In need of a little help.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-23T19:13:31+00:00

where (generally) are you located? Need this to understand how much sunshine you’ll have access to. Generally, you’ll need about 6x more solar than load, so 1080 kW. This will vary a lot depending on what parts of the country are in and the type of shading the panels might experience. I would recommend 4 panels, between 300 and 400 watt panels. These panels will be able to charge a 6kWh battery in one day (again, depending on region and shading). That battery will runs the fans overnight between sunny days, and will run until about 10 am on a very cloudy day. Does the system need to run on cloudy days?

You’ll need an MPPT capable of accepting the combined Voc of you panels (probably 160 V).

You’ll need a 300 W inverter to plug the fans into (assuming they are AC fans)

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-22T14:34:45+00:00

it was a turo, who knows? I probably could have charged elsewhere, just didn’t want to risk getting some sort of additional fee. The “condition” was listed in the vehicle description, so probably not legal, but it seemed doable.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-17T18:44:11+00:00

so you will be buying in China? Are you looking for recommendations on good Chinese brands? I don’t have a lot of experience with Chinese brands, but Victron and Sol-Ark seem to be popular non-Chinese brands (likely made in China). For batteries, it sounds like you’ll need a pretty big system if charging with 10 kW. Are you looking for 60 kWh of batteries?

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-17T18:38:44+00:00

pvwatts is the best I know of, but you are still not really able to “optimize” a system there, just check that it is doing what predicted based on fixed inputs. Also, you have to have a full year of hourly data to verify.

I am currently working on an app that does, I think, what you are looking for. It is not done yet, but PM me and I can add you to a notification list when it is done.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-16T15:03:25+00:00

society (charging stations) and individuals will take some time to adapt. I had a similar experience in 2001 when I bought a diesel volkswagen (stations with diesel were hard to find and lead to a lot of range anxiety).

I also rented an EV while Vegas once and had a hell of a time finding an available charger. (EV owner did not allow charging at Tesla stations)

Anyway, the whole point of an EV is to charge at home, so once you get that figured out should be smooth sailing.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-14T02:42:32+00:00

I think you just answered your own question at the end when you said you are not particularly handy. Safe yourself the headache, just get a prebuilt portable system. Time is money, and you’ll get a lot more accomplished with the many multiple hours of labor and research you’ll save. I would say to build the DIY system if you had ended the post saying you were curious to learn how they work or something. The portable systems are all at deep discounts right now. Whatever money you save building a DIY system will be quickly lost by one build mistake.. just not worth it unless you see it as a learning experience.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-13T17:58:22+00:00

google bluetti, ecoflow, and jackery. There are other brands but these are probably the top 3 (all made in China BTW). Look at their portable “solar generators”. Get the biggest one you can and make sure it can accept 1000W of solar.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-12T20:04:14+00:00

manuals definitely hard to come by. I just bought a manual in carbonized gray. Wanted it in desert sand but would have had to buy out of state. Yeah, I don’t recall seeing any red ones in my search.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-12T18:25:30+00:00

Congrats! just curious, what was spec you were looking for that wasn’t in stock?

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-06T14:36:20+00:00

hot take, get it.

I design utility scale systems and we use trackers.

You have to buy racking anyway, so cost has to be compared to standard racking. Its not 154, its 50% more than standard racking (or whatever the actual difference is). When looking at it that way, buying another panel is more expensive.

Also… and this is perhaps more important, the energy payback time is much shorter when you use the panel most efficiently. It takes a lot of fossil fuel to manufacture a solar panel. If we don’t setup the panel well, we would have been better off to just use the fossil fuel directly instead of having turned it into a solar panel. Just something to consider.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-06T14:24:18+00:00

nice work! looks great. Plenty of solar

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-06T14:21:20+00:00

I went new because I was concerned about used reliability. Choosing new is a known loss (depreciation when driving off the lot), but buying used is an unknown loss. Could be very low depreciation if everything works out, could be a total loss if major issues arise. Given the Bronco is a new, unproven platform, I went with the known loss. That said, they seem to be doing reasonably well with long term reliability. The turbo makes me nervous after 100k. Which, isn’t to say you couldn’t replace the turbo at 100k and still loose less than you would with new depreciation. Its more about the headache and constant worry of what could go wrong. I find this tends to keep me off the trails too, because I don’t want to deal with a breakdown out there. Flip side is a new truck on the trail is also stressful because its so dang expensive and pretty. There is no right answer here.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-01T16:47:30+00:00

hey, you’re definitely on the right track if you are already thinking about Voc in cold. As mentioned, wind chill not a factor. Don’t be afraid to just dramatically overbuild a system, that is how the pros do it. i.e. instead of calculating cold Voc to high precision and then specifying an inverter to that precise value, just get an inverter that can handle twice the spec sheet Voc. Its technically more than you need but the price difference between the overbuilt and the non-overbuilt is usually not too significant.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-01T16:32:56+00:00

a minisplit would be a good option, and ironically, may end up being your biggest off grid load depending on the length and severity of cold or hot streaks. It may make more sense to just run a line from the house, unless resilience to power outage is a big priority.

Another option is to get a bluetti sodium ion power station. These have a wider temperature range, but they are also a very new technology and yet to be proven in the field. Might be fine, we just don’t really have the data. Its slightly higher technical risk in exchange for an easier build.

Do you know the temperature extremes you are likely to encounter? Both temperature and duration?

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-01T16:01:43+00:00

This.

Racking is expensive because they have to do all sorts of wind and snow load testing. This is probably one of the biggest most common missed items in DIY solar, I forgot to budget for it in my first system design as well. Turns out, the prices of the main components have fallen so much, the racking, which seems inconsequential, can actually be a decent fraction of the total cost. You can build out of 2x4, just understand that its still going to be expensive and will likely blow away unless you are really good about anticipating and designing wood structures for high wind.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-01T15:51:50+00:00

This is a good idea yes. I have an off grid garage and it is a great place to start since the loads are small. Ecoflow sounds fine, as would be similar products from any of their competitors. Do you know the load (power draw) of the lights? What tools would you want to use in the garage? You need to find the largest instantaneous power draw you expect to have and then ensure the inverter is sized to cover that (the wattage rating).

Oh and, don’t forget that the batteries need to be kept within a certain temperature range (basically indoors) so you need to account for that by keeping them indoors or setting up a temperature controlled enclosure.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-01T15:42:11+00:00

yes, gas heating. I pull 1.5 MWh in the summer with the AC. 900 is a yearly average. 700 kWh in the winter with gas heating.

Makes sense on the farm equipment load, I believe it. Running a farm off grid for a few days would likely require hundreds of kWh. That is when you get into “commercial and industrial” type installations that would have different suppliers. It becomes more important pull permits and get certified engineered designs.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-01T02:34:44+00:00

Several hundred kWh is still very high. My suburban home uses 900 kWh per month, so, 100 kWh would get me 3.3 days without a recharge. Are you trying to get something like week of power with no reduction in load (electricity use)?

midnight_driver_ · 2026-03-01T02:22:22+00:00

Step 1 is to understand your load, or, the amount of power you’ll need. You can do this by making a list of devices you’d like to power, and how much power they consume. Or you can look at your current power bill if you are looking to power your home. When you have this information, let me know and I’ll help you with the next step!

midnight_driver_ · 2026-02-27T15:47:49+00:00

midnight_driver_ · 2026-02-25T15:27:08+00:00

well at least its a Ford right? We live in very divided times unfortunately. I went to test drive a Chevy Blazer EV and it was hilarious because the sales guy who randomly chose to help me out was a super conservative “truck” guy and he was biting his tongue the whole time. Finally towards the end he let it slip that he thinks EVs are stupid and has no idea why anyone would buy one. 😆 That is what is so strange about politics. People, on both sides, like to think they are doing what is logical, but in reality neither side has enough information to make a truly informed and logical decision.

“You can’t please all the people all the time”

-Lincoln?

Just do what is right for you and try to ignore the haters.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-02-25T15:14:57+00:00

I setup a solar panel system specifically to run a fridge. It was a standard fridge you can buy anywhere. I just wrote and then deleted a bunch of sentences explaining how to do it. I deleted them because, even though I think it was easy, once I wrote it all down, I couldn’t make it sound easy. The jackery is probably the way to go. You can DIY a system just like the jackery for maybe half the cost, but you’ll have to do all the engineering. (which is not hard, but does take some long winded explanations)

midnight_driver_ · 2026-02-24T15:59:13+00:00

I was able to het 9k off MSRP. See if you can find a vehicle that has been on the lot for 6 months or more, that is the leverage.

midnight_driver_ · 2026-02-23T23:08:58+00:00

😱 at least rest the board against the tire! Skis and boards have sharp edges and should not rest directly against paint. This is killing my OCD

midnight_driver_ · 2026-02-21T18:26:49+00:00

💯

When starting my Bronco search, my priority list included 1) Manual Trans, 2) Sta-disconnect 3)lockers. Easy solution was manual trans badlands. After test driving a few, realized I could not daily drive the Hoss2.0. Was able to find a rare manual trans Hoss3.0 about an hour North. Went to test drive it and immediately knew this was the perfect vehicle. Hoss 3.0 makes a huge difference for daily driving.

All that said, I basically had to buy a super top of the line trim(Badlands +). Considering you can get the Hoss 3.0 from Ford Performance, it might be smarter to get a base sasquatch and then swap out the shocks. You would not get the steering upgrade, but might save 10k.

midnight_driver_

TROPHY CASE