Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Great looking work!

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That's what I want for Christmas! (not going to happen though)

System up and running without electrocuting myself, bystanders or error messages. Have to recover from the shock that it all went so smooth. Batteries were nearly full at the end of the day, mainly because I had to shut it down to connect some extra load points. Finally we can leave the generator off while making noise with other machines.

Its's a good feeling to have silent and clean energy produced this way. It did cost a bit, but then, you'll have something!

Woooo Hoooo!!!
That is me living vicariously through you right now...

Thanks Ron! And.....you're welcome.

Thats a neat job you have done there, Paul. Congrats on it actually working too

Thanks, Charlie. Well, it works but not completely as intended. I will explain below, after an overview of the off-grid system.

The battery bank has 24 Trojan L16RE-2V with a C10 of 1,021Ah. Which means it should handle a discharge of 1,021Ah in a period of 10 hours without getting damaged. The 20 hour rate is 1,110Ah. Calculating with a 30% discharge daily the estimated lifetime of this set is a bit more then 8 years. That can be stretched to 10 years or a little more if this 30% discharge doesn't happen every single day (365 days a year).

To make maintenance as easy as possible, I installed a single point watering kit reducing the upkeep of the water levels to a minimum time. Also, the use of copper bus bar reduced the amount of connections one would have with traditional cables and lugs and thus reducing the resistance in the connections. The batteries are connected in series to come to 48V.


The battery bank is connected to the Sunny Island 8.0H, which is the central inverter in the off-grid system and virtually manages all external power input. The Sunny Boys 5000-TL21 (2) generating a maximum of 10,4 Kwh and feeding the off-grid with 230V/50Hz power. The Sunny Island uses that to charge the batteries during the day so we can the system at night off the batteries.

In case the sun fails us or we use too much power, a 7Kw diesel generator kicks in to supply power to the internal grid and the Sunny Island to recharge the batteries. During the day and with full batteries the system can generate a whopping 23 Kwh by combining the power of all inverters and diesel generator.

Not completely as intended…because after installation and commissioning I found during the fine tuning of the system that we did not receive a SB 5000-TL21 but a SB 4000-TL21, which explains why the system didn't want to produce more than 4000 watt! Solved the problem with the supplier in Germany and within a week or so we will have everything up to specs.

It was an interesting experience to do this all and I've learned really a lot of it. Serious equipment like this forces one to really think things through and understand the principles of how it works (best!). Seeing some people around this forum, I guess I should start an off-grid consultancy?

That automatic water top up system looks slick. Do they use some sort of float valve?

The watering plugs have indeed a float valve build in, that closes the watering opening and prevents over filling of the cell. All plugs are connected with each other and have a central filling point. It's from the US. https://www.flow-rite.com/battery-water ... pgodtmkA4w for their website.

Would love to have a solar setup like that Paul. Great job with putting it together .

Ok Stuart, I'm clueless, how about some enlightenment

@scotty is that better?

And here I thought you might be writing about the Cat Consider me enlightened Stuart

To be honest, we do sell PV systems here in Thailand. Design them, install them and maintain them. That means that we guarantee what we do and have no responsibility waver whatsoever. I guess that is the difference with a consultant, who is generally not more than a kind of horse whisperer and can walk away without having any responsibility for whatever the results are. The difference between a grown up adult and a greedy child.