Building our First Solar Array. Easy, Low Cost Solar Ground Mount.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ม.ค. 2023
- We built this ground mount off of our existing Garden Fence. So it saved us the cost of 5 posts and concrete, that was already there. We bought a $110 on treated lumber. And another $20 for Deck Screws and Lag Screws. Total cost of the ground mount was $130 and 1 day of work.
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I’d rethink putting those panels on the roof of your workshop. Keep them on the ground.
I agree. We first installed our solar panels on the metal roof and it was impossible to reach them to remove the snow and we couldn’t clean them because water made the metal roof to slippery. We moved them to ground level.
And space below the panels is good. Circumstances meant we had to place the supports for the panels directly on the ground. When we push off the snow, it has nowhere to go. We can only clean off the top half of the panels. Now we’re looking at ways to elevate the panels. Where you have them placed in this video looks great. I hope you haven’t moved them yet.
LOVE IT! Was trying to find a ground mount that was easy (and inexpensive) to build vs buying something. This was perfect, so thank you so much for posting!
How do you maintain your sanity with all the
wanna, coulda, shoulda comments you get? Every project that you do someone has to put in their 2cents.
You’re quite competent, do it your way!
Your videos are one of our favorites.
U tubers are paid by number of contents & they get free ideas that will probably help down the road. btw i get your point, patience is a virtue. ( should be "comments) not contents.
I know, I could never be a youtuber because of all the YT Engineers out there.
Dude you and Lumnah Acres have it going on !!’
I have been off grid 5.5 years now and have 16000 watts of panels. 1/2 the year I can run everything in my house and my shop easy. I would say 10% to 15% more than I need in the summer. Now November December and January I could use 15% to 20% more panels. I have 56kwh's of chevy volt batteries and I think 70kwh's would be great when I get there.
Evan, buying a solar system is a very wise investment but why not do one as your primary source of power for the house and eliminate a large portion of your electric bill rather than using it as a backup source of power. Doing that would qualify you for a 26% government rebate on your taxes. You could expand it to 10 or 12 kw and have a grid tied system serving nearly all the demands of both the house and the shop.
I’d suggest you invest in the type of solar you have in mind for your barn and that well. Doing so would save you on your electric and water bills. One of those battery storage units would probably handle all your needs for the well and lighting and power in the barn.
One more recommendation: those posts around your garden will probably not safely support that temp install in any kind of serious storm. Those panels are big wind sails. Why not buy yourself pipes for a secure ground mount system for now and then expand it rather than going with a roof mount system. Doing so will give you an easier to maintain installation now and in the future. Your panels like mine need periodic cleaning to maintain max output. Cleaning a ground mount system is far easier than doing so on a roof mount system, more so as you get older. I don’t think you have enough space on that lean to roof on the shop to expand your solar enough to be able to service all the needs of the house and shop. My system is 24 390 watt panels and it supplies 90-95% of my needs here in the Missouri Ozarks. I live near your latitude about 175 miles west of you. My summer surplus satisfies all of my spring through fall needs and about 75-80% of my winter needs. Congratulations on going solar. Take the next wise step and make it a big enough system to all but eliminate your electric bill. You don’t need to do it all at once but don’t make a move that restricts your future growth opportunities.
You're such a thoughtful dude. This test winter project to see how much power to expect in real life so your final product will be what you want. Really enjoy your content.
Wind loads can be enormous , do your due diligence people. 45 lbs per square foot is quite common. Do the research for your site. My 4700 watt array can have 8000 plus pounds of up lift alone. No Joke, This is why many piers have 2000 lbs of concrete each at 5 ft plus depth. Other ways to do it, but gives people an idea of the forces. Wind Forces are no joke.
You do know that temporary is semi permanent don’t you lol. The homestead is coming along over the years. I remember you cleaning up all the steel around there and getting the barn in shape.
Throw a cooling /heating loop into that lake for a heat pump powered by solar array, with wood stove and generator back up. Lot of things to do.
This is the best TV show I have ever seen. Fun on the Farm with Evan. 👍
Evan, If you are serious about Solar, I would go with a ground mount, for easy snow removal and to benefit from using Bi-Facial panels. Because you, like us, have a good number of days with clouds during the winter time.
Ground mounts are just so much easier, nice job. 👍
Hi Evan, I would put a rubber grommet under the fender washers. As for the ends, it looks like you have room for a block of wood or use a piece of conduit to run the lag bolt though to hold the panels down. Another thing I would do and that is to put a 2 by 4 at the bottom for added safety to help hold the panels in place! These are only my opinion's.
especially the 2x4 at the bottom.... imo...
And some rubber tubing over the lag bolts. With a little space. On a hot summer day the long array will get longer.
Check out Wild and Wonderful Off Grid as they are running a full house from their array and he is a master electrician.
You can't get a building inspection for a wood ground mount, if you need those. And you save a TON of money by building a legal ground mount, because with county approval you can have a grid-tie instead of batteries. (Which are a huge expense!) The problem is that your home-brew ground mount can warp and crack the panels. Your clamps are not engineered to keep the panels in place during a storm, and your garden posts are not that sturdy.
My ground mount is approved. It uses 1 1/2" pipe in 18 inch concrete piers that go 26 inches into the ground. The aluminum rails that mount on the pipes, and the panel clamps are all engineered to hold the panels in place in 120 MPH wind, even though we never get hurricanes here. There are several manufacturers that sell ground mount systems complete with free engineered plans you can take to your building permit department.
Need to add a bottom support bar to prevent the panels dropping as the materials change with temperature changes.
Evan, love your videos and the wide range you cover. If I may offer some advice, you live in a wooden house, you have two battery storage devices full of lithium ion batteries, if they go faulty and go into thermal runaway that’s 1800deg c and almost impossible to put out. Put them away from the house in a fireproof enclosure .. few feet of cable for the safety is a must 👍
Cold weather makes our panels put out more. The colder the better.
We’ve got a lot for our retirement house with a camper on it that we’ll power off-grid for the next 3 years to give us an idea what we’ll need.
So finding stuff like this has been wonderful
You mentioned the final place for the solar panels is the pole barn roof. Just a recommendation-I would try to stick with a ground Mount system. Roof mount systems are a maintenance challenge on a good day. JMO
God bless.
I agree, I would never walk around on my roof and risk damaging it. Most everyone in my area have them roof mounted.
I love it
Great video! Just two suggestions--Ground Mount, and move east of the Wabash!🙂
Yes keep them on the ground… I can’t clean snow off mine on the roof unless a climb up there which I won’t do due to my age lol…. Also could you do a vid on the connections on the panels. Thanks
Very good job. I much prefer ground mount panels as they are easier to clean. Greetings from Jamaica.
Evan, the one video that I think you should watch most of all is wild. Wonderful off grid. That family started out in a little camping trailer and now they have got a beautiful A-frame home. It’s a very good channel to watch and he excellent electrician. Good luck on your bill. I’ll be following you.
Evan the ground heaving with the frost will rack your frame! It could damage the panels.
Thank you!
Watch Alan Gina lumnah acres they do strictly solar
Nice and cheap mounting. Be aware with washers and corrosion especially if they are not also aluminium based. Versus time corrosion will appear here. Maybe with some plastic washer between, will save the situation. Cheers from France.
Awesome!
Run a 2x4 along to bottom to carry the panel weight
Temporary, I would think there’s some kind of angle bracket that would be made for this to make it easier to hold the sides down
I used 1" chunks of angle aluminum for mine.
Sun angle is low Dec Jan Feb plus the clouds are pretty thick.....good idea with the test run
Nice. Just remember, when you think you have enough, add a minimum of half as many more. That goes for panels and storage batteries.
Ground mounted panels typically out preform roof mounted systems. Solar panels love the sun but heat not so much.
Goooood Job sir !
A Newbie here. Following THIS very intently !!! Thanks for sharing these !!!
I have 15 72/37 inch solar panels on the roof of my garage, 280 watts each broken down to 3 , 4 panels sets and one three panel set. If your not getting good info from an installer or the company you got your panels from let me give you some true Diy things that I have discovered in the 4 years I have had mine running. My panels are on my garage roof because I have no room in my yard. You on the other hand have plenty of space. It's been said in the comments, snow is a pain on a roof, maintenance is a pain on a roof, you will be on your roof a lot. On the ground all you have to do is walk up to them. Your temp solar panel rack is fine. As you said it's temporary. The one thing that I see on this video thats worring me is your wiring from the panels to your basement. You do realize that the power from the panels is DC? Distance matters when is comes to DC power lines. Another thing that I didn't see or hear you talk about was circuit breakers for the DC lines coming in. Thats a must if you don't want to destroy your solar equipment. It sounds to me that your plan is to go off grid. There is a lot more to it then a few solar panels and 2 battery backups and testing. On TH-cam go to Ambition Strikes and look at their setup. They have already done what your looking to do. They had help installing all the stuff they needed to make it work for them. Im sure they got a cut on the price for putting the install on their chennel. Please be safe don't kill a bunch more fish. LOL
Just a thought, why dont you put a board on the bottom to act as a footer to hold the panels and give added support than just relying on those lag bolts? Food for thought especially if you are gonna roof mount them.
the better angle is closer to 30 degrees than 45. you might be loosing a significant amount of power generation. check your location for proper tilt angle to the sun. hope this helps.
For testing and trial runs..... I used a dozen folding chairs I had around the house. Just prop the panels up on the back of the chairs and wire them up. 6KW array was making almost 5KW during summer testing. Zero cost of materials.
We are starting an off-grid solar experiment this coming week. It looks like we are going about it the same way.
We've installed 1 of 3 hybrid inverters with our panels and batteries that are hooked to the grid to run first from solar, second from battery and if not enough solar they automatically switch to pulling power from the grid. The aim is to have a backup for power outage plus daily reduce our electric bill.
I have a stack of panels with an inverter and battery gathered but yet to attach together. I the shipping company left your yellow cardboard 'do not stack" cone intact. Mine was squashed flat, and four panels were fork truck fork speared. Replacement panels shipped also had a flat cone and oil stains on top but those survived.
Would love to see a cost breakdown after you give this a trial run
put a 90 degree bend in your washers close to the center hole for the outside panels, it will keep them from wanting to tilt. Love watching your videos.
I hope he listens to you he doesn't take my suggestions
I would just put a small block of wood of the appropriate thickness for the other side of the washer to tighten up against. And don't forget to cut a channel for the lag screw to pass through. I would think that the edge of a bent washer would to easily cut/sink into the wood as the lag bolt was tightened.
@@DEJones71 Most of the established channels do not , for a period of time, then the idea is theirs. Same as in real life. This channel has always had great content , filming, explanation & humor......in my opinion. Also, no mumbling.
Since Evan said this is temporary the current connections might be fine as is, but if it wasn't and with Evan being a good fabricator, he could make some clips and drill a hole in flat aluminum stock to use, and I'd make some for the bottoms to secure into the wood frames as well, with those panels being heavy enough to move over time.
The bent washers are a good idea and a really easy solution. I will try to incorporate that into my next solar video. Thanks.
Thanks 😎
Would be nice if we all had this and some wind power.
Agree with earlier comment about keeping as a ground mount, where you can brush the snow off in winter and wash dirt/pollen off on other seasons.
A cut piece of PVC pipe slightly shorter than the thickness of the panel for the end panels (lag bolt with fender washer goes thru pvc piece and wall of PVC prevents fender washer from angling down too much. Usually, you want some type of grounding on panels, even Romex with stripped wire every 40" wrapped around a bolt attached to each panel (panels should have a few holes on underside of frame) would work when coupled with 2' of rebar driven into ground with U bolt gripping stripped end of the length of Romex.
For me personally I would always prefer to install the panels on or near the ground. (if possible) I dislike mounting them on a roof because of my perceived condition of inaccessibility for maintenance and repair.
Nice work can’t wait for the update
for the end lag bolts , cut a small block and pit it the other side of the washer so it tightens down evenly.
Hey. I went to SanTan solar. I bought forty of their used 240 watt panels for 2k including shipping. Although used they work fine. Now setting on 13-14 kw of power per hour. BOOM!!!
Holy cow you got the panels cheap
Are you going to do a cost breakdown when this is done? I am thinking about doing this in the future.
Evan,
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Do not roof mount your panels to your pole barn. While it may seem like an out of the way tidy approach to dealing with your panels the heat buildup from the metal roofing in the summer will seriously effect your output voltage. Not to mention the winter time snow buildup that you may get that can not be easily swept off of panels mounted so high up.
As someone who has made this very costly mistake I would recommend mounting your panels on a pole array utilizing 8 inch schedule 80 steel pipe. Any good certified electrician with solar experience can assist you in what you need to do it right the first time.
Signature Solar is a great company to work with and even though hard to reach at times they always take the time to fully assist with any issues or questions.
Good luck with the project.
I wonder why You didn't make the structure with a variable inclination to go down in spring and summer, it cost almost the same in material and it makes better use of sunny and cloudy days. Thanks for sharing !
Solar is expensive in the USA, exact same panels here in the Netherlands are 105$ a piece
Bought similar (different wattage) Canadian Solar panels also from Signature Solar recently and I'm going to be building a ground array that will double as an equipment shed (the panels do double duty as roofing material). Planning on installing a couple of off grid inverter/solar charge controllers to be the primary power source for the farm with the grid as a back up.
Hello from Germany, here it is not allowed to screw the solar panels directly to the aluminum frame. the frame is not part of the overall statics. a rail substructure is required for roof mounting. Good luck and have fun with the system
good job !
Real world test results are always interesting to see.
Very nice, hope they work out. I look forward to seeing you guys do more with them. Thanks for sharing.
put wheel to be able to rotate always facing the sun.
thanks we love your videos. please keep it up.
I think a batten along the bottom of the panels to stop any downward slippage would be a quick nd cheap option, even if the rig is short term would be a wise move.
Don't forget about wind turbines and a lot of areas where there's a lack of sun in the winter time there is a lot more breeze blowing a lot more wind that maybe something to think about too, if need be you can probably as one and your generator being The last resort from power.. good luck with your system.. God bless and have a good day.
Love your videos. I'm glad you made it through that bad winter
Great job you two work good together love your videos thank you
Very interesting video, Evan. Good luck on this project.
Very nice job Evan and Rebecca!
Great video. Thank you. This is very interesting.
You guys are amazing. I am so envious of you.
Evan you give me the guts to go off grid. Thanks for you videos.
You really should put a support board below a panels to help prevent them from trying to slide down.
On end panels with those fasteners, put a block of wood the thickness of the panel on opposite side, nice build
Madman. You're a genius! You just gave me a great idea!
Good luck with it all!
Awesome setup great solar system install
Awesome job done Rebekah and Even. Hopefully it’s going to save you some $$$.
Could of used 3rd pearlling at the bottom with 1x1 or 1x2 to make bottom rest for panels take some of strain from lag and washer hold downs
Thanks! Seeing this gave me a great idea how to build my array easily adjustable for summer and winter :)
Nice set up. Love the team work with you and Rebecca. I too would love to set up array down by my tractor shed and it's nice and sunny there. Enjoyed full-watch. 👍🏽🤠 1/28/23
Thanks for the video, as always.
Awesome!!
Check out the Solark 1P 10K inverter. It will work perfectly with your current setup.
Sol-arks are the best!👍
All the best!
Great video educational THANKS
Great video…very interesting
nice work, looks good. I like the roof idea
Nice job
I'm right behind you, currently building my solar array. Like you I am figuring out my needs and what will need to be upgraded in the future.
If you do not get snow put them on a roof. if you get snow do not put on a roof unless you like being on a ladder clearing the snow/ice off. I have a ground mount because of the snow I get.
The panels will need to be aligned perfectly to achieve the 1260 watts from each of your arrays. Even then you can't expect full power for the entire 5 hour average solar use unless you have your panels on a solar tracker. Since the sun is lower in the sky in the winter you can expect less power, to compensate panels produce better in the cold.
1100 watts is the most I have seen out of them so far.
So first you prepare a garden, then you put solar panels to catch the sun that the plants need. Assume that the patch that the panels shade will grow no produce, assume also that sheep, goats etc will use panels as shade and scratching posts and will have fun with all the interconnecting cables.
You do a great job very smart thinker
I like the idea of screwing into the treated 2x4 instead of a traditional metal channel. I've been trying to decide the best option for mounting to our timber-framed ground mounts. Thanks for the idea!
Looks good, I think your going to get some real good usable results for your needs. I just set my house up for a gas generator, along with the disconnect, so I'm ready to go. I might try it within the next few days to a week, due to the snow and possible ice coming. Good luck on your results, I hope they turn out the results your wanting. Thanks for sharing, have a great week.
Nice setup Evan. Now the weight of the panels hangs completely on the screws and washers. Due to the effect of heat and cold, space can be created here, making the connection less strong. Wouldn't you rest the panels at the bottom on an extra rail so they cannot slide? I'm curious how it will look when it's done.
Hi, like the idea of resting against a beam on the bottom edge. Could also use bolts through the solar frame mounting holes into the beam they sit on.
Take care & keep on generating your own power. M
oh man, you can not order a system from "signature solar" soon enough. If you can, i highly recommend upgrading! (can be fairly mobile if needed, too)
Great info. Thanks for the link. Adding more solar is our next big project.