Solarrolla Homestead Series 1 - Off-grid Solar Array Build

[@grafja]

I appreciate an off-grid build video without all the fear mongering and doom-and-gloom of other channels. You've got a pretty savvy audience, please don't shy away from the technical details. Looking forward to this one.

[@edpatronick8472]

Your Lucky to have had such a handy Father. Your living the dream!

[@eriknordwall1439]

Amazing! Thanks for sharing!

[@DavidWilsonsays]

I could see you building an elevator to the platform on top with the wind tower extension as the lift counter weight. i.e. lift up tower lowers, lift down tower rises.

[@dropshot1967]

besides hot water, you could store a lot of heat/energy in sand. I heard about sand batteries developed in Finland, used to supply heat for city and block heat. These used electrical heaters that stored heat in big, very well insulated, tanks filled with sand. The sand was heated to several hundred degrees celsius, and the heat was recovered through a system of pipes that ran steam through the sand and heated the city heat system with heat exchangers. Another way could be a version of geothermal energy as a heat source for your heat pumps. Dig as big of a hole as possible and line it with insulation. fill it back in, but run lines through the backfill from both your solar troughs and for your heat pumps. This system greatly increases the efficiency of your heat pumps in winter. The use of the pond, as you mentioned in the video would work much the same but at lower temperatures. I am not sure if the pond you showed would have enough capacity to get you through the winter, that would greatly depend on the depth of the pond,. You can calculate the heat capacity of the water in the pond if you can estimate/measure the volume and compare that with your heating needs over the winter. A problem I see with the extendable blades for the wind turbine is that in the winter, this mechanism could freeze solid, inhibiting your capability to retract the blades in case of strong winds

[@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez]

pond calculations are there ONLY to be sure fish does not freeze. By insulating house (passive standard), heat loss can be so low that even heat pumps are not worth installing... but that kind of house / reftrofit needs a lot of money and expertise. just simple earth tubes can be used to preheat. less heat from sand needed.

[@tomsummers1137]

Next level ingenuity here from Brett and Kira

[@solarrolla]

@tomsummers1137 thank you!

[@clevelandthomsen7042]

LOVE IT! Inch by inch....gonna use that one.

[@jeremyp3630]

Used panels and even new solar panels are so cheap now; I just helped a neighbor install solar and those new 405w panels were 30 cents per watt! Since your turbine blades will have actuators, you could add a controller to automatically bring them in if wind speed gets too high. I like what you're doing with multiple ways of gathering energy, because we lived in Eau Claire for a few years and learned how the sun goes away for a large portion of the winter!

[@solarrolla]

@jeremyp3630 yes, ultimately, the wind turbine will automatically come in and out depending on wind speed.

[@freddymax5256]

Buy new panels @ $.30 vs used @ $.15 to produce 25% more power with 25% less panels. Smaller/cheaper stand and longer panel life.

[@whitneylake2107]

Adjustability in your windmill is brilliant !

[@solarrolla]

@@whitneylake2107 thank you!

[@SergiiDumyk]

Wow! The idea of telescoping wind tower, ideally automatically controlled, also came into my mind just couple days ago!

[@SergiiDumyk]

however retractable blades .. well, yes, efficiency, but think about safety twice as the amount of load they take raises concerns about the feasibility of making them reliably retractable. What folks here in Ukraine do is variable-pitch propellers.

[@z.Sh4ped.Po0Tin]

I’d like to see those retractable blades working because I never saw such solution. Hope it will be lightweight and strong enough. Usually a braking mechanism is used to handle strong gusts like angling the tail to set the wind turbine direction away from the wind direction (perpendicular) which slows it down and prevents destruction. I’ll look for updates because it’s interesting and seems technically challenging. 😎👍

[@lldragon]

awesome

[@SarahStuff-p5u]

Get that center to go up by a counterweight and then have a couple guy wires that can adjust in and out to raise and lower the telescope. Just a suggestion. Rip to your dad, lost mine a year ago myself.

[@SarahStuff-p5u]

Run a couple pulleys for counterweight to center structure and make counterweights about 150lbs heavier, when it is fully extended the weights sit on ground, get 3 guywires with cables down to winches to lower the structure and raise the weights.

[@Thingssimplyfied]

Hello, I would change the Solarpanels on Top and the Heatpipes below because of the better wind direction for your Windmill. The round bow of the mirrors of the heat pipe will send the collected wind in the wrong direction .

[@greensavant2573]

If you get that array any higher, you'll have to install aircraft warning flashing red lights!

[@t2rx7crx1]

Why not pitch the blade instead of retracting it?

[@JohnnyThomas-ps6mp]

Do you plan to have a pit for the cell tower to lower into the ground? Food for thought :)

[@rosalieroku3818]

Great video, thanks! Very nice design. Did you put up the posts and beams green? Any plans for preservative once they dry? Any worries about shrinkage problems? Great video. Great time to be energy independent!

[@blainecelestaine4543]

With the amount of R&D u have in this already . I'm sure u got this covered. But it seems like a lot of moving parts and fail points over the long haul to do wind power. How much power would it generate at 19 mph ? Great Work Great Vision .pls don't take this the wrong way. . I'm just fully engaged.. big up

[@lunatik9696]

where u get those metal brackets?

[@solarrolla]

@@lunatik9696 we built them

[@hithere7382]

What kind of wind load is that rated for? We get derechos and supercells et al in Arkansas. We have a 2023 ioniq 5 electric hatchback it regularly charges at 248-252 volts a/c at 48-50 amps except when the 8 tons of air conditioning turns on then it goes down to 245.5 vac for a couple of seconds. We pay way more to run the two 3 or 4 ton 2 stage air conditioners than we do to drive the ioniq but we work from home so it's basically a dog runabout and grocery getter but came with 2 years of electrify america charging so we've used it for long trips a few times and it's quite comfortable. All i changed was my usual installation of an amateur radio system and a better amplifier for the factory sound system. It's really a nice system and it's too bad they cost cut the amp the engineers in korea wanted to put in the car. It gets about 2.2 kwh/mi on fast interstates and 3.4-4 around town. Your scale model later in the video is similar to how our large and less large amateur radio and now also starlink at deer and duck camp. It's in the middle of nowhere in AR and has lots of solar but not much batteries and builds up insane credits throughout the year to run electric heat when nobody is there to run the wood boiler for little to no money to keep it 50 degrees F in there. I remember the day it was 7 degrees on the morning of opening day of duck hunting here and that's why we like having several means of heating it be they propane furnaces (and huge tanks from my dad's era and the farm), two different large diesel 1800 rpm water cooled diesel generators, and all the roofs have been solar since 2018 when they got new 18ga metal roofing installed, the wood boiler and the heat exchangers, lines, pumps and stuff for the fluid. The whole area's power is more reliable now too since this was done and is practical for EV usage. If we get a few more buildings up I might look at putting a solar powered level 3 charger maybe 40' from the garage. There's a huge wood cookstove in the kitchen and a few other stoves around the place that are more regular in size and type. The lesser antenna is trailer mounted and only 13'5" high when it's stowed but it gets 40' tall when you run it out with some grease and the 48 volt battery and motors, pulleys and stuff to run it instead of the old pony motor. It's handy for ice storms and crazy winds and it's heavy af and quite dense when it's stowed, i've seen it take 90 mph wind a few times and it didn't budge the suspension much.

[@wtpwtp]

What electric riding mower did you get?

[@solarrolla]

@@wtpwtp we converted an old gas riding lawn mower!

[@rosalieroku3818]

What's the model number of your battery? Thanks 🙂

[@llN3M3515ll]

What I don't really understand is the argument of cost vs output and efficiency, and the decisioning on going with used solar panels. You have been doing this for a long time so I am sure you are aware that not all panels are created equally, and some panels are rated for much lower loss over time then others not to mention the other factors like heat loss and output. To your point you will still likely be getting 80-90% generation of what the panel output day one, but I think the bigger thing is actual rating of the panels. Sure I can buy used 250-300w panels for 15 cents a watt, but that doesn't take into consideration all the mounting and wiring etc that is required for those additional panels. Your space is somewhat at a premium and your time is effectively money, so while its awesome you can mill your own lumber and it costs very little to do that, you are spending time doing that, which how much is your time worth? If you look at new panels, I have seen bi facials as high as 650w, if you run the numbers on a 20kw system, @300w you would need 67 panels, @650w you would need 31 panels. If you conservatively estimate a 10% loss on the @300w that brings you to needing 75 panels. So at the end of the day I build out infrastructure for 75 vs 31 panels and get the same output, have I really saved money or has that "savings" been eaten up by the infrastructure required to support more then double the panels?

[@honumoorea873]

Retractable wings ....bad idea and can't really be efficient. Variable angle wings is the solution.

[@gordon6029]

I have a bunch of evacuated solar tubes I’ll sell you for really cheap.

[@83kaszas]

Please dont charge lifepo4 batteries up to 57.+ Volts....around 55.2 they are fully charged,anything more is just degrading them....

[@honumoorea873]

55.2V is already high imo, I use 54.7V.

[@83kaszas]

@@honumoorea873 This is also good,but not for all batteries,if You have control over your BMS and can set lower equalization voltages for the individual cells,than yes.But for most brands 55.2 is still in the range for the BMS to do a top balance on the battery,and maintain it as required.I saw in this video values way over 57V,thats almost at the point to trigger over voltage protection from the BMS.You really dont want that.