Okanogan 14x24 by a lurker :)

[OlJarhead]

How things looked when I arrived.


Since much of the snow melted it was easy to clean off the deck


Got the driveway plowed


Game cam pick -- oh how I want to see this guy during hunting season! lol


Yote
Caught on the game cam plowing

[nailit69]

Sure does look peaceful up there.  Can't wait to get back over there. 

I remember when I first moved out where i'm at now...it was so quiet, and peaceful.  I live "out of town" a few miles on a lake at the end of a dead end rd. which is off the end of another dead end rd. and while it's pretty quiet out here most of the time, I have neighbors... 20' each side of me and a rd. across the lake that gets busier by the day.  Winters are pretty quiet out here... summertime is chaos on the water, really popular place for wakeboard boats and jetskis. 

Since I moved in 8 yrs ago, the (only) next door neighbor kid is now an adult and there's a whole new batch of kids from 5-13 that run around on the previously quiet street, the neighbor a few houses up has 2 pre-teen sons that just got new dirtbikes for X-mas and things are getting a bit noisy and crowded for me.  Don't get me wrong... I love the kids... love the boats... love the dirtbikes... love the neighbors, most of them anyway but it's just a little busy for me.

Last summer we did have some suspicious (drug) activity and a few cars were prowled, presumably by the sh!tbags that rent a summer cabin a few doors down (pretty sure it was them)... first time in years i've worried about locking my doors.  We (the neighbors) made it very clear that would not be tolerated in any way, shape, or form... they left 2 weeks later.  Being raised in the country I never even took the keys out of the car, now I have to remember to lock the doors and nail down anything that might grow legs and walk away... my shed is on constant lockdown which is where my dryer is and with a load of laundry in my arms, it can be a PITA if I forget to unlock the door.

I'm ready to get away ...

 

[OlJarhead]

Ahhh yes peace   My nearest neighbor is about half a mile as the crow flies   I had dinner and drinks with them last night too   I have great neighbors all around and while we'll all help each other and get together quite a bit we also have our own places to tend etc and spend a lot of time alone on our land.  It's a good place to be

[OlJarhead]

So, I left for work at 6am yesterday and dreaded what might happen throughout the day while I was gone.  My power was good at 24.85vdc but the genny had run for 2 hrs in the middle of the night early morning (I shut it off at 5am).

When I returned, envisioning my generator running all day because I thought the battery bank was dying a fast death on me I was pleasantly surprised to see it had not run in the 9+ hours I was away and while there was some solar charging during the day (very little with the clouds and fog we had all day) my batteries were as mentioned above at about 24.4v.  Around 23.5v I set the genny to run (just changed the auto start setting to 23.5v) and adjusted it to run a full 5 hours.  I had a great dinner and visit with neighbors and returned to a nice quiet evening in the cabin (minus the genny which is actually very quiet).  The batteries were already in float so I knew it had taken a decent charge.

This morning the bank was at 24.3vdc after 9 hrs through the night (fridge, inverter, fans running) and while this is not really good considering I'm supposed to have 3 days worth of reserve power I realize that my badly abused batteries which are now 5 years old, are doing ok all things considered.

Using Don's PV calculator I'm using approximately 10,228 watt hours per week of AC power and 13,440 watt hours of DC power.  On a 24v system with 3 days of reserve and 40F where the batteries are (which is close to what it was during the day anyway) and using 220AH GCB's the calculator tells me I need 12 batteries (8 would do) to meet my needs.  I've worked this calculator over a LOT and plan to work on some of the figures a little more but I think the 660AH's it tells me I need is probably pretty accurate.

Next using 4 hours of solar charging per day and my 205watt panels it tells me I need 4 panels to keep up with charging demands.

So, in theory my system is pretty close to what I need considering I went through a lot of changes to it and to it's intended use (vacation cabin use to full time living use).  My plan moving forward is to increase solar production by at least buying something in the 300watt range (times 3) and replacing my 205watt panels (which I'll save for a time when I can add another MPPT controller and use them also) and get new batteries like some Trojan L16's which I intend to NOT abuse LOL

Truth is I read recently that a lot of solar builders recommend using GCB's first for new solar users because they are cheap and you'll likely damage them in the learning process and I can't disagree really.  After all, I've let mine drop to pretty much 100% discharge at least 3 times in the last 5 years.

Guess I should be happy that they are still holding the 9hrs under use! LOL

[OlJarhead]

Just changed the PV Calc to use Trojan L-16-RE-B 6V, 370AH (20HR) batteries and it gives me 8 batteries to meet my needs (740AH vs the 660AH I have in theory now) which I think is probably just right.

My thought is that these batteries will last a LOT longer (they are about twice the size of my GCB's) and the increased AH's will probably be noticed a LOT more because it's likely more accurate than the GCB's rating (I've read that the GCB's aren't rated as well -- quality control type thing -- and that you have take their 220AH rating with a grain of salt but I don't know).

So for about $3000 I can put in 740AH of L16's which should give me 3 days of battery reserve before I hit the 80% level and the generator needs to come on.

I'll have to start planning to do that this spring -- one added benefit is that 8 batteries will take up less footprint than the 12 I have now since the L16's have the same footprint (more or less) than the GCB's, they are just taller.  With that bonus it will be easier to install them in the back room where I can keep them around 50F in the colder months and 70F in the hottest months.

[OlJarhead]

Interesting.  A little searching and I found some 420AH L16's for 319ea.  So for a little over $2500 I could have 840AH of reserve...doesn't sound like a bad thing

[OlJarhead]

Just looking at some Rolls-Surettes and comparing them to the L16's and it appears the Trojans have a much higher cycle rating.  Rolls shows about (looking at graph) 2000 cycles on their graph at 20% of discharge and Torjans show 4000 cycles.

Batteries compared:
Trojan L16RE-B 370Ah, 6V Deep Cycle Battery vs Rolls S-550 428AH, 6V Deep Cycle Battery.

Price of the Rolls was $340 s $348 for the Trojan (just on these websites).  I looked at the data specs for both and the Rolls was 123lbs vs 118lbs for the Trojan.

I find it interesting that batteries that close in weight, size etc (AH rating wasn't that close though) would have such different cycle ratings.

Either way, it appears the trojan may be a better battery overall as it should last longer if it can cycle 4000 times at 20% discharge.  That's 10yrs worth of use assuming no abuse and maintain that level  discharge.

[OlJarhead]

Woke up to the sound snow and once the light was bright enough I saw that we'd gotten a very light skiff of snow on the ground.  Hopefully it won't snow around 10am to 2pm as I could use some solar production specially on the well as my cistern is starting to run dry and I've not pumped into it in a while since I shut off the pump a couple months ago to protect the system during the coldest weather when I am not here.

[OlJarhead]

time (UTC)   Flags   Vb_max_daily   Vb_min_daily   Va_max_daily   Pout_max_daily   Ahc_daily   Whc_daily
2014-12-09T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   26.04   23.98   68.81   3774   14.6   370
2014-12-10T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   24.59   23.44   63.59   459   1.8   50
2014-12-11T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   24.95   21.97   65.41   1278   5.1   120
2014-12-12T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   22.68   22.1   61.51   168   0.9   20
2014-12-13T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   24.19   21.86   65.52   718   7   170
2014-12-14T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   27.15   21.86   70.25   5062   19.1   490
2014-12-15T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   27.66   21.78   70.94   5195   19   490
2014-12-16T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   28.22   22.24   70.77   5226   20.7   540
2014-12-17T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   24.98   21.3   65.56   497   6.4   160
2014-12-18T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   23.05   21.31   65.6   434   4.1   100
2014-12-19T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   23.55   19.7   65.18   576   5.2   120
2014-12-20T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   25.98   19.82   69.01   4430   17.1   420
2014-12-21T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   23.71   22.12   65.43   583   3.3   70
2014-12-22T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   28.03   21.77   69.69   5624   17.7   460
2014-12-23T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   28.21   21.61   70.31   5208   18.3   480
2014-12-24T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   25.72   21.44   67.81   1487   9   220
2014-12-25T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   23.34   19.65   64.19   397   5.7   140
2014-12-26T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   29.09   19.84   70.16   6231   24.4   630
2014-12-27T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   28.99   21.91   70.48   4790   22   580
2014-12-28T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   25.04   19.68   65.25   525   6   150
2014-12-29T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   28.39   19.82   70.48   5015   16.1   410
2014-12-30T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   23.54   19.63   70.87   1492   3.9   90
2014-12-31T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   25.84   19.75   71.66   1771   8.2   190
2015-01-01T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   28.1   19.72   71.6   2944   13   340
2015-01-02T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   30.1   19.71   71.24   4191   26.7   720
2015-01-03T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   26.02   21.44   71.09   2203   11.3   290
2015-01-04T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   29.91   21.66   71.05   4244   19.2   490
2015-01-05T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   22.14   19.65   58.78   57   0.2   10
2015-01-06T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   25.59   19.74   67.52   1740   9.5   230
2015-01-07T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   23.43   19.81   64.08   395   3.7   80
2015-01-08T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   28.65   19.8   70.07   5851   21.1   550
2015-01-09T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   30.04   21.94   70.69   4554   25   640
2015-01-10T15:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   30.01   22.08   68.41   1187   19.1   480
2015-01-10T17:27:46.000+00:00   no flags   30.01   26.55   61.7   181   0.3   10

If you an read his it is the logs from my charge controller over he last month and clearly shows the problem (and the reason it's better to buy GCB's when you start out perhaps).  Obviously leaving my inverter in sleep mode was a big mistake as it drew enough power (I guess) to draw the batteries down to 19.6vdc on several occasions.  Looking at the logs I had no (0) absorption time and no float time so what little charging I got was in bulk/boost only and wasn't enough to get the battery bank back to 100%.  I also see that despite setting my auto gen start to come on at 23vdc the controller is actually seeing 22v so something is strange there and I'll have to see if I can determine which meter is right.  I suspect the auto start is though as I was looking at it last night when I kicked on the generator and power was at 23.7vdc not the low of 22.08 shown.  Strange, but then this is my second Morningstar controller and I see it's also freaking out over the cold weather like the first one did (showing temps of 255c on the coldest days).  Morningstar support sucks and I'll never buy another of these.  Chances are I'll buy an Outback and stick this one in the back of the closet as a spare incase I'm desperate some day.

Anyway, clearly the batteries have cycled down to pretty much 0% of charge several times just in the last month so I'm calling them shot.  Sure they hold for 8-10hrs under use but they should hold for 2-3 days under use after a complete charging cycle.  I'll take some SG readings today to see what they look like also since I've been running the gen all morning.  Perhaps an equalize will help a little but frankly I think I've killed these puppies.

note to self:  Just shut down all power when you leave the cabin and let the batteries rest/charge/rest while you're gone.  At least then you'll know they won't get killed in your absence.

[JavaMan]

Wow.  I wish I could get up to my place more - especially this winter.  You're making me green 

The good news is that when things warm up I'll be able to finish the place and then I'm going up whenever I can.

[OlJarhead]

In time you may be able to   Just a matter of funds!  Fortunately my wife and I have been fortunate enough to be able to afford a tractor to plow the roads and our location is close enough that we can walk in the last 1/4 mile or so if roads are bad.  Heck, we could walk that last couple miles if need be but that would be a challenge in very bad conditions unless we had snowshoes.

I spent part of the day shooting with a neighbor and am happy to report I can still hit the broad side of the barn without my reading glasses   With them I can hit the doorknob of the barn door at 15 yards but I can't see anything past the front sight so it's a bit of a challenge. 

I then went out and plowed the last section of my driveway and put down a few bags of icemelt then plowed again.  The road is now much nicer to drive up and there is less 'pucker factor' on the steepest section

Cabin is VERY warm and I'm not in the mood to do much so I think I'll read a little and see what the neighbors are doing later (I was invited to watch the game but don't watch sports so did the shooting and plowing instead).

[OlJarhead]

Finally got around to installing this new light fixture & light.  It's a 9.4watt LED (that really uses 10 watts) and I'm pretty happy with it.

On a side note my 9.2 watt LED bulbs actually use 9.4 watts so they appear a little more efficient but either one is better than the 13 or 18 watt CFL's.  In fact, with these LED's I can run TWO of them at the same wattage as one 18 watt CFL (give or take).  I'm pretty happy with that.

[OlJarhead]

Looks like a young cougar decided to sniff me out today.  I had no idea it was here an even heard it when it went under the cabin I think (had a couple odd bumps under the area where my bed is but figured I was hearing things or snow was falling off the porch...that aint 'snow tracks batman!

It picked up my trail near the well and followed me back to the cabin, then wandered all around and under the cabin looking for me.  Even came up onto the porch to peak in the window.  My guess is that I was too busy reading, doing dishes or shaving when it came by...I hadn't been in that long either so I'm guessing I was just an hour or so ahead of it.



I should note that at first I thought "wolf or dog" but considered cougar too.  When I started looking at pics online and reading about the differences I realized this was a cat.

I did a little target practice on a stump with my .45 to let the kitty know I was on TOP of the food chain so to 'p!$$ off.  My guess is it is long gone now which would be good as I'd rather not have to deal with it in the dark tomorrow when I head out.

[OlJarhead]

Classic cougar paw!  You can clearly see the three lobes at the base of the paw.  A dead give-away for a cougar.

We think there are TWO!  Strange that a mother would bring her cub on the hunt for a man???  I find that odd really as you'd think she would be telling it to stay clear of man.  Either way, we found two sets of prints, one much smaller than the other -- oh, I said WE but didn't explain:  my neighbor came of to cover my 6 while I was out turning off the water, putting memory cards in game cams and generally checking the place out.  In the process we saw many many prints all over the flipping place!  Seems these cats are pretty hungry or they wouldn't have pent so much time going over every inch of my place.  They must have spent hours watching me and sniffing about.

Makes me wonder now just how long they have been about???


This is one of the bigger prints.  Neither however is very big so I'm guessing the bigger cat is not much over 100 punds if that and the smaller one is probably the size of a small dog.

Incidentally both of those prints were taken by the generator, one in the snow in front of it and the other where the exhaust melts the snow into mud.  One of them also walked between the genny and the cabin which is just perhaps 12 inches of space...they walked between the shed tend and a pile of wood and all sorts of other places that would hide them as they moved about.

[OlJarhead]

The plan tomorrow is to turn off the generator though it won't make much difference.  Only way to prevent the battery from dying is to disconnect it and then of course the system will be down hard but it might protect the battery from dying like it did this time.

Once that's done I'll shut the inverter off too and leave the batteries to power the fans in the back which don't draw much power, then at least I should have full power when I return and at least the batteries won't die while I'm gone.

[Texas Tornado]

We had a momma bring her baby to our place, lived here for a long while, she had real odd behavior and would mark our house and trees, she slept on our back deck and had a habit of following me all over the place, she did not show any aggressive behavior and kept a decent amount of real estate between us on my walks. Game warden and I discussed it in length and he suspected she had been hand raised and turned loose when she got to expensive to feed.

[OlJarhead]

My neighbor went in and disconnected the ground on my generator to save the battery for me.  Now I need to think about doing something for the batteries to get them to hang in there for a few more months

[OlJarhead]

BRAIN FART! 

Working on what my battery requirements are I realized I'd made a BIG mistake when using the PV Calculator!  I'd left the depth of discharge set to 0.8 which mean an 80% DISCHARGE!  Not the 20% (80% of cap) I'd thought I'd input.....meaning I need a LOT more battery capacity than previously thought.

No wondering I'm having all sorts of issues 

[OlJarhead]

Between Trojan's site and the PV Calculator I have concluded that I should at least consider the Trojan L16B 370AH battery and two strings which gives me 740AH of capacity and seriously look at my power consumption.  In reality to get just two days without sun I'd need a lot more capacity (1310AH) which would mean changing to 2v batteries and spending a LOT more money.

Seems I now understand what my problem was:  way too little capacity.

Fortunately I don't live at the cabin and can size the battery bank to 1 day autonomy since I don't mind the generator running once a day on days with no sun and as we only get 14 inches of rain a year that vast majority of time at the cabin it will be sunny (pretty much never need the generator in the summer even with my small bank).

So ya, I have a lot of thinking to do.

[JavaMan]

Last time up at my place we saw some cat track and scat.  Seems to be a bit more of them this year than I remember in years past.

[OlJarhead]

Did some reading and it appears my battery bank did fine last year and ran as much as 3 days before dropping to 24v and kicking on the generator.  I think I might have set the genny to come on too late over this year and thus allowed the batteries to drain too much, thereby reducing their life.  Today they drop so fast the genny runs daily.

I was thinking that if I used 140AH of power in a day then I'd need 420AH of reserve power ABOVE the level I'm willing to drop to in that three days to give me the right amount of power reserve.

On that same vein, if the Trimetric meter reads a draw of 140AH on a 660AH system it should be at 60% of capacity regardless of what the voltage reads.  Conversely if it was reading 90% at 24vdc than I must assume the draw was only 66AH or 10% of rated cap.  This makes sense to me when thinking of the battery bank like a tank of water.  If there is 55 gallons in the tank and I use 5.5 gallons I have 90% of cap regardless of what the water level shows (voltage).  So perhaps that's the sort of thing they were trying to explain about meters that show a percentage.

I believe, since I had the gen start at 24v previously and it seemed to work well, that had I left it there it would have been fine.  The strange thing is that's the highest voltage the auto start will allow me to set it to.  Perhaps because they know that if the bank were left for 6+ hours it would recover to a much higher voltage thus matching the voltage of the bank at the rated percentage.  I'll have to conduct an experiment there.

My thought now is that I need to look at the Trojan L16's and go with the 740AH bank I'd planned, then set the genny to run at 24v and if it runs daily in cloudy low light days so beit.  Better to burn propane than replace the batteries in a few years.

Perhaps I should do some math   My gen uses about 1/2 gallon of propane per hour and seems to do fine running for 3hrs at a time.  So if it ran 3hrs per day for 21 days per month November through February but only 10 days in Oct and Mar and rarely afterwards then I can calculate a rough estimate of 272 gallons of propane in the winter months (most likely well over but better to be liberal here) which would cost me about $550 a year in propane to run the generator.  In actuality I've only used 150 gallons so far this year and most of that for my heater but I'm doing a worst case scenerio to see what happens dollar wise.

So $550 a year in propane vs a 3rd string of batteries ($1400) means I'd not save a dime building the smaller battery bank if I lived at the cabin year round.  Hmmmm

On the other hand if it runs only every 3 days for 6 months of the year that's about 183 gallons of propane or $368 (67% of the above).  Still more expensive to use propane.

I might have to think about getting the 740AH bank and planning on added a 3rd string a year later.  After all, I made it fine with GCB's and approx 660AH of cap last winter so I think, in reality I could get by with the 740AH specially if I didn't run the TV at all.

[OlJarhead]

Research research research   

I've spent plenty of time yapping and typing and reading about systems like mine and have concluded that 740AH to 1110AH is about right for my needs and location.  If I was living at the cabin I'd want the 1110AH but I'm just not living there anymore so at least for the next year or less I'm going with 740AH which will not only be more than I had before but likely a lot more considering the GCB's may not be that accurate.

I'm also going to plan on adding possibly 4 of these: http://sunelec.com/solar-panels/24v-solar-panels/astronergy-310w-solar-panel.html which when combined with my 3 205 watt panels should give me all the solar I need to keep the bank topped off when in use.

[OlJarhead]

Heading back up tomorrow   Always enjoy being at the cabin specially if I get something done other than just hanging out and enjoying the peace.  This trip I plan to do two things:

1.  Add Charge It to by batteries.  I know many say it doesn't work but I figured that since they barely manage to make it 9-10 hrs under moderate use (maybe 30ah of use) and I plan to replace them soon I might as well see if the stuff helps them survive until March/April when I plan to get new ones.  Worst case it doesn't work at all and I wasted the small amount of money to try it.  Best case they survive a few more months and I run the genny less.  I'll report back on what I find.

2.  Work in the loft to get some paneling installed.  This will be a change for me since I haven't done it in a while and I have to move from installing 8' lengths (when I had help) to shorter lengths (4').  I find trying to do 8 footers alone was just too much hassle so decided to shorten them up and try 4 foot sections.  With luck it will go well.

On that note I must admit one of the drawbacks is that I have to move the saw and vacuum into the loft and while I can clean up the mess it just gets pretty dusty when I run the mitre saw inside the cabin....ahhh well   Cabin Life!

[OlJarhead]

Back at the cabin and all is well   No obvious cougar tracks and no cougar pics on the cams (must have left after I set them -- bugger).

Got to the cabin with a little pucker factor as the snow was deeper and a little wet (34F out) so it was a bit slippy even with 4WD and Studded tires but I managed and was happy to get to the cabin earlier enough to get stuff done while it was still daylight out.

First step was to add ChargeIt to the batteries.  I started by added 3.5oz ea (2oz if for car batteries so I guessed GCB's are about double the electrolyte) but after the 1st 4 realized two bottles wasn't enough so dialled it down to 2oz each for the rest.  However I noticed before (and again this time) that the sulfation is most prevalent on just some of the batteries, not all so made sure those got more juice in hopes that it would help them a bit.  The bank was 27.7v when I arrived so the sun was doing it's job through the clouds even at 3pm.

While leaving the bank sit (inverter off) I went out and hooked the neg term back up to the genny and reprogrammed it, then came back to the batteries and kicked on the inverter (says to give them 20 mins if possible but that's to wait before trying to start a car so I wasn't worried and it was 20 mins).

Next up was to get the cabin warm and bring my trash in.  I'd already turned on the propane heater and now started the wood stove.  With it going I dragged in my stuff and since I'd already started my tractor went out to try to drive my truck up the hill to forward my work phone (cell) to the cabin.  Then promptly got stopped due to the snow and had to back up, turn around and head back to the cabin for the tractor (hence starting it right away to give it a chance to warm up).

Got the road plowed to 'cell phone point' (also known as 'buck knob'), made my call to forward my phone and then jumped back on the tractor and plowed my driveway out so I'd not have trouble tomorrow (today).

With all that done I invited the neighbors over and began to finish unloading.  By the time they arrived I was moved it and it was 70F inside the cabin   When they left we turned off the genny (I'd had it running since 3:30pm and it was now 7:30) and turned on my water which ran nicely in the bathroom   Life is good.

After the neighbors were gone I reset my Battery Monitor to use 420AH of cap instead of the 660AH the batteries would have at 70F.  Now at least it should be closer to what they have when it's 32F in the battery room.  I then set to checking the amp draw on the place and found:

The inverter, fans and one light (LED) draw 3.1Amps, turning off the light shows 2.9Amps so that's my baseline.  In 24hrs I will use 70AH (I rounded up) of capacity just with fans an the inverter running (and 24-12v converter).  Next I checked when the Fridge ran and it used 5Amps and ran for 10 minutes then shut off and went 1 1/2hrs before coming on again, ran for 10 minutes and waited another 90 before coming on again.  I can surmise from that that it will run 16 times in a 24hr period and use 13.33AH a day.  So with my Fridge running as well as the inverter, fans etc I will use ~84AH of battery cap.  Assuming the bank is fully charged at 3pm (which it appeared to be yesterday) then I can figure I'd use that 84AH if I do nothing else in 24hrs and that the ~420AH battery bank (at 32F) would be drawn down 20% at which time I should kick on the genny to recharge.

On a side note the bank normally sits around 42-45F during the day in the winter and dips to 32 at night which is why I chose 32F as my set point for % of cap.

While I checked other measures and will note them later it's clear to me that in the winter when it's cold out and the sun is low on the horizon I'd better plan on running the generator at least daily but that it won't take but a couple hours of running to top off the bank.

[OlJarhead]

Using my latest figures (from watching the amp draw off the bank while turning on lights etc and when the fridge ran) I was able to recalc my PV spreadsheet.  I also set the temp value to 50F as I think I can keep the batteries there in the winter with my plans for passive solar heat etc.  With the latest research on loads etc here is what the PV Calc shows me:

740AH will work fine as I should only need 720AH to go three days without charging and be at 50%.  My goal isn't to get to 50% very often, if at all but I wanted to see what I could do with 3 days autonomy and this would work.

I would need 4 9amp panels according to the calc spreadsheet.

This was with two hours of TV and internet per day which is a little heavier that I typically use but I like to be cautious.  I think my plans will work very nicely and I should be able to limit the gen run time to about 3 hours every 2-3 days in the winter.  I can live with that

It shouldn't run at all in the summer