My Off-Grid Solar System TOTALLY FAILED

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Guys, my entire solar system just went down. My cabin is completely off-grid and I am entirely 100% relying on my solar to work. The charge controllers on my system are not showing any load even though it is sunny out. Luckily, I do have a couple of saving graces. I purchased a separate charge controller to go with a lithium ion battery. And because I had this extra charge controller on hand, I'm at about 30% capacity. If I didn't have this charge controller, I would be at 0% capacity.

[00:00:36]And my other saving grace is this whole house backup generator that I just got in the nick of time right before my solar system went down. Without the backup generator and without the backup charge controller, I don't know what I'd be doing right now. Now, I made a very big decision in my cabin to not run any propane appliances. And there's a few reasons I chose to do that. First, I didn't want to take on a second bill of having to have propane delivered out to my property. The second reason is because propane appliances are super expensive. For example, this tiny electric 8gallon point of use water heater cost me a hundred bucks. An indoor propane on demand water heater costs at least $1,200. If you buy a propane refrigerator, it's going to cost you between 1,500 to $2,000. I got my electric refrigerator for $500 bucks.

[00:01:32]And a propane stove is going to cost you between a,000 and $2,000. And the third reason I chose to go all electric over propane is because I want to be in control of my utilities. If you add a propane system into your off-grid build, you are relying on another entity to have the propane you need to deliver that propane. And propane prices have gotten pretty high and they seem to keep creeping higher and higher over the years. Putting my entire cabin on electric means I am in complete control of my energy. When it's sunny out, I basically have unlimited power. Now, I can't run everything all at once, but that is a limitation within my battery bank. That is something I can fix. And when the sun goes down, I am limited to what my battery bank has stored and what I create with a generator. But at least I'm in charge of those two things. Now, I am running an older solar power system. I bought an AS offgrid kit back in 2020, and it has already gotten antiquated and is practically obsolete in 2026. But I'm relying on those components to work. I did ask my buddy Ryan to come over and help me troubleshoot because it's just a lot. I feel like I need a second set of eyeballs on the situation.

[00:02:49]So, he'll be over soon.

[00:02:52]So, the Ames charge controller is showing 0 kW made today. So, I'm going to test it on the Ecoorthy charge controller and see if it picks up and starts showing something. 39.3 volts. So what was the reading coming in the actual load before the controller?

[00:03:16]>> It was showing like 135 to 138 volts.

[00:03:20]>> 135 to 138. And that's what this was saying was about 135 volt.

[00:03:24]>> So the charge controller is showing what what the multimeter is. So it is that you know that old too. So it kind of makes sense.

[00:03:31]>> Well, it's 5 years old. It shouldn't be going out like this. Granted, I haven't taken the greatest care of it. What is the volts per panel?

[00:03:39]>> 31.3.

[00:03:40]>> Okay. So, between 120 and 130. So, it's hitting the voltage properly.

[00:03:45]>> Yes.

[00:03:46]>> And then I think we're just having wattage >> variations because it's cloudy. Can we hook up the Ecoorthy to a set of batteries and see if it starts pulling amps? Yeah, this will be our final test because if it starts showing amps being pushed into the batteries and we start seeing the batteries getting charged, then we know 100% it's a charge controller. Now we're showing 12.8 amp.

[00:04:07]So that means it is now charging. Yeah.

[00:04:10]10.7 amp. See, it's actually going.

[00:04:13]>> It worked flawlessly the entire time we're working on.

[00:04:17]>> Yeah, I'm pretty sure that one's toast.

[00:04:20]Almost positive that one's toast. Pretty sure this one is limping along. All right, here is the moment of truth. The boards are totally wrecked.

[00:04:33]You can see here all of the melted scorchedness on the board.

[00:04:41]And you can see here too, the little contacts, all the little solder contacts are fried.

[00:04:52]So, this entire charge controller is completely screwed on this one.

[00:05:01]The damage is not as severe, but it's bad. Both charge controllers are permanently damaged. There is no point to even try and fix it cuz these boards, it's going to cost more to get the board to fix it than it is to just buy a whole freaking brand new one. Well, what I want to do is I want to get the freaking generator going. So, while this is happening, I can just go off generator power. So, right before all this happened, Gidrock sent me this enormous 11 kW generator to test out on the channel. And the timing could not have been better. It showed up literally right before my solar system went down and it ended up being a lifesaver during this whole mess. I'm going to be doing a full deep dive review on this machine very soon. So, make sure you stay tuned for that.

[00:06:00]Well guys, after doing a bunch of research, I figured out what fried the boards. When we were testing the voltage, it was coming out between 130 135 something like that. And the max voltage for the charge controllers is 150 volt. Well, there are two voltage numbers you have to watch out for. And that is VMP and VOCC. VMP is the voltage when running under load.

[00:06:35]And VOCC is a voltage when there is no load. So the VMP, the load voltage was in the 130s, which was totally safe for the charge controllers. However, when the array was not under load, it was making just a little too much voltage. It was pushing out like uh 153 to 155. So, five 5 volts over, which is bad. Very, very bad. On top of this, and it does not say this anywhere in these manuals, but you need to know this guys, if it is cold out, your voltage can jump up 10%.

[00:07:20]even higher, which it gets very cold in Arizona in the morning and there's no load on the solar panels, you're looking at 160 plus voltage, which is way over the 150 volt max that these things can handle. Now, because of that, over time, that little bit of extra voltage started damaging the boards. And in this case, they didn't go out right away. It happened over time. It's like when you take a paper clip and you bend it and you bend it again and you bend it again, it creates a micro damage. It never goes back the same. So once you've bent that paper clip 20 or 30 times, it's going to snap. And that's what happened. Oh, I feel like such an idiot.

[00:08:09]So that is why both of my charge controllers fried at the same time. they just accumulated damage to the point where they went kaput and that day just happened to be now. So when you are planning and building your solar power system, you must plan it by the max VOC.

[00:08:29]Then allow yourself I would say another 20% capacity above and beyond that to account for cold mornings not under load. So, this solar panel system that I have, my ex and I bought it 6 years ago, and we bought it as a kit. It had all the components with it. It had all the cabling with it, and we didn't really question it because it was a pre-esigned kit. We still did lots of research, but we just kind of blindly trusted that this kit was put together correctly. The two main problems we had with the kit were some of the wire was undized. We always had problems with the system never making as much power as we thought it should and we never figured out why.

[00:09:14]If you run electric on undersized wires, it could cause a fire. They sold the panels as a set of a series of four with a parallel of three and that's how we had it set up and it never caused us any problems and that's because our panels were mostly under load. It was inevitably going to burn out at some point. This is why you trust but verify.

[00:09:36]We should have looked at that system when we got it. And we're going to verify that everything is kosher, but we didn't. We just put it up and ran it. So then when I moved over here to the cabin from my old location and we reset up the equipment, we set it up as it was set up before, except we did catch the wire problem. So that was good. Well, I've done my fair share of beating myself up over this and I am going to put this debacle behind me and go forward.

[00:10:09]Because when you are living off grid, the sooner you can just get over something and move on, the better. The more you harbing about it, the longer you stay pissed off, upset, sad, whatever it is you're feeling, it only prolongs the solution. This morning I'm feeling Yes, I'm feeling very irritated with myself. Yes, I feel like a dumbass.

[00:10:32]Yes, I'm not happy that I lost expensive equipment, but I just got to get over it. I got to get over it and move on, order what I need and get this thing back up and running because I am relying on it. Now, if you're interested in off-grid living for financial freedom, I suggest signing up for my newsletter.

[00:10:50]And when you sign up, you'll get my free guide for buying off-rid property. You can sign up at rusticskills.com/newsletter.

[00:10:58]So, I have decided what I'm going to do with my situation. After doing a lot of thinking, I've decided I'm not going to replace the 80 amp charge controllers.

[00:11:09]What I'm going to do instead is I'm going to get 60 amp charge controllers and instead of running two controllers, I'm going to run three. In my mind, what I'm thinking is that I will have more redundancy in my system because I'll have smaller components but more components. So, if one of the charge controllers fail, it will only take down a third of my system. If I only run two charge controllers and one fails, that takes down 50% of my system. Also, the 60 amp charge controllers are quite a bit cheaper than the 80 amp by hundreds of dollars. So, if one goes down, it'll be much cheaper to fix. If I do buy three charge controllers, I have to buy another combiner box. And I'm not going to do that right now. What I'm going to do is I'm only going to order one 60 amp charge controller. I'm going to go with the Ecoorthy brand, which is what I have running now. And I'm just going to run the two charge controllers and I'm going to run 30% less of my panels. I have 24 275 W panels. I really honestly don't think or know if I need to run that many panels.

[00:12:18]Woo!

[00:12:20]An owl just went by. That was so cool.

[00:12:22]I'll just run off of the two controllers for now and just see how it goes. See if I really need all of the panels running.

[00:12:30]I just want to take a few and talk to you about this whole predicament. First off, it takes a lot of guts for me to show you my mistakes. Most people only show the good stuff online, but what I am showing you here is reality. No matter how much you plan or prepare, you will make mistakes. It doesn't make me dumb or lazy. It just means I'm human.

[00:12:48]And the reason I share my mistakes with you is because I want you to learn from my mistakes, too. I really do want to hear your comments and constructive criticism, but mean-spirited or hateful comments will be deleted, and those users are going to be blocked permanently. So, let's keep this community positive, helpful, and totally real.

[00:13:06]I really want to point out that the quicker you can move on from a disaster, the better. It's very easy to harp on about a bad situation and beat yourself up over it. And although you do need to give it some time to process a crappy situation, at some point you just have to bounce back and get through the fix so you can keep moving forward. It's way too easy to overthink a problem and let it consume your life. I could sit here and ruminate over and over about what I should have done differently, but why? I can't go back into the past. I can only move forward and I can only learn from my mistakes. Trust yet verify. If you hire a solar installer or buy a solar kit online, double and triple check the wire gauges, lugs, breaker sizes, and technical limits of every single component. Make sure to have breakers in between every component. A lot of solar kits do not include this, so don't assume that if it came in the box, that's all you need. And ladies, do not leave all the solar knowledge up to your man. It is easy for us to naturally fall into more feminine roles on the homestead, but you have to be resilient on your own just in case your man isn't around anymore in the future.

[00:14:12]Relationships end, people get sick, and partners can die unexpectedly. And if that day ever comes, you need to be able to stand on your own two feet and keep your life running.

[00:14:26]I've got my Ecoorthy replacement charge controller and I'm going to go ahead and install it right now. Now, I got this smaller 60 amp ecoorthy charge controller, and I'm pretty happy about how it's running. I also really like how it feeds real-time data while it's pulling solar into the controller. I can look it up on my phone with the Bluetooth capability and see how everything is performing. I'll put a link for this product in the description. Okay, guys. I have got my new charge controller installed and everything is running really good. I'm so excited. Right now I am showing a voltage load of 61.6 volts and that is way in the safety zone. This thing is rated for 150 volt. So I honestly think I'm going to put another set of panels on it. I'm also showing realtime wattage coming in at about 680 to 700 watts. So that is a nice good load into my batteries. So I've got about 1 to 1.2 kilowatt coming in per hour into my bank. The size of my battery bank right now is 14.4 kilowatts, but I have to have that because they're AGMs and they're only tapping in to about 50%.

[00:15:39]So, that puts me at 7.2 kW of battery.

[00:15:43]That is not really enough. The ultimate plan is to switch over to the lithium ion batteries as I can afford them. Now, I got this 100 amp hour 51.2 volt lithium ion battery from Tim Go. Now, Tim Go markets this as a golf cart battery, but it has been working great with my 48vt solar system. I've had it hooked up for about 6 weeks now. I can say that I am really impressed with this battery. I am actually planning on purchasing three more of these to completely replace my AGM battery bank.

[00:16:18]I cannot believe how efficient lithium ion batteries are compared to an AGM battery. This one battery here is going to replace four of my humongous 200 amp hour 12volt batteries. AGMs can only run about 50% of their capacity. They have to stay within an operating range whereas a lithium ion battery can use 90 to 95% of its capacity. What I think really sets Timo apart is that it has a huge 200 amp battery management system.

[00:16:53]The BMS monitors temperature, charging, and voltage. And it also helps protect your battery bank from too much load, and it hooks up via Bluetooth. It also has a really nice LCD screen so you can read live stats. My old AGMs don't have anything smart like that. Another reason why I'm ready to switch over from AGMs to lithium ion is because these batteries can take thousands of charge cycles, whereas an AGM, you're only going to get hundreds. So, if you treat these batteries right, they're going to have so much more mileage than your standard AGM battery. Overall, after testing this bank for over 6 weeks, I'm feeling really confident that I'm going to buy more for my battery bank, and this is the brand I'm going to stick with. And if you guys want to check it out, I'll put a link in the description.

[00:17:36]Overall, I'm just super happy that I'm running. The system is going. I can rest easy. As long as I'm a little bit moderate with my electrical use, I should be fine.

[00:17:47]Well, that was a week full of suck. But you know what? I got through it and I learned some lessons. I think the biggest lesson for me was learning to not beat myself up too much. I really didn't have time to just wait around and mope and beat myself up. I had to get over it, fix the problem, and move on.

[00:18:04]Did you guys learn any lessons from my mistakes? If you did, definitely leave a comment, and I'll see you on the next one.