Newbie Setting Up 1st System

System

Any help would be appreciated. I have exactly zero experience with electricity and or electronics.

I currently have:

(1) 130W Kyocera PV panel
(1) 30 AMP Sunforce Digital Charger Controller for 12V
(1) Xantrex Xpower 1750W 3-outlet converter

I do not know what the best setup would be for the hardware I have already purchased. Someone told me 6V golf cart batteries and another told me 12V deep cycle marine or RV batteries. I understand I'll need cables to connect everything together, a fuse and switching connection.

Any ideas for mounting the panels and securing the hardware and batteries together would be great.

I have been doing a bit of reading here before I started this thread. There is a wealth of experience, I'm hoping some community member(s) would patiently walk me through this.

Thanks again.

Aloha

BB.

Re: Newbie Setting Up 1st System

This may be a good thread for you to read (I just typed up a response while you typed this post).

The only thing to add--is to size your battery bank by roughly 6x your daily power usage (3 days of no sun, and no more than 50% discharge of battery bank for long life).

Read the battery FAQ here... But try to stay away from RV/Marine batteries--those are typically a compromise between an engine starting battery and a storage battery... You will want a true storage battery for longest life--typically.

My last comment would be you have a "small" amount of solar panel (130 watts) and a pretty large inverter (1,750 watts)...

Just taking a rough guess to make an example of what I am talking about... Assume 6 hours of sun (Hawaii?) and 52% overall system efficiency:

130 watts * 6 hours * 0.52 = 406 watt*hours per day

If you ran your 1,750 watt inverter at full power, your solar panel would run it:

406 Watt*hour / 1,750 watts = 0.23 hours or ~14 minutes per day in Summer...

Before you spend to much on solar hardware, really need to understand your load requirement (how much power per day, by season, generator backup available, etc.)...

-Bill