Anyone else on here have solar and a Yarbo? I have a large solar setup and live totally off grid, so for sure my Yarbo is cutting the yard for free. Just wondering how many others have solar and a Yarbo.
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I donāt have solar for the house, but the Data center I install is outback, full view of sky on top of the chicken coop with a Solar panel to power the Data center, the wifi extender, and the thermal fan controller for the box. Along with lights and auto door for the chickens.
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Von Tom just posted about his solar use in one of the FB communities, so I summarized for the Big README: Getting Started with Yarbo: FAQs, Tips, and Head-scratchers for New Users | Yarbo Wiki
Itās very straightforward, the challenge is trying to determine the ideal battery + panel sizes, but that will depend on how you use your machine.
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Thanks @Ken for bringing that over here.
Not that I have solar. But I do have some power measurements that Iām sure some one could benefit from.
Note this is a 2023 core with a 2024 charger.
Charger seems to draw ~4 watts when the core is not docked. 20watts when docked and āfully chargedā though I saw the battery drain when in this state so the core seems to draw more than whatās being provided in this state. And when charging it peaks to 700 watts. I also included daily power draw. Seems to avg around 2kw / day.
Have fun
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Good info. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah I have rooftop solar. Thatās the reason I was very interested in Yarbo. I have electrified almost everything here and I havenāt paid an electric bill since 2019.
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That is important info. Thanks
Total investment costs for your solar solution?
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Pete, I have 28KW Solar array. I has produced 27MWh over the last 7 months. My local utility is below national average at $0.13 / kWh, so that is a return of $3,510 over 7 months, or an avg of $501 / month. My total cost of installation was $45,000. At $6K / year ($500 * 12) that is an annualized rate of return of just over 13%. Not quite what the S&P did this year, but it also is pretty much a guaranteed ROI (we also power 4 EVs). Most people donāt install that much solar, but most people donāt consume as much either, but the ROI is pretty solid compared to other investments I considered. Hope this is helpful.
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@moyer.jeffrey How far north are you? How much do you anticipate to produce over the winter?
Battery?
I am fully off grid, full electric house and shop, and 2 evās. I also mine bitcoin with excess solar and use the heat from the miners to heat my shop and sometimes my basement. Spent too much, lol.
As an electrician it was my dream to be offgrid. Another thought is keeping all costs low as I near retirement. My daughter and I installed the entire system. 75kw of solar and 325kwh of diy battery. Took me 3 years of expansions to get to this point. I will probably expand one more small amount to 80kw as I have open inverter mppt space I could fill.
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Wow, so your system is a 28 kW solar array capacity or production? Thatās a serious setup. If weāre talking about typical residential panels in the 350ā400 W range, that would be around 70ā80 panels in total right? Or you really talk about production so like 4 times as many panels?
Hi Ken, I live in Sarasota county Florida. So not very north. I tend to over produce in the spring and still net input from grid to varying degree other times of the year.
Hi B-Mod, I have 20kWh of battery. My whole system is EnPhase, with IQ8 micro inverters. I got the batteries so that I could form a micro grid and keep the panels live when grid went down and to act as a buffer before standby generator would fire up. Iām waiting on the EnPhase bi-directional charger to become GA so that I can use the large batteries in our EVs as additional storage. Iāve lost grid power for close to a month a couple of times after large hurricane strikes, so much of this is for that scenario.
My previous ROI numbers were for the panels only as that was the discussion at the time. The batteries and generator are additional and for disaster prep.
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Hey Micke Good point! I should have said capacity. I have 80 panels at 360 watts each. Thanks for the catch. 
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Yeah, not very far north. 
Iām in central Ohio and have thought about installing solar. Added a decent setup to our RV, but nothing for the house YETā¦.
Sounds like a nice setup you have.
I just caught your 325kwh of battery. Wow! Thatās a lot, but to be fully off grid I understand why youād want that much. Not being an electrician myself, I donāt have the skills to do what youāve done, but Iāve tried to select commercially available systems that would help me to be less dependent day to day, and be able to prolong my propane supply after a hurricane.
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You probably are already aware, but if not, googleās āproject sunroofā has analyzed pretty much every rooftop in the US and can tell you how much power you can harvest. Here is the link if you havenāt seen it: https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/
I also used energysage.org to procure and negotiate my system components. Itās kind of like the old ālending treeā commercial where I was able to get multiple suppliers proposing designs and quotes to me on the portal without a bunch of salespeople coming to my house. Itās a non-profit and they have engineers on staff that will help you verify the designs, answer questions. If youāre not an electrician, electrical engineer etc (Iām not) I found it to be very useful. My installed price was about 1/2 of what my friends were quoted ($45,000 / 28,800 watts = $1.56 / watt (capacity after tax incentives).
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Yeah the killer here is the long cloudy stretches of weather we get up in Wisconsin in winter. I can make 500kwh on a good sunny day, but then only make less then 50kwh on a dark cloudy day. I also envy you not having to clean snow off a 300+ feet ground mount on a windy -10 degree morning, lol. I call it living the solar dream.
Do you sell much power back? We are only allowed a 20kw system to be grid tied and I knew I was going bigger than that. Plus our sell back rate is not that great and only going lower.
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