Living off the Grid

[Daniel]

At first we purchased a system on the mainland. It had 8 panels and 16 batteries one charge controler and a 3024 less than great inverter and all the switches n'stuff. It was 10,000ish. The rest of the panels we bought used, wich saved a bunch of cash. So when we saw that we could produce so much power we got more (8) batteries and hooked the whole house up to it. Then we noticed that the inverter wasn't so great, so we upgraded to a really good one. And with a 24 volt system we needed another charge controler to handle all the juice. Finding 16 used 130's isnt a common thing. I feel like it was a great blessing. As far as instalation we did it all. We did get some adivce on how to maintain and set controls etc... from the solar man. But its been a great learning experience. Our next project is to build a tracking system to put all those panels on. You can get 25-40% more just by following the sun.
If I knew then (when I started) what I know now I would have built the battery box bigger, to be able to expand in the future. Extending the battery bank also meant buying more, very expensive cables, so I would have made the original main cables long enough to reach 24 batteries. As for the final cost im not sure because it was over the course of a year. I guess if you want solar, buy a pv system, not a new car, because they're about the same cost. If you can afford to buy a new car, you can afford solar.
We still have helco due to the large shop equipemt and large water pump. However, we have the ability to completey cut them off if and when we want.

Daniel R Diamond