Our Power System
Heating
We heat three buildings, heat provided with outdoor wood boiler, we also get our domestic hot water & heat our hot tub with the use of copper tube heat exchangers
House & shope has infloor radiant heat.
Cast iron rad in engine room, 4 10 watt pumps move water around when needed, no pump runs full time, these pumps are very efficient
Everything is electric except the gas range
for pumping water from our well we use a Douro piston pump 1/4 hp
We run a large refrigerator and freezer, office, 2 computers, fax machine, which run 24/7
as well as running a clothes washer, dishwasher, microwave as you would in any normal home.
We now have power in the 40'x52' shop, this will tax the system, as of now we just run lights, small tools,
When we run the welder, compressor etc we will run the lister..
Solar
9 panels, approx 1400 watt, sunny day will provide up to 9KW hours which is about 1/3 fo the power we really need.
Batteries
we have 16 6 Volt Deep Cycle batteries L16 type, 1680 amphour at 24V
flooded batteries will take more abuse than a sealed battery
We add distilled water once a month, we also equalize with the SR 3 Air cooled Lister & Trace Inverter once a month to keep plates clean. Batteries should last 7-8 years or longer if looked after. The fellow at the battery shop said these are the biggest seller for Off Gridders...
The batteries will run 7-8 hours if there is no sun before we charge with the lister.
On a sunny day we get up to 18 hours before charging, even if batteries are charged up and we will be running heavy loads such as pool pump, projection TV, shop tools we start up the 6/1 Lister
Listers
Our large lister is a 3 cylinder air cooled, SR3 1964, 18Hp, 7KW external oil sump that holds approx 25 gallons of oil.
Built for 25/7 service, purchase from Crown Assets.
It is controlled by inverter, automatic start is used for back up if other engine is being serviced or we are away
Our main genny is the 6/1. We have it plumbed to the boiler for cooling, hot water going to the house goes through engine first, boiler water 150-160 degrees, comes out of engine at 190-200 degrees.
We use 6/1 as battery charger, it runs a 24V 100 amp Delco alternator wired to an external Balmar Marine Regulator, fully adjustabel, amps, volts, time similar to a Trace Inverter
Charging
We run Charger at 70% and run 5-14 hours depending on Sun and Season
and it takes approx 1 litre per our and we average 250 hours per month on the 6/1 Lister
We would like to add a 2-3KW wind turbine which would cut our genny time considerably
Inverter
We use a 4000 watt 24 volt Trace Inverter Charger and have left space on wall for second Inverter and that will give us 240 Volt for shop, so when planning your system always leave room for future expansion
We will be puttin a system together to clean waste motor oil, veggie oil to burn in the lister and boiler
