Kingston Solar Power installation.
- Filed under: Solar Power and Off-Grid Living
- Date: Jan 15,2008
Solar Power is the future. I’ve posted many things about this that have all lead to this moment. This small solar power installation cost about $600 for EVERYTHING except my time.
Basically, as you know, my sister and her hubby have a nice new small house in an outskirt of Kingston, Ontario, and have been living with no electricity and no plumbing for over a year now. This is a mostly by choice I must add, since they want to live a simple life. They are both very “green” people and don’t like the idea of needing to chop down tree’s to get regular grid power installed. Despite all this, I want my little sister to have light in her home, and be able to run BASIC electric devices if they want too. (And to a point, they do)
This weekend was the weekend I put all the things i’ve been learning about for the last 3-4 months to use !
Here is the breakdown for my last 3 days. I’m TRYING to put details in order to help other people who may want to do a SMALL solar setup.
Click here to read the post about what specific hardware i’m installing. The only thing not mentioned is the 300 Watt Xantrex inverter I got at Canadian Tire.
Friday Night :
It was already too dark to start installing the panels outside, or even to decide WHERE to put them, so I decided to see how much I could get done inside with the light that was currently available.
- I put the batteries in their container, and connected the 2 together in series with a #1 Car Battery Cable from Canadian Tire that cost $14. The connectors where already on it that fit the batteries I got them, so it was convenient. So 2 X 6 volts 225 amp/hour Deep Cycle batteries connected in series = 12 Volts 225 Amp/Hours.
I connected the 300 Watt Xantrex Inverter (Also from Canadian Tire) to the batteries using #10 Cable. (This is plenty for the small loads it will be drawing)-
Then came the part I was worried about. When the house was built, it was all ready to have electricity. (All the wiring was installed, along with the sockets and fixtures. The only thing missing was the installation of grid power) So I had to connect the inverter to the existing fuse panel. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT:
With Grid power, the Neutral cable is linked with the Ground. When using an inverter, the positive, neutral, and ground cables must NEVER touch. So using a multimeter set on a continuity test, I had to fiddle with the panel until I found a big screw that when taken off removes the neutral bond to the ground. So basically : I checked for continuity between the NEUTRAL ( in my case, black) cables and the copper uninsulated
ground cables in the fuse panel. Sure enough, there was continuity, so I fiddled until I found that screw that connected the ground to the neutral. PLEASE NOTE : There was NO power in this panel, so it was “ok” to fiddle. Don’t Fiddle with electrical panels that has ANY kind of power going into it if you don’t know what you’re doing. Once I was confident the neutral and ground cables where never connected together, I plugged the cable between the inverter to the input of the fuse panel. I backed away as far as my arm would let me, shielded my
eyes, prayed to the techie-gods, and then turned on the switch. Woohoo nothing blew up ! !!! I started plugging in light bulbs and testing the switches, sockets one by one. Everything was working!! My sister was happy .. 
I expected to spend HOURS AND HOURS on this part, but it took an hour or so. I called it a day, and spent the night chatting with Sharon and her hubby.
Saturday “Morning” :
To me morning starts at around 10-11. Before that, it’s coffee time. (Although I did go outside to check out where the sun was shining when it popped out from the clouds) Sharon and I went to the hardware store to get supplies to build some sort of pole mount for the solar panels that we decided to install in the backyard. This took alot of time, we had to go to 3 hardware stores, and the furthest one was a good 40 minute one way drive from their house. We got back from the stores at around 2:30pm. I missed out on alot of sun time there, but I had no choice, I couldn’t do anything without the materiels.
I made the pole mount for the solar panels out of long, L shaped kind of brackets with holes in them. (Sorry, really hard to describe, but you see what I mean when you look at the picture) . These brackets are great and made my job alot easier. I made a kind of big I shaped form with the brackets that I mounted the panels onto.
I got a fence post and drilled a hole through the CAP to put in a really long bolt that was mostly inside the post but stuck out through the top of the cap. This gave the panels the
ability to turn. Another note : the big bolt type thing gave me a hard time, it was moving and making the whole mount sway and wobble. (The mount, not the pole) I simply compacted sand in the pole, THEN put the long bolty type thing through the sand and back onto the top of the pole. The sand was just what it needed to keep it in place.
We also got a bracket for the pole that is technically meant to be able to hold it up
without having to dig. Instead, for extra support, I dug a 2ft hole and put the mount down there. The pole sits into a fixture for it on the mount and is secured with a bolt that holds it in place. I put a few big rocks right onto the mount, and then buried it.
The aluminum rack simply sits in the bolt sticking out of the pole and is kept there with a butterfly nut. How much you tighten the nut is what makes the angle. It wobbles a little still, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. In high winds in might turn the direction it’s facing on it’s own, but the nut can easily be tightened MORE so that it can’t move AT
ALL and faces directly up if needed. It’s not the ideal, but I only had a few days. I’m happy with it.
That’s pretty much the extent of what I got done that day. It’s winter and it gets dark really fast now, but atleast now they have a floodlight that works in the backyard that helped as it was getting dark and we were still “trying” to work. This took alot longer than I thought it would, but i’m on a learning curve. 
Sunday :
I was originally planning on leaving today, but the combination of needing to work during sunny hours, and my hatred towards mornings slowed me down somewhat. I decided to leave on monday in order to not rush myself and get it done right.
Sunday was Trench diggin’ day ! It’s about 70 feet between where the panels are located, to where the batteries are. Luckily most of that I can run the cables along the house, attached to the lower part between the concrete foundation and the sidings of the house. It’s not too obvious. The rest however, needed to be buried. (About 25 feet) So I dug my trench and stuck the cables in there. I would have liked to put a pipe, but I didn’t think of that the day before when we were at the hardware store. It’s a bummer because i’m sure those cables will need changing when they get a couple of extra panels. I guess i’ll just re-dig it ! It actually took most of my available work hours to dig this trench, as some of the earth was still frozen, and there were lots of rocks and old roots in the ground.
Sharon’s in-laws came by and had supper with us that night. They seemed quiet happy to see that their kid’s finally have some light in there ! (Honestly, I think the people that care about Sharon and Calvin - aka the inlaws, myself, my mother, - may be more happy and comfortable knowing that they have power than they do ! Still .. i’m selfish .. I did all this for myself. It’s just too techie to resist.
Monday :
Today was to finalize. I attached the cables to the house to make it nice and clean looking. I FINALLY connected the solar panels to the cables
I ran and to the charge controller. I connected a permanent multimeter onto the batteries so that they can have an idea of what state they’re at. Everything was working perfectly. So I packed my bags, and made the 3:00 bus back to Montreal.
The rest of the pictures from this trip are here.
If you’re interested in Solar Power you should also read about :
- How to make power from the wind (Wind Generators / Turbines)
- SolarSuno Solar Power Installation in Spain
- Calculating your power consumption
- Solar Power Basics
- Figuring out how many solar panels you need.
- Choosing Batteries for your Renewable Energy System
If you’re looking for LOTS of information on solar power and wind power systems, you might consider buying these sets of e-books that are filled with tips and tricks for solar power.
Special thanks to the people at fieldlines.com !
23 Responses for "Kingston Solar Power installation."
Nice! Thanks!
Nice Site! Thanks!
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Cool this was added to hackedgadgets.com .. Thanks !!!
If anyone wants more detailed information regarding this Solar setup, such as what it cost me, send me an email …
digital mind @ techienation . com
(Remove the spaces)
This was an awesome article, I really can appreciate a project like this! And in the future you could make some improvements to the panel mounting and cables and it would run forever! That is great. Thanks for posting this. I did also see this on Hackedgadgets.com
George : Yeah I plan on changing the cable between the panels and batteries in the summer (I installed this in DECEMBER, in CANADA, got lucky there was almost no snow at the time) The pole itself is remarkably solid !
Thanks for leaving a comment !
Nice writeup! I am a bit concerned about your splitting of the ground and neutral, though. Why do you say you must split them when using an inverter? You may be putting your sister’s safety at risk by doing so! I work as a technician for a company that builds (among other things) military and commercial DC-AC inverters, and neutral and ground are *always* tied together inside the inverter unit. I have also poked my head into several models made by other companies, and again the neutral and ground are tied together. For your sister’s sake, I hope the Xantrex power inverter you bought is built this way, otherwise do her a favor and reconnect the ground inside the panel!
Brian, the way that most invertser slike that work is that internally they step the 12v up to a positive and negative rail that is half the peak voltage, and then they drive both the neutral and live off h bridges from those rails. If you measure either side to the chassis you will have 60 or so volts RMS, because the 2 are out of phase that gives you the 120 between the 2.
Connecting either side to ground will cause a short on that side so in any case, a ground vault will shutdown the inverter (Or blow it up in the case of a small cheap one like this) - only saftey concern is with incorrectly wired equipment that has neutral and earth reversed on it, but that wouldnt work in a place with a GFI breaker anyway so the chances of it these days is very remote.
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Hello,
I am doing master’s program in electrical from California state university los angeles. i also have great interest in solar panels and all and i want to learn and would like to install this system in india at my home but before that i have lots of questions about this system like the avg consumption of electricity of my home is 33kw and as yo stated that i’ii have to use around 10,000 panel…so please tell me about the cost??….the solar will charge the battery first or we can directly connect it to the equipment??
10,000 watts panel.
Hi Ritesh, welcome to TechieNATION. Get ready to have a bunch of numbers thrown at you, but first, please clear a few things up for me. Your average power consumption is 33kw over how much time ? A day, a week, a month ???
Also, if you had to guess, how many hours of sun do you get on average PER DAY where you plan on installing these ??
Where did you purchase the panels and what made you choose that company? There are tons of companies out there claiming they have the cheapest solar panels, so how did you filter out the best choice? do you just figure out the average price per watt first and then times that number by the number of watt panel to see if a particular company is competitive?
Hi Jake,
Yes exactly. Divide the price by the amount of Watts and compare each manufacturer’s panels price per watt. That’s the best way to judge. Once you have the best deal, I’d go online and look for reviews of that manufacturer just to be safe. Although to be honest, I haven’t heard of any solar panel manufacturers that are flat out BAD.
The panels I used for my small solar power install in Kingston were from Canadian Tire and cost about $80 per 15 Watt Panel. (They were on special at the time) So $5.30 per Watt.
checking checking 123
How is your solar and wind research coming along ?
hi digital
i tried sending a comment earlier but it went astray
anyway remember when i said i was checking ebay for a motor to build a wind turbine ? well i have changed my mind and bought a wind turbine and some panels from ARI
i have not completed the setup just yet however i wanted to test the inverters to see if my refridgerator could run on the 4 100AH i connected in parallel and connected to a 1500 watt pure sinewave inverter
the strangest thing happened , whenever the compressor on the fridge wants to engage the inverter shuts down momentarily with a low voltage warning so i initially thought it was the batteries and i was getting confused as, based on my calculations four batteries ideally should be able to deliver 4800 watts at least for 1 hour and with the rating of the fridge being 450watts i at least should get 10 hours
i connected a voltmeter at the inverter dc input and realized that the voltage fell to 8 volts each time the compressor attempted to turn on in doing my investigations i realizes that there was a significant voltage drop along the line carrying the dc current ( it is 8 feet long)
at the inverter connection the voltage measured 8.9v but at the batteries it measured 12.58volts.
this situation really boggled my mind
what are your thoughts
Hi Oral,
I’m glad you posted your experiences with this. 12 volts is hard to carry along cheap wire. You need REALLY good and expensive wire. I paid about $5 per foot for the cabling between the batteries and inverter. I think I used 2 guage wire. Basically, go to the electrical section of your store, find a guy who knows electricity, and tell him you need to carry 12 volts and 150 Amps. (Plain old electrical cable that’s usually used for 120 volts will NOT due) The reason I say 150 amps is because you have a 1500 Watt inverter. 1500 Watts divided by 12 volts = 125 amps.
What kind of cable do you currently have between the batteries and inverter???
i am a little ashamed of myself as i should know better
actually i used a piece of old jumper cable(with the ends cut off)i had ,my view was that a jumper cable should be able to carry a significant amount of current afterall to start a car requires a lot of current ! but i did not remember that i had retired this cable as it just could not start anything even though an ohmeter put accross the ends will give continuity and a voltmeter will read the voltage accurately in an open circuit but it just could not carry the current
i am going to buy new cables tommorrow
i think i will use 2awg and also try to shorten the run
i am not yet set up i have only setup a few components on the backboard i could send some pictures or wait until everything is set up most of the items are coming from the states
lastly is it normal for the inverter to arc when connecting the battery wire even though it is turned off? i am using two 1500watt pure sine
It’s ok. Jumper cables was a good start, although maybe not for a fridge. I’m glad you figured it out!
I always saw a small spark when connecting the batteries to the inverter. Always freaks me out. I guess it’s normal.
What do you mean you’re using TWO inverters ?? (one for fridge and one for other stuff that you turn off when not needed?)
Pictures will be great once you get something up and running !
the two inverters are actually by accident ,i was trying to get a 3000 watt pure sinewave inverter but my supplier was not able to source one so he suggested two 1500 watt
i gave it some thought and decided to go ahead as my reasoning was i can run the fridge and microwave exlusively on one and the other circuits ie the tv’s and lights etc on the other ,only problem is i would need 2 transfer switches and two circuit breaker panels
that way if mother nature does not feel like giving a lot of energy on a particular day i can always shut down one part of the system to lessen the load on the batteries
i want to set up the wind turbine next week as i do not want to miss out on too much of what we call in jamaica “christmas breeze” it tends to get very windy this time of year
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