Can't wait!

glad to hear the solar is going well! also cant wait for updates to your tall tales, they make for good listening at work.

3 milliwatt hours or 3 Megawatt hours? I suspect you could measure your total grid use in kWH with the setup you are using. 1.2 MWH on tap through your converters ain't hay! Color me impressed good Sir, that is an accomplishment. ( And no, no sarcasm involved. That really is something! )

Personally, I'm holding out for a set of Douglas-Martin sunpower screens or a micropoint fusion generator. But I'm not gonna hold my breath for them either...

Always look forward to your stories, it's a happy break from the daily tedium of work, eat, sleep, repeat.

3 Megawatt hours at 10-15 kilowatt hours a day most days.

I can see how much solar flows each day to run the house and recharge the batteries - and how much the bills have dropped for the same months last year. (Avg. kWh/Day of 5.8 vs 17.1 last January.)

The solar controller records the daily kWhs sent through it as well as total kWhs (3400kWhs as of a couple days ago.)

I really can't wait, this is one of the better storys out there, and the rewrite has been very well done, fleshing out bits and things that where left and not covered. Your getting a lot more background, and motivation for everyone.

I work for an author, and got a couple friends that are authors, Mercedes Lackey, and K vale. So I got kinda a weird take on things. Gotta remember to snatch some fresh books from Misty when I go to wild nights, think I will set up a small table and see about selling some books, just cause.
I have been reading the Folly story sense it was on that chacket site, with Goldfur and everyone else. I have rather enjoyed watching the evalution of the story over the years, and watched as your ability to write has grown rather a lot over the years as well. ALso rather fun to find someone else playing with solar, and such. Trying to get the money up to convert the property to solar, but, thats easily 50k, cause we need at lest 25 kw for the property.

A lot of what you 'need' is what you have to work against. My 5kw of solar panels has netted me close to 22kwhs on really good days. I might manage another kwh or two if I could trim/cut down a couple of trees that aren't mine. Having just bought a spare inverter I think I'm in around 21-22k at this point. (5kw solar, 30kwh of batteries, 2 6000 watt inverters, 2 80 amp solar controllers, spare 40 amp solar controller and 2000 watt inverter, and a few breakers, switches, meters and more wire than I want to think about!)

Another part of the cost will be how much of it you can do yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/@AmbitionStrikes/videos is two nut cases doing a lot of doing including setting up solar. I think in one of their videos they said they'd spent about 50k on their setup - and it would have cost them 60k to get power lines run out to them (plus then paying that monthly bill).

Drop me a note if you want to get into the nuts and bolts of things.

Everything is electric, so at peak we actualy will run closer to 30 kw. 7 buildings, heat and ac in 4 of them, plus in some cases, some very big equipment, such as plasma cutters and welders. The electric bill here is insane, a couple grand a month. Main building I need 400 amps of service for, as 200 amps is covered just for basic needs, heating and cooling and hot water. Working to improve efecancy has been inb the works, heck, just adding insulation is helping a lot, but, there is still a lot that we gotta do to improve things. The new heat exchanger system works a darn sight cheeper than the older system too. Trust me, I look at the electric here and just about have a heart attack every time.

25kw of solar may not be enough! And any cloudy/rainy days will be even harder to recover/recharge from.

Yeah, all electric means 60+ Amp 240volt breakers just for the stove/oven at my brother's place. (and my inverter tops off at a mere 25 Amps per leg ...)

There are inverters out there that you can 'gang' to get the current/amps you need, but you have to have the solar/batteries to supply the juice.

Not knowing your full situation, you might make a plan that allows you to go at it in stages. You cable and space things out as if you already have the full kit, filling things in as you have the time/money, and you try to buy things that will not only fit the 'now' but the finished plan.

Yes, I screwed up a bit on that, the batteries I got strongly suggest not using more than four sets of four in series/parallel, which limits the group to 20kWhs of battery (during the first year cooler months I was getting away with the original 15kWh setup.)

You say your 'peak' is close to 30kw, that tells us how much the inverters need to be able to carry, but we also need an idea of what heavy/busy day's kWhs looks like - that would give you an idea of how much solar battery you want/need.

Might be a lot more, its really hard to say at this point. Do to the amp requirement, for standard generators we gotta look at a 45-50 kw, just cause of the amps that might be needed for full complex powerup.
Also gotta plan around the max load, as I am probably the only one that would consider doing things like limiting use of high power items. AKA not run the electric stove the same time I got the inline water heater running, stuff like that

Another thought is breaking things up a bit. Instead of one massive system you have two or more rated for what you think you'll need from them. That way a heavy high demand day in the shop doesn't leave the house in the dark. If all the batteries and inverters were in one place you might have breakers set up to swap who gets what power depending on needs (Shop power feeding the house because the house batteries are low.)

Of course any of this requires someone (you) understanding what goes where and why - and what NOT to do to keep any magic smoke from escaping!

That’s cool…

Vix

Always nice to have a spare for the one thing the rest of the system needs to be of any use to you.

tell that to the 'modern' aircraft designers... cough cough...

Vix

Heh, saw it in the '90s when the Navy was going to 'upgrade their jet trainers from T-2Cs to the new T-45. Old was a twin engine beast they could be rough on and it would still get them home. New was much more delicate with a single engine that if there was a compressor stall it would be spiting teeth(blades) and of course was dead-stick at that point.

By the time they were forced to admit their blunder, I had moved on to playing with computers ...

*laughs… the crews never get what they want, they only get what someone up top got bribed to give them.

Vix