Solar Upgrades...., and a blown up generator! Options

[Caveman]

Signed a contract to upgrade our solar last Saturday, and our old Generac Guardian 16kw gave up and ate its rotor and stator, so it was replaced by another Guardian 14kw
genset on Tuesday. Guardian Gensets are designed as back-up generators for homes when the power grid fails. For non-grid homes (like mine), they back up the solar
power during the night (and low sun days) - that is, when the batteries are drawn down to a certain voltage, the system turns on the generator to bring them back up full.
This should not happen very often, but as my current system is now under-sized, it runs every day. A few years ago, something went wrong with the old genset (a rat made
a nest in the generation unit), and I had it repaired then. It blew a board, and the contacts on the rotor were greased up with rat fat, which caused arcing. This probably led
to the current failure. The new genset is critter-proofed by fine (1/8") screening from the factory. The old one was protected by 1/4" screening (obviously not fine enough).

On to the Solar Upgrade:
The upgrades - 3900kw of SunPower E-20 solar panels on a Wattsun Tracker, upgrading Outback inverters to 48v from 24, adding 12 more Trojan L16RE-2v batteries (old
ones are less than 4 months old), 1000w Bergey wind turbine on a 60' supported tower.

Ideally, an off-grid home should be equipped with 150w of solar per battery. We don't come any where close to that currently. Plus our current panels are old, and not at
peak efficiency (we are getting around 700w out of 1025w, on a very good day). Things you learn as you go along.... Neither my wife nor I are minimalists either, and we
have 3 parrots that need to be kept warm. Plus, our horse waterer has a bowl and pipe heater to keep it from freezing. Add a refrigerator, well pump, pressure pump,
microwave, TV, phones, satellite dvr receiver, dvd player, etc., and you will see that our requirements far exceed what we have now. We have things on timers to reduce
load, but it doesn't reduce it enough. Hence the upgrades to the system. Plus we have added an outbuilding that must be heated (kept at 55F until it is in use), and a
sunroom (where the birds are kept) heated by a pellet stove and kept at 65F during the night. Our upgraded system will better handle the load, plus added insulation to the
sunroom floor framing this spring will help. Until then - no lights on during the day, TV use kept to a minimum, power the well pump only when the generator is on, etc., etc.,
etc. At least I am here full time now, so when something goes wrong, fails, or starts to fail, I usually catch it quickly and can try to remedy it before it causes a big hit to the
bank. However, The genset failed catastrophically, so there was no way to have caught it early - there was no sign other than the occasional blown fuse - when replaced, the
genset acted normally, and all readings were good with no alarms. Even had it looked at twice, and the techs could not find any problems. Then, no start and a VERY strong
burnt windings odor. ARRRRGGGH. Even caused a 120v feedback alarm on the B/U inverter. Fortunately, that was cleared with a complete system reset. It was a very bad
day - but STILL way better than Peyton's! I actually felt sorry for him.

[CP]

Thanks Caveman and no worries on the panels, just thought I'd ask. We'll keep our eyes open for a decent deal on something that works.

Hot water by solar we've tinkered with a little but have found the "on demand" hot water heater to work quite well. Even with inflowing water temps of near freezing, the tankless water heater can still easily scald you if not cautious. Just love it! They run on propane and must have a minimum pressure to ignite but it's darn nice to not run out of hot water! We are working to install it into the room we added on now that the two water holding tanks are put in there.

You're definately right on the storage capacity and matching batts etc......with this small set up we keep each array, controler, batt, and inverter seperate from the other that way we don't have to worry about that just yet. Once we add more then we'll sure need to match them up in the set.
Most folks run their batts down too far when in use too....we are like you trying to not discharge that far which will extend life even on these smaller batteries.

Yes all on 12v/inverted except for genny time then we switch all direct to 120v while it's running. Fortunately all our appliance type stuff will run under 400w not including the chest freezer we've replaced the refrige with.....that just gets run at night for a couple hours on the genny but holds the chill for the food goods much better all through the day, even through summer with opening during the day. After reading about others replacing their propane refriges with chest freezers on timers it sure made sense to us. Every time that dang refrigerator was open all the energy we paid for fell to the floor! GRRR!!! And propane fridges do not chill quickly at all. The newer small chest freezers can be run on timers that run 15 and off 45 for folks with battery banks, you'd be suprised how much colder they stay and how little power they consume!

Bet the power company's just love that fact in what is viewed as "normal" refrigerators.....they are making a killing chillin' the floor! Wonder if they own stock in the appliance companies?

Thanks for the kudos but those old time pioneers were very stout folks, we are all softies compared to them I think. We'll be very happy to get more of more of those modern conveniences again soon too, just one step at a time! For now we are just a tad bit busier with chores day to day as they were back in the old days......wells, pumps, plumbing and wiring were/are all cool inventions.