Close up of the wiring rack for the leads

@prologic (#qywwn6a) Yeah it wasn’t. The housing shroud of the box to hold the fan has a 40mm half circle pipe cut into the box, that fits over the 32mm conduit space, so both fit through the 90 by 90 hole through the besser block wall. In summer, this fan will help keep the room cooler.

The three orange cables plus a black cable, are the power wires running into conduit that leads to the house, 3 power lines and 1 24Volt lighting line. They seem to enter the box on the top right, which is cut to go around the 32mm conduit, is in fact a box to channel the extractor fan air to the outside of the power house. So I share the same hole with extractor fan and conduit for the 4 wires.

Here we go, the extraction fan, and the computer fans, see red arrows.

My picture does not show the fan, bother…

And another extraction fan, 240V at 14W, needs 1 amp to run, for summer heat times in the day.

See red arrow, also a switch to turn off meter reading.

Add 2 more computer fans to move air over the 5 inverters.

Hard to convince wife to use power at night, thinking the batteries won’t handle it? Takes time to get used to thinking off grid, you have to adjust your life around the sunshine hours you get.
Will fix this problem eventually with more solar panels, etc.

It’s sunrise 6:50 am and the batteries have 52 amps going out and no amps coming is, the voltage is 23V, since float is 29 V and night is 24V, one can assume the battery is still over 80% full. The bore pump is on with 26 amps and the water pump is on with 18 amps, the fridge uses only 6 amps.

Correction on your 26,000, excluding the building costs, the electrical part of the system only cost me $18,000. Not bad for off grid living.

@mckinley (#7kbwzra) When you consider building cost 4,000, batteries cost 9,000 and the inverters and solar controllers from Victron cost 4,000, the rest of the money spent ie 5,000 was on electrical stuff, like wire, conduit, RCB and CB, lights, switches and solar panels, you can see over 70% of the cost comes from the batteries themselves. Rainbow power Company quoted me a system of same size for $25,000, this excludes the building, so I am 7,000 in front of their quote.

If sombody like James want to have 30 units of power on storage, you need the same as what I have here but you go 48 Volt DC, that is 24 cells per row, cable one for 300 amps, and 24 cells on next row, and than 5 inverters of 3000VA with a 10 amp circuit breaker, limiting each power line load to 10 amps or 2400 watts. The cable and bolts are the same, as the current load is about the same, 20 to 30 amps each load. The 48 cells will cost you around 20,000 dollars for the nickel iron battery bank.

A closeup of the wiring bay with 10mm brass bolts and 16mm2 wires to each inverter, the maximum size each inverter has a hole for.

My cables are 10mm brass bolts to a huge copper plate . Wires are 16mm 2 capable of up to 60 or possibly 100 amps. Yet I drag only 20 amps from them. Notice my overkill of wiring and set up. Going bigger is more costly, keep that in mind. If you drag more current through copper and heat the atoms they will rust and change impedance, hence over time your wires will fail. Stick to what I have done, and the reasons why I did it this way. Cheap, efficient and long lasting.

My next door neighbour is upgrading his power cables to 19mm dia, 300Amp lines. He has lead acid 1000Amp hours. Lead acid needs gentle use. So never take them below 80% fully charge. That is only 200Amp hours of power you have. So you can only remove 200 amps for one hour and your done. So the need for 300 amp wire is overkill and a waste of money.

Notice my Nickel Iron batteries have more than 200 amp/hour, I can use all the power. I have 500 amp hour. So in theory I could drag out 400 amps for a single hour.

Our electric power bill used to be 430 PER 100 DAYS, or about 1700 per year. This set up may not run a large house needs like my Son on 30 units per day, but it runs easily our needs on 5 units per day, with 10 units of power in reserve for cloudy days. Unlike lead acid, I can drain the batteries down every day to 50% fully charged everyday without harm. I can go even lower to 20% fully charged if I want to.

If anybody wants to go off grid, and a reasonable with doing stuff, I have a website explaining all the things required here:

http://spiritualsprings.org/ss-1576.htm

This link have so far 15 webpages, showing you all the steps required, which are also here on TXT, but gathered in one place for beginnings. The overall cost of off grid living is 22,000, and if you subtract the cost of building a power house, you need 18,000 just to purchase all the components. I expect the set up to last 100 years, and I should get my money back after only 12 years.

The other aspect is stress over technology. The less space on a page of words, the more crammed the words are, the more difficult it is to read and digest the words. Compare a university book with a kids book and see the difference. Now compare the space of a single big 5000VA Inverter on the wall, to my space with 5 Inverters, 6 circuit breakers and 5 wires of power, about 4 times the space, meaning its easier to understand the wiring and the technology behind it.

If one inverter breaks down, I have 4 others still running power lines to the house. Notice the weight of the single one verses the weight of the 5 others is the same, meaning the inductance is the same, but the prices are different. Why is that? Supply and Demand I suspect. It’s cheaper to purchase 1200VA and 800VA because millions of people purchase them, whereas only few people purchase a big 5000VA Inverter.

And you will note the 5 smaller ones with other pieces, are around 800 to 1000 dollars cheaper, than the one big 4000 VA Inverter, actually to run continuously at 4,000 watts, it needs to be a 5000VA, and costs

Victron 5000 VA 24 Volt, 4000 watt continuous, $3,700.

So I am more in front.

@lyse @prologic (#37dokda) Yes that was what I was thinking, I compare inverters
Weight: 34.8 Kilograms
Warranty: 5yrs
Code: INV-VC24-05-120-100
Price: $3646.64 total output is 4000watt

verses
Victron 1200 900W 24 Volt \(505 weight 7.4 Kg 3 of Victron 800 24 Volt \)425 weight 6.4 Kg 2 of
Total $2,365 weight 35 Kg total output is 4300watt

About the same cost I paid for the 5 inverters, 3 controllers, 5 circuit breaker and the 5 residual circuit breakers. So is one box better than 18 individual ones?

The finished project so far. My neighbour reckons one can buy a VIctron box with 3,500 watt inverter, 100 amp solar control and Residual circuit breaker and circuit breaker, plus amp charger all rolled in one box for $3,500.

These T8 four foot LED 24V DC tubes are expensive at $50 each….

Note pull cord red circle red arrow. easy to turn off light from your bed.

LED tubes 24V DC with a view of our bed/lounge room

Near completed power house/

Note the pipes to remove H2 gas, and the light 24 wire, plus the 5 inverters.

@prologic (#mofsqfa) nice, have fun