Hello Everyone,
This is my first post here and I'd like to get others opinions on my thoughts.
A little background on me... This is my first time working with solar on this scale. We live in the US Virgin Islands and our electricity rates are pretty high at .56 per KWH. Our current bill shows 655 KWH for the month (21.12 per day). Not only is our power expensive, it isn't very reliable, recently we were off and on (mostly off) for a week. We are in the Virgin Islands so we do get PLENTY of sun but I live on the north side of a mountain and have two large mahogany trees, that being said, parts of our house have good sun most of the time. I work 6 days a week so most of the time during daylight hours I'm at work but on Sundays the deck and house are sunny with crisp shadows. Is there a meter that I can buy to set outside to measure the amount of sun my house receives?
I'm thinking of installing a 3kw 48v solar system with a 5kw inverter so I can expand if necessary. The previous owners of the house had a generator, so there is a manual transfer switch installed. I plan to keep our grid power and hook the inverter to the transfer switch so if we have any issues or need to charge batteries we can just flip a switch.
Do any of you see issues with my plans? Does $7000 sound like a reasonable budget for the whole setup; panels, batteries, charge controller, wire, mounting hardware, etc. I have been looking at ordering from aliexpress or alibaba but I'm not sure of the quality of the components. Price is a little bit of an issue for us. If I were to know that I can get 100% of my power needs from solar then I can just put it on a credit card or take a loan and use the $325 a month that we pay to the power company to pay the credit card. Do any of you have experience buying your solar equipment from China or do you have recommendations on quality equipment at lower pricing?
Thank You for any replies. I am still in the early stages of my research but I want to start making my purchases within a month or so.
Stay Safe,
Gabe
This is my first post here and I'd like to get others opinions on my thoughts.
A little background on me... This is my first time working with solar on this scale. We live in the US Virgin Islands and our electricity rates are pretty high at .56 per KWH. Our current bill shows 655 KWH for the month (21.12 per day). Not only is our power expensive, it isn't very reliable, recently we were off and on (mostly off) for a week. We are in the Virgin Islands so we do get PLENTY of sun but I live on the north side of a mountain and have two large mahogany trees, that being said, parts of our house have good sun most of the time. I work 6 days a week so most of the time during daylight hours I'm at work but on Sundays the deck and house are sunny with crisp shadows. Is there a meter that I can buy to set outside to measure the amount of sun my house receives?
I'm thinking of installing a 3kw 48v solar system with a 5kw inverter so I can expand if necessary. The previous owners of the house had a generator, so there is a manual transfer switch installed. I plan to keep our grid power and hook the inverter to the transfer switch so if we have any issues or need to charge batteries we can just flip a switch.
Do any of you see issues with my plans? Does $7000 sound like a reasonable budget for the whole setup; panels, batteries, charge controller, wire, mounting hardware, etc. I have been looking at ordering from aliexpress or alibaba but I'm not sure of the quality of the components. Price is a little bit of an issue for us. If I were to know that I can get 100% of my power needs from solar then I can just put it on a credit card or take a loan and use the $325 a month that we pay to the power company to pay the credit card. Do any of you have experience buying your solar equipment from China or do you have recommendations on quality equipment at lower pricing?
Thank You for any replies. I am still in the early stages of my research but I want to start making my purchases within a month or so.
Stay Safe,
Gabe
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