I am looking to mount my solar panels on an uninsulated pole barn about 30m from my house.
Does it make more sense to route my 48V dc lines to my climate controlled house or should I build a climate controlled space for just my solar inverter/batteries in my barn?
Are there any off the shelf containers for battery storage? Like a chest freezer designed to keep the interior at 15c?
The system will be hybrid grid tied with about 7kwH of battery capacity. My house is very shaded, but the pole barn is not. That is why mounting panels on the house is not an option.
Conclusion: After reading all your input I think I’m going to build a tiny room in my pole barn with insulation and a ductless mini split in there to maintain a stable temp/humidity over the year. It’s a headache, but it’s going to be cheaper than giving up 25% of my power to DC resistive losses or killing my battery’s life.
Thanks for everyone’s input.
I am getting the same issue. Also have my current system in solar shed (3m3) and want to upgrade. It cools off here in winter -20. An idea would be to have at least an insulated space + exhaust fan on too high temp and two series places h4 headlights (=48v) switched on below 0 and turn off at 2 ( how?) would give enough heat to heat the insulated space. I am struggling with the triggering though. Also there are heat mats for ea seedling heating or pet heating. How to switch on/off though. I use home assistant at home but its way too bulky for a “thermostat switch”. Only if i could find an old refridgerator for the switch.
Why run the heating off 48V? If you aren’t running the 48VDC to the house then that means you’re already inverting it to AC right there anyways. Just hook up a standard 110V space heater to a thermostat. Same thing with the exhaust. Just wire a regular 110VAC exhaust fan to another thermostat. That way you don’t need to manage a seperate circuit pulling off the DC side, you just manage the inverter. Running them off the AC also lowers your switching amperage significantly which will mean cheaper thermostats. Plus running them off the AC side also makes it easy if you ever want to set up a transfer switch for service/emergency use in the future.
As far as a thermostat goes, a couple of White Rogers 1609-90 stats are about as dumb and robust as you can get. I’m an HVAC-R tech and we use those things all the time. In an indoor environment those things will will be trouble free far longer than most other components in the system. That particular one has a temp range from -30F to 90F so it could suit both use cases. If you want to go a little fancier then the Johnson Controls digital thermostats are also nice and very robust, but I don’t personally see a reason to go with a more complex thermostat than absolutely necissary. You can very rarely go wrong with big, dumb, and entirely mechanical.