net as a great system for monitoring your energy usage and production… we have tries several and they have been the best
FYI we use 2 SMA AMERICA SUNNY BOY SB 8000-US GRID TIED SOLAR POWER INVERTERs…
My Family has spent the Last 5 years (and you do not want to know how much money) taking our 1200 acre ranch in Idaho 100% solar (we have a wind turbine but it really lacks in output).. Over the Last 30 days we have generated 2.50 MWh and only used 1.96 MWh.. It has taken quite a while to tune things correctly.. But we Found to really do this we had to change out appliances and really conserve.. Conserving energy is the cheapest thing you can do to go off grid..
Seriously looking forward to that next video, and thank you SO much for sharing this.
Thanks for the info. It was a little confusing that the link of “good” controllers had the “fake” one listed first.
Excellent. This is the kind of review I need. I think you have saved me a lot of headaches and cash. Thanks. Please do updates if you find any new info that may be helpful.