My (sort-of) off grid home

You can read all the gorey details of how my system got built here:

My thread at Mr. Sharkey's homepage

I also hang out at www.fieldlines.com/section/solar which is a cool place for people with a mad-inventor aspect.

Here's where I'm at today after one year of playing with some solar panels in my back garden.
 

From the top left there's:
1x BP 3160S 160Wp (35.1Vmp)
2x Sharp NE-80 80Wp (17.3Vmp) in a pair

From the bottom left there's:
6x TopRay 15Wp amorphous (17.5Vmp) grouped in 3 parallel pairs
8x TopRay 12Wp amorphous (17.5Vmp) grouped in 4 parallel pairs

There's more on the garage too... :D

From the near end there's:
2x Kyocera KC40 40Wp (16.9Vmp) in a pair
2x Sharp ND170E1F 170Wp (23.2Vmp) in a pair
6x TopRay 15Wp amorphous (17.5Vmp) grouped in 3 parallel pairs

The big 170Wp Sharps are on one Morningstar 15A MPPT controller and the rest are on a second identical controller that parallel charge 4x 110Ah 12V leisure batteries (yeah, I know, but they were really cheap) wired for 220Ah at 24V.

I've got some DVMs that read battery charge Amps on embedded shunts (made by just sticking pins into the 8AWG feed wires at measured distances) and a SmartGauge to accurately read the bank state of charge in %.

I've got a couple of 12V LED lights in the room with the solar gubbins but the rest of the house runs off a Cotek SK1000 24V 1kW pure sine inverter with a remote control and load / battery monitor in the livingroom. I also have a home-made wireless remote (fashioned from a cheap wireless doorbell!) upstairs so we can turn the power (and so the lights) on without having to stumble downstairs to the inverter controls.

Another embedded shunt on the inverter provides info about net battery charge / drain with a little mental arithmetic from the other two meters.

Finally, a pair of cheap plug-in kWh meters measure yield and Winter charge from a grid charger to stop the batteries rotting. It's only a 3A 24V electric bike charger that I bought at a car boot sale for £2, but it does the job and I haven't had to use it since February :D.

My system is still pure off-grid but with the house lighting circuits switchable between grid and solar by a change-over socket. The rest of my solar appliances run on a completely separate "ring main" that consists of some semi-permanent trailing sockets round my living room, into the kitchen for some low watt appliances and upstairs to the computer room.

This week I broke 220kWh offset from the grid since last December. On a daily basis I might get up to about 15% or 2kWh out of my daily 13kWh usage.

My goal is to be able to run the computer room 24x7 off-grid. I work at home so the internet router, wireless, and mail/firewall/browser/file&print PC is a challenge.

The BP and the smaller Sharp panels and the Kyocera ones are all "recycled".  People bought 40W and 80W panels a few years ago and have upgraded to higher power or smaller mono types (these are poly ones) so they sell them on eBay and I buy them because they're only 3-4 years old and still good for another 20 years.  If you don't mind random shapes and sizes you can get quite a few.  I'm slightly constrained by running at 24V which means either I have to find 35V panels (like the BP) or pairs of 17V ones.

An understanding wife that doesn't mind a patio full of solar panels is also a must :D

I'd never advocate using the communal power in a block.  It's not yours (except for the agreed use of lighting the garage and hallways).  Everyone has to pay for it through the management fees so it's unfair to use it for anything else.

My previous apartment had an underground "bat cave" garage and my allocated spot was nearest the door which meant I had some dead space next to my slot.  I used to store all sorts of auto stuff there but also it meant I was near the door and my kitchen was just above it so when nobody was looking I ran a 30m extension down the wall from the kitchen and to my parking space.  It was all neatly run and I cable tied most of the external run to an existing cable TV cable run so you couldn't even see it :D

I used it for vacuuming the car and work lights and so on.  I let my neighbours use it too so they were happy as well.

A couple of times I caught other people stealing my power without consent.  One guy who rented a flat at the top of the building tried stealing my power to run  refrigerated truck in the car park outside!  You weren't supposed to keep commercial vehicles on site as it was a residential car park.  He even ran his own extension off my one as his truck couldn't get into the garage!  I waited until midnight and then cut the power... He woke up to defrosted whatever it was in his truck and he didn't plug into my power again :D

Same for another resident who decided to plug into my power for a big PA system in the garden for a party.  They were making a hell of a racket when I came home that afternoon and then it suddenly went quiet :D

Get yer own power, you cheeky...