Csaba and Melinda from Hungary share their experience using LiTime solar products for off-grid living. Through two solar systems - one with traditional lead-acid batteries and one featuring a LiTime LiFePO4 battery and inverter - they've gained valuable insights. The LiTime setup surprisingly outperforms the lead batteries and powers appliances like a fridge. As the couple expands their LiTime-centered system, they strive for energy independence from the grid through optimal use of solar and batteries. 

My name is Csaba and I live with my partner Melinda in Hungary. We have a house and use a solar system with 200 watt solar modules and a wind turbine with 400 watts, plus three normal lead-acid car batteries with a total capacity of 217Ah.

Our second solar system consists of 2 x 180 Watt and 2 x 170 Watt solar modules, with a total output of 700 Watt and here we use a LiFePo4 battery from LiTime, with 12V and 100Ah capacity.

With this solar system we use an inverter with 2000 watts and this is also from LiTime. We use this inverter because it not only has two sockets, but you can also mount a cable directly on the inverter and lay a cable from the inverter in the house, which we will do later.

Here are our two solar systems:

With these two solar systems and the different batteries, we have a good comparison between conventional lead-acid car batteries and LiFePo4 batteries and although we have more capacity with the 217Ah car batteries, we can run our fridge and several battery chargers with the 12V 100Ah LiTime battery.

I couldn't imagine before that a 12V LiFePo4 battery with 100Ah could supply more and longer energy than three 12V car batteries connected in parallel with a total of 217Ah, but the LiTime battery has convinced me otherwise.

We are currently using our solar system with LiTime products to power a fridge in the outbuilding and also charge the batteries of various battery-powered tools that I use in the workshop.

This allows us to make optimum use of solar energy and if I then lay a direct line from the inverter into the house, we will also operate the second refrigerator and the heating circulation pump via this solar system, but we still need to expand our LiFePo4 battery system a little.

Here are the two LiTime products that we use for the larger solar system:

On my YouTube channel “Solar-Wind-Storm” I constantly report on our solar systems and any changes we make to the solar systems, but also on our LiTime products and how I have integrated them into our solar system...so it's worth watching the videos.

In the beginning it was all just going to be a test with solar and wind power, but in the future we want to expand our solar system and battery capacity to the point where we can almost completely eliminate grid power and we (and everyone else) can do that with the help of LiTime's products and batteries.

The biggest hurdle is the large consumers such as the electric stove for cooking, the washing machine, the dishwasher or the hot water tank and this is exactly what you need sufficient batteries and a powerful inverter for.

Step by step, however, we will expand our solar system with batteries and will then also be able to operate the large electricity consumers in the household via our solar system, and we will continue to report on our steps in videos...