System for an Eco-village.

[lovare]

Hi all,

I am completely new to everything solar and have somewhat pieced together the components of the system I would like to build. It will be used for a sustainable village with 6 tiny houses.

I plan on using

4 magnum energy 4.4kW inverter/chargers in parallel (17.6kW total) with the magnum router.

2 midnite, classic 150, ppt charge controllers. I read that these can be difficult to make communicate with each other when in parallel??

8 12V 200Ah AGM batteries

26 280w Canadian solar, panels.


Like I said earlier, this will be my first time doing anything solar, I'm sure that I've missed something or there is something i did not think of. Any help on missing parts or alternatives that you think might work better than what I've picked will be helpful and appreciated. I am very excited for this build, and look forward to starting soon.

Thank you,
Lovare

[inetdog]

What voltage are you going to use for the battery bank?
If we assume 48V (less would not make sense for a new installation of that size), then you would have two strings of batteries in parallel. If you can find comparable 6V batteries of twice the AH capacity it would give you a more robust system.

[Mike90250]

AGM batteries are not sustainable. Their cost is too high, and their lifetime too short.

Maybe flywheels would be better ?

Actually, a forklift battery pack is a good 15 year battery bank, as long as you equalize and water it properly. Not very sexy though.

The Midnight controllers, while sexy, have issues. I'd suggest the Morningstar MPPT 60 Has decent logging features.

I know nothing about the Magnum products, owning none of them. If you have a 240V water pump, you may need a transformer to run it. And I don't know what Magnum has for data collection.

Midnight makes great combiners and wireing boxes, you will need a bunch of them.

You have left out the backup generator for charging in bad weather, and for equalizing batteries. Actually, 2 are needed, because after running for a week, you need to service the generator, and must run the spare at that time. Maybe for a small system you can get by with only 1, but with 6 houses, you can bet someone is going to fire up a hair dryer or boot warmers on a wet day.

How are the panels mounted, Pole, Roof, or Ground ?