Rack-mounted battery bank
Batteries Included
Overthinking where to put the battery backup bank
When designing my solar system, I knew from the get-go I wanted a battery backup solution, as, while it's not a frequent occurrence, we do experience the occasional power outage on the farm and having an smooth effortless failover is far easier than dealing with a generator.
When I received all the materials, the batteries sat in boxes for several weeks on the floor in my shop. When I spoke initially with the installer, we were considering putting the battery bank right next to the Sol-Ark to keep everything together.
We were thinking next to the tool chest in this general area. I found myself staring at that spot over and over and just ... not loving it as a final destination to a solid brick of batteries. They'd be in the way of my nice and easy power tool access. I do not like things sitting on the floor of my shop. Like, at all. Things in my shop belong on wheels or mounted to the wall.
When I examined the batteries a little closer, I realized they were rack-mountable. As an IT professional, this is a problem for me because now I have an idea of how these can be mounted. Inevitably I'd have to acquire a network/server rack, since I've always sorta wanted one anyway. This is my curse.
At first I found one on eBay. I ordered it, and expected it to arrive a little after Christmas.
I was stoked to throw some casters underneath it and maybe make a little shelf on top. Except the eBay seller backed out and didn't ship it. Ugh.
Back to the drawing board but undeterred, I started thinking bigger. Full rack, baby. So to the List of Craig I went, and I found several options of varying viability, but one stood out. Behold, this full-sized Dell server rack, listed in Minneapolis:
Yeah, that'll do. A quick* trip was made to Minneapolis and I returned home with a new hub for any and all of the tech in my shop.
*"quick" is a lie
And as I thought about the placement of the battery bank, I realized -especially in the context of placing them in a server rack- that I wanted them off to the other side of my workbench by my technical things. Installer said "no problem!" Sweet.
The timing of all this was stupid, however, because the day I got the rack was the day the installers got the batteries hooked up to the Sol-Ark. I didn't know if the rack was going to happen or not so I told them to go ahead and set it up how they normally would. It looked great!
Except now they needed to go in a rack. I agonized about reaching all the connectors around to the front and how all that would work. Even got em racked up and connected.
The problem was the length of the home run cables going back to the Sol-Ark, not to mention logistics of moving the rack forward and backward for access and how the casters on the rack would maneuver around the thick cords underneath the rack. My wife initially suggested that I mount them in reverse, and I hesitated due to aesthetics. They looked super cool facing forward. But it just didn't make sense to leave them this way (wife was correct). I ended up swapping them all around and facing the rear, and though I don't expect to need to access them frequently, I have simple access to the controls of the batteries by simply pulling the rack out a little ways.
Now I can start adding all the tech things to my oppressively large black monolith in my shop. This is the way.
Posted by:
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Justin