I'm starting to prepare to do the solar, inverters and lithium batteries, which means plan everything out in as many variants as possible so I'm not redoing the work again in the near future. I know this is long winded. It's hard to be concise when you have more questions than answers on broad fronts.
I'm looking at doing the Valence batteries or similar since my wife is not especially comfortable with batteries known to burn violently when damaged. Does anyone have feedback on the safest Lithium batteries commercially available? (
demo video here for the sort of differences.) I like the safe aspect. But I was planning on 4-6 260AH batteries as minimum. The larger size doesn't seen to be an option with them with quite high enough power discharge capabilities. I know it's a trade between safety and power density, and I haven't done nearly enough research to spend money on batteries. That kind of holds up the entire project, so please share any experiences or send links to any relevant reading for this type of application.
My FW is still in storage until at least April before I can start to measure. My thought is that the excess space over the hatch on the front compartment should be a good spot to mount the inverters. Until I can see how large the gap is over the top shelf for the gen and batteries go, it's only a thought to place them there.
So far the Xantrex Freedom SW looks like it would be best suited to what I'm after. It limits voltage for the batteries to 24V though. Does anyone have other alternatives for something that would give enough power? I like that I can tie them together for higher power output, and tie them with sequencers to shed loads as required. It also has an AGS option, although I haven't even started to look at how I could tie that with an external generator. (Which would only come into play if I am building a house, much later down the line.)
The solar aspect I think has been covered in more detail and with better instructions than I could hope to post, so I'll skip most of the details on that side of things.
For budgeting, I'm looking at roughly the following:
4 (minimum) 260AH batteries - $3k USD (
link)
2 Xantrex Freedom SW inverters - $4k CAD (
link)
Xantrex control panel, sequencer and cables - ~1k CAD
Batteries & Inverter/charger portion of the project is about $24.6k CAD / $18.9k USD. This is before shopping for best price, so I expect to be able to find some savings on that.
For those still wondering why I'd do this:
This is a proof of concept. The need to run dual AC is to make sure I can handle heavy loads.
My primary thought is that if I start building a house in the future (at least a few years out, if not longer), I would like to have as many options as possible for power. I'll have an external generator, but I'd rather not have more noise than needed if there is no construction going on. Building a house would be far enough from anything else that generator noise would really not be ideal. The house would also be far enough out from existing hydro service (electric power) that the build cost to bring power in would be more than the entire cost for the solar/lithium/inverter build on the RV, and a good chunk of it for the house. Also, if building a house I'd rather be living on site to make sure everything is done right. I don't plan to build a house and move again after it's done.
There is a possibility I *may* use this for work. I work with technology, and some of the computer systems I would like to be able to stage in the trailer are far from light on power. If it can run the dual AC, i can at least run parts of the solutions I'd be staging while still having at least the one AC running. If I'm doing consulting and staging in the RV, I would likely be in locations where running a generator could very well not be an option. Another perk to the Xantrex system for me is that if I'm at a client site and I can get a 15A connection, I could charge the batteries in the down time, and use the power stored via the inverters to get higher power during work times.
Linear Mode
