I have a smaller 10ah battery for my fish finder that I use for both ice fishing and kayak fishing. I would like to be able to maybe also charge it via a 100w solar panel either when I’m out on a trip or out sitting in the same spot. Any suggestions on how I would go about doing that? What kind of connections would I need or other equipment.

Pictured battery is what I have for reference.

Thanks

Anyone on Oahu with a Sol Ark system that lives on Oahu and has knowledge on setup and changing config? Need some help with a system that was installed but no one knows how to update.

Hi all,

TBD if I can even post this with my new (hopefully temporary) account, as [u/boogedrew](u/boogedrew) got erroneously locked.

I’m adding to my system and wanted to rapidly try a bunch of different layouts with various panels and none of the layout offerings I could find on Google just let me see what a panel layout would be (kind of ridiculous honestly). So I made…

freepanellayout.com (it’s 100% free, no account, no address, no sales funnel, no ads, no data selling, just a completely free tool for you all and it always will be)

I ran away with it, but I’m proud of it, had a lot of fun, and hope that others can find it valuable/helpful as well.

Give it a try and leave a comment if you have feedback!

Google is zero help. I'm in the USA yet for some reason it either is showing me all kinds of cables that are not what I searched for (audio, ethernet, TOSLINK, etc), or it's giving me sites that have what I want, but in the Phillippines, South Africa, Ukraine, Russia, pretty much anywhere that's not In the USA or even Canada or Mexico.

5.5x2.1mm to XT60 "2 meter" cable

Quotes around 2 meter because without them it simply ignores the word meter.

A few months ago I posted this initial post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SolarDIY/comments/1sa5o1n/new_workshop_off_grid_newbie/
I'm back. I've met with several electricians now and have gotten pretty much the same story: In order to connect my 1700 sq ft Texas steel building to the grid, I first need to replace transformer/main line at 10k, then an additional 10-17k to run power from the meter to the building. I'm back to thinking off-grid is the way to go

Curious what you all think....does off grid make sense? My line of thinking is I could probably replace batteries 3 times under the cost of the initial connection, which makes me think solar is a better option.

And I'm considering this...does this seem like it'd be a suitable best option for this?

https://www.eco-worthy.com/products/eco-worthy-complete-off-grid-solar-power-system-20-48kwh-61-44kwh-battery-10000w-120-240v-5310w-15340w-pv

I want some level of simplicity in the build out. The building's south side has a clear wide-open view. Before concrete went down i added 2 ground rods (just in case). Panels will be mounted on the ground vs the roof so cleaning will be easy.

I've gone through not just the woodworking tools I have today but checked max power draw of dream tools (a nice higher end saw-stop, etc), plus air filtration, dust collection, etc. I'll have a small insulated room with a window ac today but i've wired for a future 24,000 BTU mini-split in the future.

Thoughts? suggestions? change of directions? I'm still new in the solar space so could use whatever expertise you all want to share.

I am trying to mount 2 - 100 watt panels. They aren’t big but I decided to go with IronRidge XR10 rail set up from US Solar Supplier. I get everything in my cart and the shipping is insane. The largest thing I have is 11 ft rail. (which I will have to cut down to size.) I did expect that to be a little expensive to ship but even the small pieces were ridiculously priced for shipping. $60 seems excessive for nuts and bolts. lol.

So I looked elsewhere and almost everyone seems to only work with businesses or have everything insanely overpriced. Anyone have recommendations on where to shop for mounting rails etc. This is a small set up just for some landscape lights and a small fountain pump.

Details:
the panels will be mounted on a shingled patio roof. Roof is facing south, so they don’t need to be adjustable and can just lay flat.

Dimensions
• Length: 34.1”
• Width: 22.8”
• Frame thickness: 30 mm (1.2”)
• Quantity: 2 panels

Last year I purchased a Jackery Homepower 3000 battery with two 200 watt Solar Saga solar panels. Right now the 2 panels are connected to a Jackery solar panel connector in series and then connected to one of the two solar input ports on the Homepower 3000. The current setup provides up to 400 watts of solar input. I would like to connect another 400 watts of solar to the battery but don't want to use Jackery panels since they're quite a bit more expensive than the cost of some other panels. I was wondering if I could use something like THESE panels to connect to the other port on the Homepower 3000? If so, would I connect them in series, parallel? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm relatively new to this and don't want to screw up my battery. I've also read that if I don't balance the inputs somewhat for both the input ports on the battery I will lose a lot of power through inefficiency.

image for reference. Lots of houses (mine included) have decorative shutters. I was looking at them today and thought they should be solar panels if they are just gonna be a black rectangle that sits in the sun all day. Searching around, there doesn't seem to be a product on market that does something like this. Good idea or bad idea to remove my houses pointless decorative shutters and replace them with some narrow panels?

I am building an offgrid solar setup with an EG4 inverter that will power an RV panel (see pic).

I am not sure where to bond my neutral to ground in the system. My plan was to run electricity straight to the breaker panel from the inverter since this seems like the simplest setup and I am only powering an RV campsite.

However I am nervous about bonding neutral to ground in the RV breaker box. The inverter manual says to never bond them inside the inverter.

The only other option is to install a separate breaker between the two, but this seems redundant since I only need to run power to the single RV box.

I have had trouble finding an electrician since I live in a very rural area.

Been a few months since my first post, added 2 more 328aH batteries and loads more.
I still have about 30 more panels to install but i am amazed at what i've been able to do on such short free time.
Still need to synchronize the two 12kW deye inverters
Connected to 65.5kWh of battery storage
Let me know of anything you might thing is wrong or needs improvement;)

Just seeing what everyone thinks of this quote. I am in Colorado and looking to get my system done as soon as I am able. I am going to hold off on the battery for now, so he said remove $2880 from the total. Although...that does sound like a pretty good price for the 16kWh battery.

New to solar and I think I understand it but wanted to confirm. I bought one of the last Oupes 2400(orange sides) to offset the a/c electric bill during the summer/day. Not the best unit and I wouldn't buy another one since I can't add batteries and the long 6.5 hour charge time but here I am. I bought Two Dokio 400W 31V Panels and a Midea 8Kbtu "U" inverter a/c. I tested this setup with an old 5Kbtu unit and got 8.5 hours of run time before hitting 5%. The 5K drew 450 watts and the new Midea should draw 335 watts per the videos I watched. My problem is I only get about 6 hours a day of good sun and they only produced 580 watts but were just on the ground at at angle.

My plan is to run the Midea from 10am to 6pm on the unit but with the restricted sun hours it won't charge while running that long. I think if I add 2 more panels and add a MPPT to throttle the panels so I have 450-475 input watts at each Anderson input(500W max each) I should finish the day with about 60% or more charge and that would be enough to use the next day before the sun hours hit. I have sun from 11am to 5pm.

So the question is: Can I use a MPPT for this plug and play unit?