|
We don't have a nifty thread for solar (that I could find), and I think it deserves its own! Solar is really cool, it makes some people really angry and others happy. Why? Because people are weird, that's why. So let's talk about the types of solar installations! Roof Mount  These are the traditional types you will see driving around in neighborhoods. They mount on the roof (surprise!) in various ways depending on what supplier is chosen for the equipment. Pros
Cons
I might be biased against roof mount systems since I have land to do a ground mount ... sorry. Ground Mount  These are gaining traction and are what you see when huge solar farms are constructed. Pros
Cons
Inverters! At its most basic level, the inverter takes direct current (DC) and converts it into alternating current (AC) that we use in our homes. They can also perform functions such as a charge controller for battery banks, allow the export of electric back to the grid, etc. There are two styles of inverters, the standard string inverter and a micro inverter: String example:  Micro example:  String inverters take a "string" (a series of solar panels in a certain configuration) and feed those to the inverter for DC to AC conversion. The micro inverter convert DC to AC at each panel, these are becoming more popular for certain installations such as roof mounts because they generally couple the inverter + disconnect together. Hybrid inverters allow you to interface with grid power and, generally, sell electric back to the grid. Off grid inverters do not have this capability or are not certified to do so and will NOT meet code requirements for that purpose. Solar Panels There are a lot of types of solar panels at this point, based on cell count (60, 72 and 144 split cell), chemistry type (monocrystalline and polycrystalline), monofacial or bifacial and efficiency ratings. 60 vs 72 vs 144: Generally speaking, the more cells there are the more watts you're gonna produce, as each cell is wired in series, the more cells you have mean the more voltage from those cells. 144 cell panels are basically 72 cell panels but each cell is split into two. 72 and 144 will have the same dimensions while 60 cell panels will be much smaller and lighter. On makeup of the cells, I am quoting the energysage.com site (https://tinyurl.com/4v5wdj29): quote:"The main difference between the two technologies is the type of silicon solar cell they use: monocrystalline solar panels have solar cells made from a single crystal of silicon, while polycrystalline solar panels have solar cells made from many silicon fragments melted together." Monofacial panels have solar cells on a single side of the panel, whereas bifacial can collect photons that reflect from the ground surface on the back side of the panel. These can provide additional gain especially if you put a reflective surface covering on the ground (white plastic sheet to control weeds, etc). Batteries Saving this for later because .. Whew I am out of time right now. Useful Links PVWatts calculator: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/index.php Use this site to estimate your power production for a given size array in your area. Pretty cool! SolArk's calculator for their Inverters: https://www.sol-ark.com/solar-panel-sizing/SolarPanelSizing.html Input your panel and if their database has it, you can test your configuration against this or press the "max panels" button and see what it spits out. My Project I will update this post as we go and I will be documenting my solar project that will be getting installed in the next couple of weeks. If you are interested here are the primary components of the system I have purchased: 20 x Canadian Solar 445W bifacial panels (CS3W-445MB-AG) 1 x SolArk 15K Hybrid Inverter 1 x ReadRack Ground Mount kit for 20 panels This configuration will not cover my entire demand for electric but will offset it by about 1/3 at this time. Two years ago we purchased an EV, which did greatly add to the demand for electric and we have a temporary arrangement where some friends live on our property in a camper. Please feel free to add to this, PM me if you would like to see something added to the OP. Also if you have done a solar install or are a pro at this, please correct anything I said that is wrong or .. whatever! I hope this thread turns out to be fun. mAlfunkti0n fucked around with this message at 20:28 on May 8, 2023 |
#
?
May 3, 2023 15:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 04:19 |
|
|
Awesome thread idea and I hope it takes off in a major way. I hope maybe you know something about MPPT charge controllers. There's a question that's been bugging me for a while now. Maybe someone knows the answer. Here is a 100amp MPPT: https://www.renogy.com/rover-100-amp-mppt-solar-charge-controller/ It's the biggest single MPPT I can find. When it's maxed out, can I add another MPPT in parallel to the same battery bank? If not, how do you get 200amps into one bank of batteries? edit: Like, your setup for example. 445W x 20 panels = 8900W. At 12V that's nearly 750amps. How are you doing that?
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 17:09
|
|
|
DreadLlama posted:Awesome thread idea and I hope it takes off in a major way. I hope maybe you know something about MPPT charge controllers. There's a question that's been bugging me for a while now. Maybe someone knows the answer. So, charge controllers and battery banks are a huge learning curve for me but one that I will have to tackle. In terms of the amperage I can indeed help with that. In a series, the voltage is multiplied by the number of panels in that string but the amperage does not. So the amperage will equal that of one panel. Now if you run them in parallel, it's the other way around, the amperage will multiply but the voltage will stay the same. My SolArk 15K has a maximum input of 26A on the first two MPPT's, so I can run two strings in parallel (8 panels in one series, 8 in another and parallel those) which gives me the voltage of one string but the amperage of the two combined. With the MPPT you want to make sure to stay within the voltage limits as going above the voltage will generally toast the MPPT. You also want to make sure you calculate for the maximum voltage based on the historical temperature extremes in your area. To give my numbers exactly, this is the configuration I will be starting with: String 1 = 7 panels, that gives me a 342.3 voltage open circuit (VoC) since we combine the voltage from each panel in this string, the Isc (short circuit amperage) is 12.69 and current (amperage) at maximum power being 11.98. String 2 = 7 panels, so same as abover String 3 = 6 panels so a little less than above on the voltage, but the same amperage. This configuration stays within the max of the voltage range and gives me the best in terms of the earliest start since its a 125V minimum for the MPPT to go active. Next year I plan on adding another set of 20 panels, so I will run the same string sizes but parallel those to each other. That will give me the same voltage open circuit but will multiple the Isc by 2, so roughly ~25A. I hope this makes sense. mAlfunkti0n fucked around with this message at 17:24 on May 3, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 17:18
|
|
|
You connect your panels in series! I've heard of doing that but doesn't it mean that any shadow on any panel will drop the voltage on the entire string to zero? I thought solar panels were kind of like old christmas tree lights in that regard. I run parallel panels to avoid that problem. Are modern panels more shade tolerant? I'll bet you save a lot on copper relative to me. Your strings aren't all the same voltage, but the charge controller plays nice with all of them? That's wild. I had no idea that was possible. My system consists of multiple arrays of 4x 100W panels connected via an 8 ga length of copper wires directly to the MPPT; where multiple lengths of wire converge. 12V(nominal, closer to 18.6 in reality) at between 21.5A and 33.3A. 3 arrays of those pretty much maxes out my MPPT. You seem to be getting a lot more power with your series configuration. It seems I have a lot to learn as well! Since you're not running your batteries and panels at basically the same voltage, I'm curious if you know the answer to this question: When they say "100A mppt" is 100A the maximum it can deliver to the batteries at 12v nominal, or the maximum amperage it could accept from the panels (at up to 500V?!)?
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 17:56
|
|
|
DreadLlama posted:You connect your panels in series! I've heard of doing that but doesn't it mean that any shadow on any panel will drop the voltage on the entire string to zero? I thought solar panels were kind of like old christmas tree lights in that regard. I run parallel panels to avoid that problem. Are modern panels more shade tolerant? I'll bet you save a lot on copper relative to me. For my use case the string will only be shaded by clouds, there are no trees to interfere with the production. Also with the 144 cell panels my understanding is that they suffer a bit less for that, but a shaded panel will drop the output but wont kill it entirely. That is one of the huge benefits of micro inverter setups, each device produces its maximum no matter what happens to its neighbors in the string. However, this is the normal setup for most string inverters, just pushing them as the largest string you can. My inverter has 3 MPPTs, each of them can handle their own separate input of up to 500V max so running different voltages is supported there. For your last question, checking the data sheet it shows that it's a max per MPPT of 100A to the batteries as it lists it as "Rated Charge Current: 100A". If you paralleled them it would indeed link up to provide 200A.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 20:51
|
|
|
I have my delivery "scheduled" for my skid steer for 5/15, hoping the weather holds off enough so I can get my ground anchors set properly. To get an overview of whats going to happen that day APA has an installation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqWoc6NO8Bg Running through Solark's calculator it looks like the maximum number of panels I can run with my selected panel is three strings of 9 panels each, that should give me (without any gain from the back side of the panel) of roughly 15,000 watts in best case scenarios. If I can find these panels again I will purchase 8 more and likely go with something like the EG4 ground mount kit, that would run me around $500 for the mount itself. Fun times ahead.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2023 14:41
|
|
|
My parents installed roof top solar last autumn on their 1970s house. Roofs here are rated for significant snow loads and a solar panel installation is very light so I've never heard of anyone having to do anything to their roof. They are favored here because they are permit free unlike a ground installation. And it's easier to get out from the shade of trees. lovely phone photo from last oktober. It faces south east. Used to be a strip of forest next to the house but it got logged, fortunately for my parents. We also looked into solar but all the good places are in shade during parts of autumn and spring when the sun is low on the horizon (we're far north!) and we honestly rather keep the trees than get solar panels.  We reduced our yearly consumption of electricity from 11000 to 7100 kWh this year, turned down the heat, installed mini-split in garage, extra insulation in attic (500mm total). So I think solar isn't for us given our locale and we managed to effectivize pretty well anyhow.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 09:03
|
|
|
His Divine Shadow posted:My parents installed roof top solar last autumn on their 1970s house. Roofs here are rated for significant snow loads and a solar panel installation is very light so I've never heard of anyone having to do anything to their roof. They are favored here because they are permit free unlike a ground installation. And it's easier to get out from the shade of trees. That looks awesome! I’ll update the OP with info on roof mounts for your area and add another pro to the list. That install looks great, thank you for sharing! Lowering usage is the best thing to do before solar installs anyways. 11kWh to 7100 is a huge drop!
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2023 13:26
|
|
|
I am really glad for this thread. I have been thinking pretty hard about a roof mounted solar system with battery backup system. I'm in a house in a city so my yard space is at a premium. Do you have any trustworthy discussion resources ( websites, youtube etc.) that get into the nuts and bolts of building your own system and quality manufacturers to work with? My broke brain likes to start with those kinds of things. I've seen from posts in this thread sol-ark and renogy seem good. But I am a complete n00b in this space and would not like to work with manufacturers or installers who use them which will set my roof on fire. ptier fucked around with this message at 15:46 on May 15, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 15, 2023 15:37
|
|
|
I was waiting for someone qualified to reply but nobody is biting so here’s my lovely opinion: The core of your system is the batteries. You build everything around them. More batteries means more power. You can run more stuff for longer and are better equipped to handle longer periods of no sun the more you have. I started doing this in 2002 and have been building and expanding since then. There are definitely better ways to build than I have done, some of which are already posted in this thread. There’s stuff I straight up don’t know about, such as connecting multiple panels in series in order to transmit higher voltages back to the charge controller, saving money on copper wire. I built/build everything in parallel so the degradation of any one component does not adversely affect the performance of any other component. Speaking of starting in 2002: my first 8 panels were 15W panels from walmart for $89.99 apiece. As far as my charge controller knows, those panels still work fine. But nowadays I refuse to pay more than $1/Watt. To that end, the most recent panels I’ve bought are $99 for 100W from Amazon. Eco-worthy is the name of the brand. According to my charge controller they work fine. Renogy is probably better, but not in any way I’ve been able to quantify. Anyway. Buy any solar panel and a deep cycle battery (not a “starting” battery or a “marine” battery). “Deep cycle” is a kind of battery that’s designed to discharge most of the way down and not be bothered by it. Regular “starting” batteries are designed to supply a lot of amps for a brief instant and then be immediately topped up by the alternator of the vehicle they’re in. Deep cycle good. Starting bad. Do you have access to distilled or reverse osmosis water? Your batteries will offgas some hydrogen while charging and the fluid level in the batteries will drop over time. I have to refill mine every other year or so. It’s a good idea to take the cap off a brand new battery and take a photo of the fluid level so you know where it’s supposed to be when it comes time to refill them. Don’t use regular tap water. It’s got minerals in it and that’ll mess up the chemistry. Ditto for spring water. Don’t use that either. You want either reverse osmosis water or distilled water. You’ll need like a quarter cup every other year. It’s not a lot but it’s important. Don’t let the metal plates inside your batteries be exposed to atmosphere. They won’t last as long. You can start with a single battery and solar panel and you have a barebones complete system. You can add to it anything that’s designed to run in a car, boat, or RV. For example you can get a 12v USB adapter https://www.amazon.ca/Oiyagai-Alligator-Female-Adapter-19-6In/dp/B07FKK9RFR/ and use your solar system as a phone charger. Or, anything that runs on 8 batteries (AAs, AAAs, Cs or Ds) can be run directly off the deep cycle battery. (1.5v apiece x 8 batteries = 12v, exactly what you have). That’s how I ran my cd player for like a decade. Anything that can be run in a car can be easily integrated into your 12v dc system. There’s travel coffee makers, truck flood lamps, RV water pumps, 12v electric blankets. Husqvarna and ryobi both make automotive chargers for their battery power tools; (QC 80F and p131 respectively), so you don’t technically need grid power for your power tools if you happen to buy into either of those brands. Eventually you’re going to add enough appliances to your system that you will need more power input. That’s when you buy a 2nd solar panel. You can probably go up to 4 or so before you need something called a charge controller. A charge controller is a device with 2 main functions. 1 it stops dumping power into your battery when it’s full. You get a charge controller because solar panels are stupid and will happily overcharge your battery until it’s nothing more than an empty lead bucket with some sulphates in it. This is because solar panels don’t put out 12v, but something closer to 17.6v. You need to input a higher voltage than the battery has in order to charge it, and 12v batteries are fully charged at around 14v. This is where the charge controller’s 2nd function comes in. Everyone knows that Watts = Volts x Amps. Watts is what your panels are measured in, and amps are what goes into the battery. The problem is that you buy your panels thinking that 100w / 12v = 8.3 amps. But you don’t get this. Instead you get 100W/ 17V= 5.88. Where do those extra 3 amps go? Away. You lose them. Unless you have a charge controller. A charge controller has a buck converter and a boost converter in it, and enough smarts to know when to use them. If your batteries are discharged down to 10v and your solar panels are putting out 17, your charge controller will transform the voltage down to like 10.1v (just barely enough voltage to force power into the batteries), and gaining you the extra amps that would otherwise be wasted. Instead of putting just under 6amps into your battery, you’ll get closer to 9.9amps. The charge controller will continuously monitor your battery voltage to ensure it’s always getting the maximum amperage possible. Turn on your water pump and refrigerator at the same time? The voltage drop this causes will be seen by the charge controller and it will correspondingly drop its output voltage to maximize the amp output. When you turn those appliances off and the voltage goes back up, the charge controller will increase its output voltage to ensure current continues to flow into the battery. You don’t need one right away, but when you do decide to get one it’ll be like you suddenly have 40% more solar panels. You want to have just enough batteries that they’re nearly discharged after you finished making your morning coffee. You want to have just enough solar panels that your batteries are fully recharged by dusk. And because solar panels are stupid, if you have a charge controller, the numbers you calculate in theory will be closer to what you actually need in practice than if you didn’t.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2023 00:12
|
|
|
Most people here don't install any batteries, the surplus goes back into the grid and they are paid spot price for it.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2023 06:56
|
|
|
His Divine Shadow posted:Most people here don't install any batteries, the surplus goes back into the grid and they are paid spot price for it. I didn't get batteries for this reason. I'm considering it in the future, but at the time it didn't make much sense, and I live in an area that doesn't experience many blackouts
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2023 14:28
|
|
|
This is true. However as I recall after the derecho last year most people in the affected area were without power for some time. I only learned there was an outage by reading about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_One posted:In October 1998, the provincial legislature passed the Energy Competition Act which restructured Ontario Hydro into separate entities responsible for electrical generation, transmission/delivery, and price management with a final goal of total privatization. If you trust these assholes to keep your fridge running, by all means skimp on batteries.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2023 15:17
|
|
|
DreadLlama posted:This is true. However as I recall after the derecho last year most people in the affected area were without power for some time. I only learned there was an outage by reading about it. I don't disagree with that. It's definitely something I want to do in the future, but at the time it wasn't a big priority since I was eligible for net-metering. Now that I've had the system for a few years I think I'm more understanding of my consumption/energy usage so I can make an informed battery decision. This was the first big project for this house and I was switching over to an EV, so projecting my energy usage was not super straightforward at the time. It seems like I sized the array about right though
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2023 15:57
|
|
|
Glad to see some activity here! My install was postponed a little due to weather and availability of the skid steer to drive my posts in. I now have it all lined up for Monday next week. In the mean time I snagged my THWN (3 spools @ 500') and about 220' of PVC conduit. I was able to snag 15% off the conduit and 16% off the wire. If I had to do this all over again, I would be going with the EG-4 ground mount system they have now. The price of renting a skid steer for me is very high as I do not have a truck to pull anything, and the price of the ground mount from EG-4 is DIRT cheap. My plan for next year is snagging about 30kWh of batteries (EG-4 has their 5kWh packs for $1500 each, and seem to be very popular) to avoid the issue with power outages as much as possible.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2023 13:48
|
|
|
I'm curious to see how this goes. I'm also a Hydro One customer and I have been trying to get a net metering agreement but have run into the whole not enough capacity issue. By capacity they mean the pulled out of there rear end distributed generation anti islanding percentage. They look at the minimum night time load on each feeder and allow 7% of that as distributed load. Somehow out of the ~2000 people on my local feeder 19 of them take up the entire 7%. I was ready to buy all my stuff for an on roof microinverter setup and have it installed by now.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2023 14:16
|
|
|
Our usage (I think I described above) is higher than I would like for a few reasons. We are doing everything we can now to lessen the amount of electric we need to produce, as I would love to be fully energy independent in the future.
Edit: There is one thing I have that I cannot (to my knowledge) reduce the power consumption from. We have a septic system (mound) that requires a blower fan to aerate the second chamber that moves the effluent to the pump tank, that blower uses around 400w constantly, which gives me a roughly 9.6kWh/day footprint from that alone. I am trying to reduce as much expense as possible, I feel like rough times are ahead in general with the unstable climate and civil situation here in the US. "Worst" case if things don't go down the crapper is we are just in a better position to reduce the amount I work in my secular job. We can all dream right .. 
mAlfunkti0n fucked around with this message at 16:00 on May 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 22, 2023 15:49
|
|
|
Wow, it has been a long few days. A friend came over with his bobcat and repositioned some posts for me for the ground mount, then trenched the 175' run up to our house where the inverter is going. Some lessons learned: Ground mounts like this require some VERY precise locating for the posts. There is a -/+ 2" tolerance, but when you're an idiot like me with very little experience you can really cock it up easily. We have worked around the issues and have our 30 degree tilt. The pictures below were from two days ago, last night my wife and I got all of the east-west purlins installed and went to mount a panel only to find the end clamps that came with the kit need a thicker panel. I have reached out to the supplier to see what they can do for me, for now I am going to 3D print some spacers from ABS just to give the clamps something to bit to (see last image). ABS has a glass transition temp of like 205C, so it will work until the new clamps come in. Thankfully these are the east-west clamps so they can be replaced easily when they arrive (as I was writing this the rep confirmed the clamps are the wrong one and are sending the correct model out). With that being said, if you are GOOD at this kind of stuff (laying out your marks, driving a post straight with a bobcat, etc) this is a great kit. However, I have had my eyes on the EG4 BrightMount rack kit. This would be far cheaper (about $1600 total ... vs $4k) and something that I believe anyone could do. A simple post hole digger (or better, an auger) with some 6x6 treated lumber and concrete would be sufficient to mount these. Edit: Over the past few days I have been seeing more about the EG4 solar mini split unit available for sale as well, it will do DC and/or AC input. It has an MPPT so it can simply be connect direct to panels and run without an inverter in between. I would actually like to snag one of the 12K models just to give us the ability to heat/cool one part of our house instead of the entire thing at certain times. But that is further down the road.    
mAlfunkti0n fucked around with this message at 15:05 on May 31, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 31, 2023 14:58
|
|
|
First row done today! My awesome wife is my helper on this, couldn't do it without her.  And my temporary fix for the wrong end clamp issue. My sales rep confirmed the wrong east/west end clamps were sent, said I could use cardboard on them to just keep the project going ... but I have a 3D printer and a roll of ABS I won't use for anything else more than likely. New end clamps are here tomorrow. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2023 20:37
|
|
|
We finished the mount two days ago. I’d post pictures but I cut my fiber line by digging close to the house. In that time we decided to order a Senville 18000 BTU mini-split system to reduce hvac power consumption. By our estimation it likely will drop power usage by half.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2023 00:16
|
|
|
We finished the array on Friday and spent Saturday extending the trench to the house and array. I didn't have faith in things being in the places where 811 marked them .. because they told me my SER cable was 6 inches down .. thankfully it was 24 inches down, but my fiber line was 4 and I still managed to slice it. I sit here waiting on the company to come out and fix my screw up. This was an amazing feeling reaching this point. We did the full bottom row b/c I was nervous about keeping the row straight, it made some extra work for the top row but nothing we couldn't handle.   Trenching up to the array by hand. This part was miserable, it has not rained here in two weeks and the ground has turned to its concrete form.  Up by the house was a bit easier, only one small section that was super dry. Near the house was much easier to dig. Clearly when they were putting the place in they had some fires and just buried the half burned logs because they're bits and pieces of them in the soil.  My stupid mistake, I was exhausted and didn't pay attention to where the fiber CLEARLY was and cut right into it. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2023 13:53
|
|
|
I am still alive, and have internet too. Monday last week our local provider came out and fused the fiber, back to 1Gbit symmetric, woohoo! Since that time I discovered a LOT of stuff about permitting. The biggest thing is that ... apparently I don't need ANY permits because my home is a manufactured home and in Ohio .. I guess that's just some magic pass due to how things are regulated. So, I was declined permits because the county cant issue them and was told to basically just be careful. On Friday we mounted the 200A fused disconnect and the SolArk 15K. I ordered the wrong wire way, so I have a 12x12x48 on the way to keep all of the conductors in to keep everything tidy. We're running 2/0 copper from the meter base to the disconnect, from the disconnect to the inverter and then to the main panel. We are almost there! Here is a little sketch of the run from my solar mount to the house:  Before:  After:  With the inverter open:  Hopefully the wire way comes in early this week, my conductors and all the other little bits to connect it all should be on Wednesday. I am installing my IMO DC disconnects at the panels today, along with the junction box they will feed into that will connect to the conduit run to the house.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 14:28
|
|
|
The wire way arrives today, need to call my local supply house to see if my order has arrived for all of the other conductors, conduit, etc. Tomorrow looks like we may be active with solar. At the very least the inverter will be installed and working on grid.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2023 15:48
|
|
|
Somehow I managed to convince hydro one to give me a connection agreement so I’ll be on this road as well. A bit frustrating to have this all ready to go only to have to out it off for two months with the possibility of it never going. Time to go over my plans and suppliers for updated pricing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2023 17:46
|
|
|
helno posted:Somehow I managed to convince hydro one to give me a connection agreement so I’ll be on this road as well. I feel like that is how about 75% of my life goes, I know the feeling!
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2023 22:06
|
|
|
Saturday update. We finished wiring everything up yesterday, the inverter is on (woohoo!) but is not working as expected (sad sounds). I am calling SolArk in a few minutes to see what's up, it seems like a firmware issue as the "No Battery" option does not work as expected right now. Since this unit has been in my house for almost a year .. I am sure they have found some bugs and fixed them since then.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2023 16:03
|
|
|
Solark support is top notch. Had me going in about 5 minutes. I ordered two EG4 batteries today, for a total of 10kWh. Working on my interconnection agreement with Duke Energy as well.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 00:10
|
|
|
Is there any more irony to installing solar panels, the weeks leading up to it being a dry and sunny, the weeks after being wet and overcast. I am glad we have the rain.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 02:54
|
|
|
Been running for close to two weeks, I still do not have a sell agreement with Duke Energy as they are going to stretch out this 10 business day review on my plans (it seems). During that time I have found Duke has an inconsistent power delivery, once a day we see a drop of about 60v which was causing the inverter to drop from the grid and reboot (due to me not having batteries). So, we bought two "Lifepower4" batteries from Signature Solar. 5kWh each, 48V 100aH. My friend came over with his Dingo and filled the trench back in, so now we need to plant some seed and return the grass to normal. One last photo of the setup at the house:  Over those two weeks we have been able to cover most of the load of our house with solar, however there have been some less productive times due to the smoke coming in from the wildfires and also the more cloudy than normal conditions. On 6/21 we hit a peak in our production of 9.6kW, so the bi-facial panels are doing their job! The SolArk inverters have a read only modbus map published, an a very nice person created a HACS add-on to covert the data to something human readable. I picked up an RS-485 interface and connected that to my Home Assistant VM to get the following data, since the PV Pro app that SolArk uses gives very slow updates.  
|
|
#
?
Jun 30, 2023 15:25
|
|
|
So time for an effortpost on what I am doing with Solar. I am building a microinverter based system that is grid tied and covered by the greener homes grant offered by Canadian government. To save money and avoid some of the annoying issues that people run into with contractors I am DIY'ing the entire thing. My background is that I am a red seal Instrumentation technician and work in the power generation industry. Here are the steps required to do this. 1) Energy audit (gives you the list of eligible refits) 2) Design a system that will qualify 3) Apply to Hydro one for a net metering agreement 4) Get rejected for capacity constraints 5) Wait two months and apply again 6) Get an offer to connect from Hydro One with no change in the application or the capacity of the system 7) Apply for a municipal building permit 8) Hire a structural engineer to evaluate your roof in order to obtain a building permit <----- currently here 9) File a notice with the ESA for an electrical inspection 10) Install the solar power system 11) ESA electrical inspection 12) Post install energy audit 13) $$$$ from the federal government 14) Optional get a 10 year interest free loan from the federal government for the install. Step two was a fun process of learning about the workings of modern grid tied systems as well as learning the code requirements for the electrical side. I spent some time looking at issues people have had and how suppliers dealt with DIY installers. A major complaint seems to be that quite often the companies who do the installs are mostly just sales companies and they hire local roofers so things get installed half assed and then it is a pain to get timely service. I am going to avoid this issue by being the idiot who does the install but at least if it has issues I can get ahold of this prick without much fuss. The system is small but designed for expansion. The initial system will be two arrays of 6 450 watt panels with the ability to expand each to ten panels without having to upgrade any of the supporting electrical installation. There will be a single #8 electrical run from my panel up to the roof and then it will branch into two fused 20A branches for the micro inverter cabling. I chose to use Enphase micro inverters because they appear to be the world leader in this technology and are DIY friendly. They are very well documented and offer free online training for people looking to do the installation themselves. They are more expensive than the competitors but seem to be well worth it from a support standpoint. The building permit application in my municipality is done via an online service and I am just waiting for a letter from a structural engineer. I sent him the documentation on what I am installing as well as pictures and measurements of my roof trusses and he is writing a letter describing what I can safely install. The letter will be open ended so that I can use the same documentation for future expansion. They only thing they are requiring is that I have a support foot on every joist rather than every second which the racking system calls for. I'll add more to this as I go. As soon as I have the building permit my credit card takes a beating. The wiring for this is going to be around $12-1500 CAD including the micro inverter harness. helno fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jul 16, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:10
|
|
|
helno posted:So time for an effortpost on what I am doing with Solar. I don't know the rules in Canada around the credits from the government, however if you have to report production to them I would encourage you to install a physical electrical meter. You can get one for like $30 US on ebay. I have an enphase system, and their cloud monitoring system has been having issues for months where it will just miss data... it's supposed to report every 15m, and if it fails the data just goes away. So, my production graphs are pretty whacky looking even when it's been a perfectly sunny day. This means you can't just run #8 to the roof and branch there, unless you are putting the combiner there? Edit: I'm wrong, you can do it but you'll need to rig up a place to mount the envoy: https://www4.enphase.com/sites/default/files/downloads/support/TechBrief-Planning-for-IQ-System.pdf#page=8 (page 8-12) devicenull fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Jul 17, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2023 00:26
|
|
|
devicenull posted:I don't know the rules in Canada around the credits from the government, however if you have to report production to them I would encourage you to install a physical electrical meter. You can get one for like $30 US on ebay. This system is being installed behind the meter so my existing power meter takes care of that. I'm going to install consumption metering via the envoy that will be installed next to my electrical panel. The combiner is overkill for what I am doing. The grant program is just that a grant. $1k for every kw installed up to a max of 5 kw. The energy audit proves you installed it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2023 01:37
|
|
|
helno posted:This system is being installed behind the meter so my existing power meter takes care of that. I'm going to install consumption metering via the envoy that will be installed next to my electrical panel. The combiner is overkill for what I am doing. Ah, the program here in my state pays per KWH produced, so the utilities meter doesn't help (as it doesn't count things I produced but used within my house).
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2023 02:20
|
|
|
devicenull posted:Ah, the program here in my state pays per KWH produced, so the utilities meter doesn't help (as it doesn't count things I produced but used within my house). Ontario used to have a microFIT program like that. Large premiums paid that scaled with the cost of installations. In the early days you would get 80 cents per kilowatt hour but a 10 kw system was around $100k. Now it is just 1:1 net metering. But the costs to install it are much lower.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2023 02:25
|
|
|
I’m glad to see some posts here! I am currently at the emergency vet for our dog, it might be her last hours, not sure. I’ll re-read this when I’m in a good frame of mind but I’m glad to see some others here.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2023 02:57
|
|
|
I hope your dog is ok. Stay with her. When I lost my boy I was there for him in the hours beforehand, but not the days. That lapse remains one of my biggest regrets.
DreadLlama fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2023 19:11
|
|
|
DreadLlama posted:I hope your dog is ok. Stay with her. When I lost my boy I was there for him in the hours beforehand, but not the days. That lapse remains one of my biggest regrets. She is doing well now, she likely has a UTI (they couldn't tell b/c her bladder was empty) but its somewhat normal for her as she has stage 2 kidney disease and is 16 .. but she isn't in pain and still enjoying life, so we are good for now. I am really happy to see some life in this thread, I have a little to add for myself! I have built a small "lean-to" for my battery bank. I framed it out with 2x4 walls (T1-11 siding), it gives me enough room for a full stack of 6 server rack batteries. Right now I am running 4x "48V" (really around 52~55V) 100aH EG4 Lifepower4 batteries. We started with two but for my size inverter and system, it just does not work well. Going from 10kWh to 20kWh really is a HUGE jump practically speaking, far more than I had imagined. If you are thinking batteries, just do not do what I did and run the batteries at 1C charge/discharge, while it can do it for a short period of time it will cause massive imbalances. I now run them around .3~.4C for charge and discharge. I have found Duke Energy to be very frustrating to deal with for the interconnection process. They do not understand basic single line diagrams or know how to read the documents sent to them, which leads me to believe they have farmed out their "engineering" team to the lowest bidder. At this point I am not sure I really want to "sell" back to them since my end goal is a 30kWh battery bank. From my understanding they are in process to adopt new net metering polices that will greatly reduce the impact of that agreement. mAlfunkti0n fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Jul 24, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2023 22:10
|
|
|
Moving forward a little today to a much brighter energy usage future. A friend is here doing the final work on my mini split system, I will soon be able to remove the old heat pump/strip heating system. That will drop my energy usage dramatically during all months. I HIGHLY recommend doing something like this before going solar, just to make sure you do not spend more than needed to supply your home.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2023 17:06
|
|
|
All I can say is if you need to lower energy usage and you have an older HVAC unit, take a look at a mini split system. They even have the units that will swap out with your existing central air unit. The power savings is incredible with it being a multi-stage DC inverter. Running 100-400 watts once it reaches temperature, even under full load it's been around 800 watts. Just blown away by the energy savings at this point. I have another on the way to complete the house.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2023 22:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 04:19 |
|
|
1) Energy audit (gives you the list of eligible refits) 2) Design a system that will qualify 3) Apply to Hydro one for a net metering agreement 4) Get rejected for capacity constraints 5) Wait two months and apply again 6) Get an offer to connect from Hydro One with no change in the application or the capacity of the system 7) Apply for a municipal building permit 8) Hire a structural engineer to evaluate your roof in order to obtain a building permit 9) File a notice with the ESA for an electrical inspection <----- currently here 10) Install the solar power system 11) ESA electrical inspection 12) Post install energy audit 13) $$$$ from the federal government 14) Optional get a 10 year interest free loan from the federal government for the install. Only a slight update but I got my building permit last week. Now is the time when money starts flowing. Just ordered the panels and racking structure. Waiting to hear back on a price match for the micro inverters. I'll submit my notice to the ESA for the electrical inspection tomorrow and Hydro one gets the notice to swap the meter out as well.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2023 01:08
|
|