Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Where Do You Place Batteries?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Where Do You Place Batteries?

    The place I'm thinking of mounting my solar array is about 100ft from my house and 100ft from a nearby shed. I was thinking I would build a small waterproof cabinet under the panels with a fan to keep air circulating where I could install the charge controller, batteries, and inverter. It occurred to me though that in the winter, it sometimes drops below 0F. I assume this would be a killer on the batteries. Should I buy a nice thick cable, like 4 or 6 gauge at 100ft and run the PV output to shed where it will at least be a little warmer during the winter? Or is the potential 0F temperature drops overnight okay? I could run the cable to the house instead but for some reason, I'm just afraid to put 460AH at 24V of batteries in the house... I'm hoping to set up 8x 100w panels in a 24v configuration.

  • #2
    place batteries close to the loads (inverter or lights). Place the controller near the batteries

    Fro very long wire runs, you need to use higher voltage arrays, and a MPPT controller to bring the voltage back to battery voltage.

    When you start pricing 300' of #4 copper wire, and compare it to #12 & a pricey MPPT controller, the controller and small wire wins at some point.

    In my .sig, is a link to a spreadsheet to calculate wire size for PV, combiner, controller and battery runs.
    Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
    || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
    || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

    solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
    gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

    Comment

    Working...
    X