I have been testing this system out for a while now,I can only say outstanding, better performance than I hoped for. absolutely everything I have run on it operates perfect off this DC buss, even one of those big carpet steamer shampooers, electric chainsaw,grinder, hand drill, a 2hp router, saber saw, electric frying pans, kettles, slow cookers, coffee machine.I had anticipated regulation problems with multiple loads,or heavy inductive loads switching on or off but no, the buss stays stiff, of course I have only been playing with it through the strong sun of the summer, soon I will get to see how it works in the winter.

A toaster wont work on it though, you would think it would? who can tell me why? for extra points what could you do to make it work?
Don't bother the googler, it wont help you with this question...

The buss is roughly 2000 watts, and I find it consistently puts out roughly 1500 watts, a little less than 2000 due to the panels not being perfectly aimed at the sun, at this time of year, its usable from roughly 9 am to 530, 6pm or there abouts, longer in july and now shorter hours as we go into winter. I picked up this for load testing....(and Solar cooking)

and remember if you do such a thing not all switches can handle switching dc current..they can pass it fine, just not open the circuit (properly or repeatedly)
..I haven't replaced the switches on this burner yet, I just have the controls turned to max so the burner thermostats don't try to open when I am using it. I may not replace the switches I am toying with the idea of just building a interface box that any heating devices plug into and operating the on/off and power level control from the interface box, this may be more practical than replacing switches, and ofcourse since I have 120 volts dc that means, I can have 0 to 120 volts dc, so I may as well incorporate a adjustable voltage regulator into the interface box so I have any dc voltage I may want, for charging phones, running my laptop, or whatever.

This was the slow cooker I insulated last year, the insulation made a huge difference, it had two settings high and low, after insulating it I never have to use the high setting. I have been testing this on the DC Buss and it works perfect, didn't even have to replace the switch, the one on it is rotary, and is switching such low current that its been working fine on DC.

And I have been selecting different motors to test. I have bins of them so I have lots to choose from...so far the largest I have run is 2 HP, I have a huge 5 HP DC motor but it was way to large for the Buss to run but up to 2hp no problem at all.

I thought I better stress the importance of switch selection again....here is why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zez2r1RPpWY

He is switching twice the DC voltage I am but you get the idea..its not a problem you understand, rather just a characteristic of DC above 14-15 vdc. Lots of ways to mitigate this switching characteristic including going solid state with a fet if you wish.

I have also been running a electric hot water tank with this Buss. I stuck a temperature probe under the insulation, but next to the tank so I could monitor the temperature...its coming up to oct and my tank is being held to about 197-198 degrees F.

I am not even using a third of this busses power to heat water...so I am very confident that I will still be making my hot water by solar power come December.
Running a DC buss like this is just another way of using solar power. some people might want to have a back up source of power (like solar panels) but not want the cost of batteries, charge controllers, inverters and such.
You can do a awful lot with a high wattage buss like this....my cost for these Canadian made panels was just 1044.00 but since I have bought these both the USA and Canada have slapped import penalties on the Chinese manufacturers, so now the Domestic manufacturers don't have to compete as hard, and it would now cost me about 1700.00 for the same wattage, still cheap considering what you can do with them, and solar panels are the only power source I know of where the fuel is delivered to you every day!

Some of you think gold is a good investment...I think power is..

Thanks for keeping us informed on your experiments! I'm really hoping to be able to meet and chat soon!

Saturday afternoon? check your pm.

Water distiller is another thing I am now running off the Buss. I just used it to distill a couple gallons for my batteries before I equallized them. It has a ac only motor to blow the air over the condenser so I picked up a 120vdc muffin fan to replace it with but once I got it apart I realised there was a different way to wire it so I wound up not even having to replace the fan motor after all.

Having a DC buss this power full is really openning up a lot of possibilities. I had a email exchange with someone that is sceptical of what I am doing. I actually love sceptics, People who don't question things I think have pudding for brains. Always question things, in fact allways demand evidence, thats the only way to learn. Though I see why the doubt as there is little on running things on DC on the net, and as seems to happen now days, everyone uses the googler and thinks its all knowing and that's just not always so....There is no substitution for doing, and I found little when I googled this myself after the questions were asked of me, even u tube turned up nothing for me until just a week ago this guy posted, he built himself a 108 vdc battery pack to run his corded 120 volt AC power tools on...smart and corded tools are cheaper, and better built. So for you smart person that questioned me I give you this other guy who popped up on the 16th doing the same thing as me, I will just post it for all to see rather than emailing you as you will see it here anyway, him with batteries and me directly off panels, same chips different flavour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvvSTsFIYxE
And this thread should give pause to all the emp and solar flare enthusiasts believing in Ultimate destruction of everything electrical, nothing could be further from the truth...maybe ask these so called experts why they havnt told you of this alternate way to run things, requiring no power grid at all. Maybe they don't know as much as they think they do.Just food for thought, lets just say Im not worried.The very idea of needing power distribution is being made irrelevant when you can now affordably produce your own.

just adding, of the possibilities opened up by cheap panel prices is heating, direct resistance heating...ideally on a new build if when you poured your basement or pad you could incorporate a resistive grid and be using the mass of cement as a storage medium for heat...I am thinking we will soon be seeing people trying it. As little as 5 years ago or so, such things as I am doing couldn't even be reasonably considered due to cost, just solar electric hot water heating would have been considered crazy from a price perspective. We are entering a great time of affordable power independence possibilities for the average person.......

Further testing of things, found 2 out of the 3 types of LED bulbs I tried ran fine on DC the Third didn't light...I would normally crack it open to see why but I just don't have time right now...It was a sunny day so I tested all my yard equipment..Electric hedge trimmers, weed wackers, and electric snow blower

all worked just fine, but I noticed something when testing the electric snow blower, it worked great but just didn't sound as gnarly ( technical term) as a universal motor should drawing 12 amps from the bus...I seen it had a access panel on the underside so I had a quick peek inside, and to my surprise it had a true permanent magnet DC motor (2 pole). I say surprise because they cost more to manufacture.( I think).

I got another surprise when I read the data sticker on it, you might not be able to see it as I had to shrink the picture down for the fourm but in words it says "Magnet DC Motor" but then in the specs it says 12 amps 120 VAC. This is so wrong, I don't know how this has a csa sticker on it because if I pulled this motor out of the snow blower and gave it to someone who read 120 VAC, and if they applied 120 VAC to it there would be a smoke and fire show, until the breaker tripped. Inside the unit as it comes from the factory its fine to plug in to 120VAC as the rectifier that you can see just above the motor (square thing) changes the 120 VAC to DC, but the motor by itself can not run on 120 VAC. it should not have a sticker on it saying it can... Trust nothing...always verifiy everything before applying power.
This brings up a interesting thought though.... I don't know if this is typical of electric snow blowers, that they have permanent magnet motors, as this is the only one I have looked in but PM motors have a interesting characteristic, and that is if you spin the shaft they produce DC power, and in looking at the gear ratio in mine ( wrong term its a belt drive in mine) if I spun the impeller by hand , I could easily generate 14-25 volts DC no problem at all (guestimate) Just something to think about, if I had time I would explore it further....So who wants to guess why they would use a DC permanent Magnet motor in this thing?? ( I think I have a hypothesis).....since no one wanted to guess about the toaster, I wont hold my breath, are there no electrickens around??
No one who takes things apart for fun? No one who likes to use reason for problem solving? or who even likes to take a wild ass guess at why things are done the way they are?

One more thought. I was in my garage and seen a couple inverter type welders and got to thinking....the newer type built in the last 10 years or so, these newer built inverter types don't have manual taps (like in the old days) that you have to set for the primary voltage you want to run them on. and they don't care if the power is 3 phase or single, and I just realized they must do this by converting the incoming AC voltage to straight DC, in other words I bet I could run my inverter welders off my DC Buss no problem....don't have time right now to experiment with this but I bet it would work...just something to think about...as I was typing this it just came to me, I bet I could also use one of these welder inverters running off my Buss to down convert my high voltage DC (low amperage) Buss to low voltage (high amperage) for battery charging....I am sure it would work...should work just like a mppt controller...but without the charge control a true 3 or 4 stage battery charger has, so mostly useful for bulk charging but that's fine...Think of this guys...you now can tell the wife you need a welder for battery charging!! What better excuse to buy a welder! I better get to bed, more ideas are coming in now.....

Ps No! it just occurred to me I could feed the output of the inverter welder directly to one of my PWM charge controlers, The charge controller can then handle the 3 stage charge control needed for the batteries...Stand Back..Im firing on all cylinders now......I don't know how big these ideas are going to get.

Ok another thing that runs off my buss just fine, and that's Sewing Machines. I snaped a pic of the data plate, this ones from the 1970s. everything used to say 120 vac and 120 vdc back in the old days, now that everything everywhere is 120 vac they don't say, but that doesn't mean they don't run fine on DC, and there was so little sun out today that I couldn't see a shadow but my buss easily runs this 1 amp load no problem at all.

Now should someone else try this with newer sewing machines due be aware, that the motor will run fine, but I don't know about the newer speed control petals say from 1990 onward.....I suspect many are solid state control now and They may function either off or full on when using DC .just something to be aware of.

Of course my meat slicer works just fine off the DC buss.

I might have shrunk the pic to much but it says115 volts 7 amps dc, 8 amps ac on the data plate.

That kind of invites the question why would it draw more current on AC? any guesses? am I the only one who wonders about these things?I am cursed with a curious mind and a small wallet.

I thought people might find this interesting, A guy trying to power a toaster....it doesn't go well, they say it is a 700 watt load... I find that hard to believe as I don't think I have seen any newer type toasters under 1000 -1200 watts, and look at the waste, they are making the guy power up a empty slot, Half his energy is going to nothing, I know if they disabled the other half of the toaster he could have done it no problem! Also if you go to buy a new toaster all most all off them have the slots so wide so they can advertise that you can toast bagels and muffins, this means the coils are so wide apart that they have to throw more wattage into the slot just to toast ordinary bread.Something to think about how waste full we are with power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ

So as a update I can say this Buss is still performing well, right into the short winter days, water is being heated fine, and I also have extra power for running electric cooking elements, only problem is fewer hours of use during these short days. sun is out mostly 8.5am to 5 pm right now, with about 5 hrs of that range having enough solar energy to drive the buss hard.
But this has now given me a rough idea as to what is capable.....Capable in a rough estimate way. I cant do this in my home as my basement floor is poured, but for someone doing a new pour on a basement..run a resistive grid through the concrete. I would go with 1/8th or 5/32 stainless wire to use as your heating medium. if your doing a new build, may as well pour a thin concrete floor on the second level as well , 3/4 inch concrete with a additional 1/4 inch ceramic tile on the top, with a resistive grid in the cement of course.

I estimate somewhere from 10kw to 15 kw in panels would keep a house warm and comfortable down to temps of -20, -25, all without any moving parts and nothing to wear out.
I am thinking I my try this in my kitchen next, rip up the lino, build up a cement base on the floor with the resistive wire in it., then tile it. I will have to build my own controller but that's not hard,

Stainless wire by the rolls, been using it to spin up my own precision resistors as needed, but heating may be a better use.