A Closer Look At OFF GRID SOLAR Components FOR YOUR HOME

Yesterday I showed you the 4(count) VMAX 125 amp hour AGM batteries that we purchased from ebay for $1000 shipped. That is a great deal for AGM batteries and like I said in the post, they have great reviews.
Here is that post: https://steemit.com/homesteading/@mericanhomestead/how-to-get-cheaper-solar-batteries-inside-information-installers-don-t-want-you-to-know

Today, I wanted to give you some more details on the system and includes an Air 40 Primus wind turbine. There are a lot of misconceptions about wind turbines out there in internet land. One of the common mistakes is to think the wind turbine is going to power your whole house on days the sun doesn't shine. Most wind turbines will produce some good current for your batteries if they have consistent wind. But you may notice that wind is not always consistent. In fact, most of the time it is not.

Wind turbines are great for putting a nice trickle charge on your batteries when they are working. Have an extra 3-5 amps on a working battery bank is great for keeping those batteries healthy. So wind turbines work best when combined with a solar array.

Lets take a look inside our system and I'll give you a run down on what you are looking at. The box that houses this particular system on our homestead sits on the front deck of Hive account@hansjurgen in a box he made himself. The top of the box is harvested cedar from our forests. It was milled on our saw mill and then Hive account@hansjurgen cut and planed it for the top of the box.

Cedar is an amazing looking wood!

Next, we will start over on the left of the box and work our way over to the right. At the very left of the box are the wires coming in from the wind turbine and solar panels. The wires from the wind turbine will first interact with a lightning arrester made by Midnite Solar products. (Yes I know I spelled Midnite wrong. That's just how they spell it.)

Here is the deal with lightning folks. You can put in a million countermeasures to keep lightning from damaging your equipment. Nothing is guaranteed. If lightning decides to go one way, there is nothing you can do to stop it. All you can do it give it a bunch of exits along the highway hoping it will take the off ramp. Lightning arresters and ground rods are your highway exits. Just know what if lightning hits your turbine, you're gambling at a high stakes casino and you're not always going to come out on top. We have a bunch of deep ground rods on this system.

Lightning Arrester

Next up in this system is the combiner box (grey box) that houses the fuse for the incoming solar panels. The incoming solar panels hit this box first and then continue on to the black Midnite Solar charge controller before heading over to the battery bank. The grey and blue box is the kill switch for the wind turbine. The kill switch is a simple on/off switch that will short (connect the pos to the neg lines of the turbine) the turbine and brake the system effectively turning it off.

At the top of the photo, you will see two grey conduit lines coming in. The top line are wires from the solar panels. The bottom line are the wires for the wind turbine. The green wires go to grounding rods and the yellow cable is plug run to the inverter that you will see in a moment. At the top of the picture you will also see a small 40 amp fuse for the wind turbine positive before it runs to the battery. Below that, you will see all the black wires coming into what is a homemade buss bar for all the negatives. The very far right black wire runs to the battery bank.

This is the inverter. This is the last stop for generated power before it gets used. All the power generated runs into the battery bank and from there, it runs to the inverter. We have one master cable that is plugged into the inverter that runs into the house circuit breaker box (yellow cable from previous picture).

We also have an analog amp meter. Different sources recommend an analog amp meter for your wind turbine. Not sure why but that is what we got. This measures the amount of amps (current) coming in from the wind turbine.

We also have a digital readout for the battery bank. Hooking this up is simple. It's a positive and negative connection on the battery bank. And of course in this picture, we have the bank itself humming along nicely.

This is called a Battery Life Saver. It's job is to send out pulses into your battery bank to help de-sulfate your batteries for you when they are charging keeping the plates inside clear of crystals. Some will tell you that these are a gimmick and useless. But read the reviews. They speak for themselves.

Every off grid systems needs one of these. This is a three stage battery bank charger. On days where the sun is not shining and/or there is no wind to bring in some energy, you can plug this charger into a generator and keep your batteries topped off and in healthy working order. Don't get caught without one of these. They can save your battery bank from getting dangerously low. Buying new batteries is expensive. Keep them charged!

TOOLS

We have a variety of tools that help us when working with our energy systems. Aside from the obvious screw drivers and ratchets, you need these two important tools when working on or building one of these systems.

Wire Stripper - If you are going to be connecting wires, that means you will be stipping wires. I know they sell other wire strippers out there that are more modern and easier to operate. Get one of those if you can. But get a wire stripper!
Channel Lock Crimping Tool - Once you strip those wires, you will be attaching them to something. Get a good crimping tool. You won't regret it!

That's it! Now you've seen everything! Well, maybe not really but you've had a good inside look into one of our simple off grid solar and wind turbine systems. As always, I like to leave you with a wiring chart. This chart is from the Primus Air 40 manual. This is very close to what we have for the system as described above. There are a few small differences but this should give you a good idea of how we have the wiring hooked up.