Previously on 24

Off-grid solar at the tiny house

Notes on the 12-panel roughly 5kWp solar ground installation at our tiny house/cabin in rural Estonia. Currently limited primarily by storage/consumption and also by solar charger/inverter capacity.

The solar panels are installed on mounts intended for flat-roof installations but this works, and a longer thread about how fabulously a no-brainer it is to get solar panels:

Peak spring solar production with two solar chargers and two small-ish battery packs - 1400W:

DIY batteries

DIY batteries provide a lot more flexibility in terms of voltage, storage, configuration and monitoring. They also help avoid vendor lock-in and limitations of commercial offerings.

My first 24V LiFePO4 battery bank assembled from cylindrical 32700 cells currently used in the off-grid house, and the more recent DIY battery pack for my balcony solar project used at my apartment:

DC solarification

Generally we want to avoid AC→DC conversion, and especially a DC→AC→DC round trip through an inverter to improve efficiency.

Replacing my monitor’s power supply with a DC power regulator to run directly off of DC power of the batteries without a need for an inverter at the house:

Expanding the same concept to my home networking to run as many DC-native devices off of (balcony) solar power as possible at the apartment:

More at the #offgridFlaki hashtag at flaki.social