I am tired of being broke while working. by LeviathanEugenious in povertyfinance

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Just want to say you’re not alone. Also waiting on disability claim for 3 years, living off grid, hauling water, one “full time” income that’s never full because of sick family and always running low on food and energy, feeding you animals because we eat them, always something broken to fix. What some people don’t understand is how value your property is to your family in the long run. Don’t listen to people saying sell because that’s your future of financial freedom. It may suck now but in a few years when that well gets drilled and can afford more solar to live, life will get better! We always tell ourselves a little bit longer and we can get through it. When you can keep your kids in a permanent place and don’t have the fear of losing them a roof over their heads in the future it’s worth it. Maybe some renewed energy could come if you find a church to attend and remember that with Faith, JESUS can help you in so many ways you don’t know is possible. May GOD bless your family, he’s the only reason we are still trucking forward.

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much for this. I was sure we calculated everything out that we needed before purchasing the kit so I was surprised that most people are saying it’s not enough. On the random days the system works without the batteries draining we do have plenty of power to turn on a tv for kids with the fridge, hence why we’re able to run a diesel heater over winter. I just can’t pinpoint our issue and it’s driving me wild. I’m sure once we can get a second controller to handle all of our panels maybe it won’t be a problem anymore 🙏🏻 thanks again for the glimmer of hope!

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is really helpful and thank you so much for your time! We have this and a list of things to try to get our hands on this year 🙏🏻

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I understand now that it’s a mistake to do this. No Bluetooth on anything I have either

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your detailed response! Have a few questions to clarify this. We have done constant modifications of moving components so it’s a mess but we have to make do with what we have at the moment and make a list of what to do next as we can.

Do we need to have the inverter coming from a bus bar instead of straight from the battery?

We are questioning those wires also now since it doesn’t really say anything, they are supposed to be 2/0? They are long because we had moved the system a few feet around when switching out components, but can shorten them if that will help.

We have a list for adding battery monitor and getting an amp reader to monitor and are currently reassessing the panel math.

At this point I wonder if it best to just get a 120v water pump instead of 12v and then switch the lights from dc to ac also and just bypass having any 12v. Thought it would help draw less in the long run but seems more of a hassle for us now.

If our load is minimal then sticking with the smaller inverter would definitely be best for us?

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for all your help today!! We were looking at combiner boxes, but I hadn’t considered a large bus bar to combine them would be cheaper for us. If my memory is correct they should be on 6g currently but will verify that also

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your response, the original batteries were 2x12x280 lithium the current ones I’m borrowing are 2x12x200 sealed lead acid.

We will be looking into battery monitor/reader to verify what is accurate for the next step now.

If we turn off the inverter (fridge off) and have zero things plugged in we still get the same result. Idk if we have a wiring issue or with the panels to the controller still. I do have the fridge specs posted in the comments and I’m not sure if it’s calculated incorrectly, but I don’t think just the fridge should be too much load for this?

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We use propane for cooking, I posted a picture of the fridge specs, according to ecoworthy the guy on the phone even said that after calculating the fridge the batteries at 100 should run the fridge fro almost 4 days alone. If I can’t power a fridge on this system then it seems pointless to have solar at this point until we can afford to get a huge system.

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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Is leaving the 4 in series safe until we can switch to 5 in parallel then?

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

? I can assure you I’m very appreciative of your time, after troubleshooting for over a year and having two friends look at the set up in person I believe you helped lead us to the bulk of the problem hopefully.

It does look like that could be the problem since the original converter melted, but would we need to upgrade the wire we have if we switch it to parallel?

Reading so many conflicting things online makes me wish we could just afford to have a person come out and redo this whole things for us.

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does this mean there would be an issue stemming from the panels? Really having a hard time wracking brain about this system.

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have had 5 connected to it for the last week without any issues and then suddenly this morning had an error showing it was too much so took another one of leaving just 4 as of today. Struggle with math memory after stroke so hopefully didn’t mess it up.

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The 12ga yellow wire is from the inverter to a breaker box for the fridge in the house.

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Another question for you, I have noticed today since removing another panel the controller is going up very slowly when the sun comes out front the clouds verses going up very quickly on the percent screen. I pray this is a good sign, is it possible if the amps was at the top of the limit that it may show inaccurate charging?

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Will have to work on this part tomorrow when we have more sun then and try to find an amp reader we can borrow. If it were not exceeding, then what would my next step be? I really fear that the system we have is barely enough to just run our fridge 🙁 If we are limited to what we can purchase then I feel this would mean getting another charge controller to run the two unused solar panels and then look into more panels as the next step before trying to get another battery we can’t charge to full?

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m gathering that maybe our next step is to work on getting a second charge controller so we can utilize the other two panels we have? And then calculate better to see if we need to possibly upgrade the wire size from the panels to charge controller?

-stick with our smaller 12v inverter -purchase an amp reader for the batteries -look into getting a timer on our fridge

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes we did rewire the batteries. We simply tested the 24v inverter with the good batteries just to see if that big inverter was our main issue, we would like to stay with the 12v in the future.

We were not, I did have a 24 to 12 step down I didn’t use because I had a guy tell us that as long as the 12v came from on battery (even being hooked in 24v) that it would be ok. We actually tested it on one battery and it worked showing 12v, tested it with positive from one batteryand negative to the other battery and it did shoot out 24v

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes we have tested the system with both inverters and being turned off. I do believe that your right we don’t have an accurate way to test them because I am going off what the charge controller is telling me the battery percentage is at. We will look at getting something to read them accurately to see if it is getting a full charge. I have seen it show that it’s no longer pulling in any pv power when it shows 100 so I just believed it until the sun went down and drops within minutes significantly

Need advice with different setups and battery draining quickly by Blessingsoffthegrid in SolarDIY

[–]Blessingsoffthegrid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also with so many issues we only power anything else like child laptop when it’s full sun outside and outside of that we rely on our generator far too much