My initial plan... Input needed

[bjaccord]

I am wanting to power a small garage that I use for various things. My dogs use it to get out of the weather, I have T8 fixtures I use 4 months of the year to start my vegetables, I have an 800 watt a/c unit and a 750 watt heater when temps are on one extreme or the other. I would also like to have some emergency power during outages. We had 4 days no power in February with low temps and I lost half of my food crop do to no light and freezing temps. During the power outage I was able to run my hot water heater off of a car battery and 400 watt inverter (tankless gas heater, 260 watts while water is running) and power a few lights in the house. Here is my plan after a month of research and reading.

5 x 300 watt 24 volt panels
4 x 300 amp 6 volt batteries (24 volts)
Mppt charge controller (Apollo brand looks nice, open to suggestions)
1000 watt 24 volt Pure sine inverter

Looking to see if I am on the right track here, and any suggestions for improvements or anything I am missing.

I am located in rural North Georgia and have a deck 25 feet above ground that I want to mount the panels to. Angle would be fixed at around 20 degrees. I am hoping to make the panels into a roof of sorts to use deck while raining.

Watts used normally would be for lights (450 when growing plants, 12 hours a day) and during power outages heat or a/c 900 watts during the day then a few lights at night, water heater for 10 minute intervals (showering etc).

I think my plan would accommodate about 1000 watts a day for 6 hours.

Any and all input is appreciated, this would be my first solar power adventure (other than solar garden lights, which were awesome during the power outage, brought them inside at night for basic lighting).

Thanks!

[Sunking]

You are not even in the ball park close. You can not even run the lights, and forget about air conditioning and hot water.

Watts used normally would be for lights (450 when growing plants, 12 hours a day)

This right here alone is 450 watts x 12 hours = 5400 watt hours. Just to do that with solar in Georgia in spring will require:

2200 watts of panels
24 volt battery capacity = 1125 Amp Hours
MPPT Controller = 90 amps.

The largest realistic battery system you can build is:

5000 watts
90 Amp Controller
48 volt @ 1374 Amp Hours

That only gives you 13 Kwh usable which would do what you want, but cost $25,000 with $15,000 4000 pound battery you replace every 5 years.

Good luck with that. If it were me I woul dspend a few buck to run a 60 amp circuit from the house to garage. Lost less expensive an no power limitations.

[SunEagle]

Don't forget about getting an emergency generator and AC battery charger. All off grid systems require this in case they get more than a few days of limited sunshine.

Or you can just do what Sunking suggests by running a circuit to your garage and get the generator. That can be used as your emergency power backup and forget the solar equipment.

[bjaccord]

Well most of what I had read was also pushing me to running a power line and buying a generator, looks like that will be the route then.

Sunking: thank you for being straight and to the point, I had read a lot of your posts, I appreciate you chiming in on mine.

I am still interested in doing a solar project just for the fun of it. Are there any somewhat practical purposes for it with current pricing?

One project I had also considered was using an old satellite dish pole (think 80's huge sattelite dish) that is near my garden, putting a single 12 volt panel on it to charge a single 12 volt battery to run some 12 volt lights near my garden and the path to the house. This would be a fairly cheap solar project but what would be some suggestions for a system like that?

And lastly, why does solar seem so hyped up if it is so cost prohibitive? The green energy to me is a mistaken argument but maybe I am wrong?

Thanks for the replies.

[SunEagle]

Well most of what I had read was also pushing me to running a power line and buying a generator, looks like that will be the route then.

Sunking: thank you for being straight and to the point, I had read a lot of your posts, I appreciate you chiming in on mine.

I am still interested in doing a solar project just for the fun of it. Are there any somewhat practical purposes for it with current pricing?

One project I had also considered was using an old satellite dish pole (think 80's huge sattelite dish) that is near my garden, putting a single 12 volt panel on it to charge a single 12 volt battery to run some 12 volt lights near my garden and the path to the house. This would be a fairly cheap solar project but what would be some suggestions for a system like that?

And lastly, why does solar seem so hyped up if it is so cost prohibitive? The green energy to me is a mistaken argument but maybe I am wrong?

Thanks for the replies.

Most of the solar projects that can be inexpensive usually have very small loads running for very short times. The other way solar can be cost justified is with a Grid Tie system if your electric rates are high otherwise it could take a long time to pay for itself.

For whatever reason it has something to do with how the media is pushing the climate change issue (that's another story) and a lot of people are looking for a solution.

Unfortunately they have been sold on a whim and a promise concerning Renewable energy. Sure solar is a way (not necessarily green) to generate electricity and I support it, but it is far from being efficient or cost justified for most people. For some reason those facts seem to fall on def ears and people choose to hear what they want and not listen to what is true.

[Sunking]

And lastly, why does solar seem so hyped up if it is so cost prohibitive? The green energy to me is a mistaken argument but maybe I am wrong?

First thing there are two types of solar PV systems; Stand-Alone Battery and Grid Tied.

Battery systems are extremely inefficient meaning it takes a lot more panel wattage than his cousin Grit Tied to the tune of 25 to 30% more. Secondly you cannot utilize all the powers a battery system is capable of generating. The big killer is the batteries and never ending replacement. Battery cost alone will cost you 55 to 75-cents per Kwh making it impossible to ever reach an ROI as you end up paying many times more than buying the power from the utility. Lastly battery systems are anything but Green because there is no EROI (energy return on investment) They waste energy that could have been better utilized.

Grid tied is a different story. If you live in the right area, it is possible for a consumer to obtain an ROI or at least breakeven. But to do that requires heavy subsidies using your neighbors money to pay for it. On paper a highly efficient commercial installation has an EROI of 3:1. That might sound good, but minimum needed to be profitable needs to be 8 or more and that still falls way short of conventional fossil fuels EROI of 50 to 60, and 200 for nuclear.

Bottom line, it is political.