Best sales for Canadian Off-grid solar
Posted by Limp-Salamander-@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 8 comments
Posted first in bugout to no avail.
Fairly new to all of this, been feeling an overwhelming yearning for preparedness for uncertainty lately after becoming a new dad. Been looking around for portable (at least relatively) Off-grid solar powered setups to serve bare essentials. I noticed a site by the name of Renology that seems to have some fairly good deals and features on a couple YouTube channels. Right now they are having a sale and though it seems pretax a 400W setup with a 200Ah battery and inverter is close to 1200 CAD pre-tax.
My questions are: is this the proper price point? A good deal worth jumping on, or wait it out? Also Is anybody familiar with Renology? Do they have sales often?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Mechanik7@reddit
Renogy has a good reputation. I haven’t heard anything to put me off them. I have some of their MC4 extension cables and they have worked well.
My portable solar gear otherwise is Ecoflow. They have Canadian shipping centres so the prices stay reasonable for Canada. Generally free shipping on any sizeable item, and no hidden customs fees. You will have to pay HST though as you would expect. If them item is already in the Canadian warehouses it will ship quickly.
Tmanok@reddit
Except that their prices are ridiculous, sure Renogy is fine. I bought a full Renogy system as part of a larger purchase and I can get twice the wattage for half the price by purchasing bulk solar, almost the same for batteries. Renogy has polish, besides that it's an Apple Tax to me.
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tmwildwood-3617@reddit
Depends on what you consider bare essentials and what you want to power. That will dictate how big of an inverter to provide power.. and then you size the batt to provide enough power for however many things for however long. Then size the solar to...being conservative...charge back up the bank of batts quick enough so you don't run out of power for the next cycle of drawing power.
I really like the 200ah lifepo4 batteries and the victron mppt bluetooth charge controller. Being able to just pull up the app to check things is very handy.
I have several renology panels...so far so good. I would def get an mppt controller over pwm. And Lifepo4 over lead acid/gel.
As examples
Re inverters...for provinding 120v power....the 2000w inverter I had would charge phones/laptop fine...but would fail to run my nespresso machine. 3000w would be fine...but might trip if little bar fridge kicked on at same time as nespresso. 4000w runs lamps/fans/starlink/fridge/whatever tool battery is charging and phones/etc.
1x 200ah batt would be very close to empty by the next morning...charge up fine off of 400w of solar panels...but we'd always be nervous of running out of power. 600ah of batteries...very little worry day-to-day. 3-4 "no sun hour" days in a row and we'd prob be out of power.
You could look for used panels...often much cheaper than new ones.
Re. Portable....not really as in take down...pull it out...put it away. Doable for sure...but the panels are not small and you'll typically have some sort of rack to prop/bolt them onto. Again...depends if you just want to be able to charge up phones/etc....or more loads-more often.
Personally...not a fan of the fold up panels. Typically a high premium on those.
YardFudge@reddit
Start with a couple $70 100W panels from Amazon, a cheap controller, old car battery, etc
It’s better to fry cheap things and learn why fuses exist than start DIY’ing with high end gear
LogicalGoal7143@reddit
Short answer, I'd say yes. That seems like a good deal to me. Renogy is a decent brand.
Longer answer: I'd visualize breaking it down like this (in US dollars):
Quality panels can be expected to cost $1/watt. So ~$400 is fair.
For lead acid batteries, expect them to run around another $400 for 200AH worth. LiFePO⁴ batteries could run considerably higher (but worth it, in my opinion).
For an inverter, I'd recommend a "pure sine wave" inverter (safer for more sensitive electronics), and they can run anywhere from $200 up through several hundred.
You'd still need to buy an appropriate solar charge controller ($30-$150), appropriate/heavy gauge copper cables, fuses or breakers, ($50-$80). And on top of that you'd need to do a bit of research and/or homework to make sure to size all of the above appropriately for your setup.
All of the above figures are assuming you shop around for good deals on all the components, they probably wouldn't be Renogy brand.
LogicalGoal7143@reddit
Browsing renogy.com, I think I found the same kit/bundle you're describing. If it's the package that comes with the 2000W pure sine wave inverter, and the MPPT charge controller, then in my opinion this is a great deal. I'd jump on it.