Solar (Temporary) Installation Progress

ALL NEW - Battery Finder Search for 12/24/36/48v or by capacity www.batteryfinder.net
New & used Batteries, Solar, accessories, LifePo4 cells & more 5% Coupon "Powerwalls" www.batteryhookup.com
It's dark, but there's outside night lights that could be producing yours. I'm out in the woods basically and surrounded by trees all around. No way a neighbors lights can hit my panels.
It's just really strange how even some light from somewhere can produce power.

Altho, most solar panels produce more power from the low-frequency IR bands. So it would be interesting to see where that light is coming from, not the visible light 🤔
 
Today's power production was a lot better for sure! Reached peak of about 1kW. Batter was fully charged back up about 11am. Though it wasn't fully discharged. Tomorrow (Sunday) will really put that to the test. Battery is down to 24%SoC. Might toss up another row of 7s panels tomorrow morning and do 3p7s. Lower voltage, but higher amps capable. But then again, it's a bit chilly in the morning this weekend
1733020768365.png


Also ordered another 20 cells to put in parallel with my existing one. So I'll have 16s2p. These are the Calb 72Ah cells from BatteryHookup. Couldn't beat and additional 20% off for the season sale. That'll double my capacity.
I'll take the 2 cells from this order plus the 2 from the last order and make a 4s battery for my cargo trailer. Which will get the solar panel treatment as well. That's another story to tell tho :p
 
Made some changes today. The second test string was 14s and it was split across the roof ridge. So half the array was facing away from the sun. This was fine for the second test as I figured out what needed to setup and arranged.

Today I cut back some of the trees around the west end of the house so that no shading on the panels for another hour in the afternoon.
The other thing is that I moved half of the array on to the south side with its other half. So now the whole 13s string is on the south facing roof.

Can you tell what time that happened? :LOL:
1733089881063.png


I then laid out the second string of 13s on the north facing side and moved them a little further away from the west end of the house. I can't quite take out the large oak tree on that end, but trimming it did allow for better arrangement of the panels. These aren't connected yet as I need to inspect my other combiners because I came across an issue.

I now know why my MPPT was being quite jittery and random
1733090043185.jpeg

So before I use the other ones, I'm going to pull them, make sure they are clean, and use my macro lens to inspect to make sure they are still in good condition.
There was moisture in other connection point, so I'm not sure if I didn't get these securely snapped together, the ring washer wasn't sealing properly, or they were defective such as having a cracked casing.
For safety, the others won't be used until after inspection and they are are good.
 
1733191156571.png


Today's power production. It's a shame I didn't have more capacity to keep recharging :LOL:

This is the output of the rearrangement of all panels on the south facing roof. Later in the week I'll be pulling down the older panels and replacing with more of the good panels.
Also, I have on order from Battery Hookup another 16x 72Ah CALB cells. So I'll be able to double my capacity. Hopefully I'll get them by the weekend so I can set that up with my new BMS. I got a JK BMS.

Annnnnd, the guy who I bought these panels from still has 28 panels left after selling to the other buyers. Soooo, guess who's getting more panels at the end of week!? :ROFLMAO:
That'll give me a total 68 panels!! In a couple months I may actually be completely offgrid!!! :love:
 
1733276140046.png

Another really nice chart!

You can see easily when the battery is full :LOL:

For the time being, I think I figured out what I'm going to do with the excess power. Especially after I get the other set of panels put up with the extra battery capacity. Since I can't really use all that power atm, I might as well turn it into heat. And, considering the energy is "basically" free now, the best thing to do is turn it directly into currency. Cryptocurrency!!! 😜 Plus the added bonus of helping to heat the house. Reactivate my Nicehash account, considering they are implementing that surcharge for inactive accounts.
Have the mining work while i'm not home I think would be a good use for the extra energy for the time being.
 
1733355119994.png

So this is what the graphs look like while running mining software :LOL:
"very" up/down on the loads

I will say tho, I probably won't do this more until I get the second half of the battery built (which, it has been shipped) which will help smooth out the power usage. I noticed the MPPT would crash several times. This is seen in the middle one where the green fills the graph below the peaks. Compare with the previous image/graph.
The increase in capacity will make it smoother, at least I'm hoping so. Also I want to add more power production. I haven't been able to hook up the other panels yet.
 

Attachments

  • 1733355081845.png
    1733355081845.png
    142.7 KB · Views: 157
1733522959146.png

Just a wwweeeeee shy of 3kW!!!

So today's test run configuration is that I added a 2nd string in parallel with the 1st 13s string. This other 13s is on the north facing roof. It definitely allowed for a higher voltage overall.
It looks like it starts making voltage a little sooner (altho, tbf, this morning there was no ice on the panels like the previous 2 days), but it takes longer for them to start producing current.

I was able to fire up the cryto mining for a few hours and still dump 35A into the battery while also supplying 800-1kW of power to the rig :LOL:

Also received the 2nd batch of cells from Battery Hookup this evening. So I'll be doing some tests on them before I toss them into the mix. There were 5 cells that were reading 3.14V or so when all the others were 3.22-3.30V. So I've separated those out to give a little more attention to just in case.
 
Just wanting to give a quick update.

Overall the solar install has been doing pretty good. A couple weeks ago I went up on the roof and cleaned the pollen off while we had a light drizzle before a storm rolled through. Figured it was a good time to get them cleaned and I had to do minimal work :p

The PowMr inverter has been working mostly decently. It has had some quirks. I'm in support chats with their tech support. One of the issues is that it's not producing proper sine wave and frequency. With two of my meters I can get upwards of 100Hz on the line. I was able to get a pretty decent oscilloscope and I can see why now
1745092933492.png

1745092949494.png


There's definitely something going wonky with it. It's a 5kW model and with these readings it was sitting around 1700W load. A few induction motors (ceiling fans and a window aircon) and most digital loads (tvs, computer, etc) so a mix of different kinds of loads present.

I do need to get another charge controller. Ideally I need 4 considering I need 4 strings on the roof due to pitch and shading during the day. Right now I just have 3 strings with the north slope panels sitting mid-way to get the most light from dawn to dusk. Power production starts kicking in decent around 8am, but still slack off around 4pm due to a big oak tree on the west side of the house. I've thinned it a little, but I'm not cutting it down.

Here's a screenshot of the production for today, clear skies, @ 4pm
1745093638272.png

Another oddity I do not like about the hybrid inverter is that when the BMS turns off the charging circuit, if it lasts too long, the charger will start registering the battery SoC as increasing, even if it's not taking in any power. It uses no accepting charge condition as the defining factor of a full battery instead of solely on voltage condition. I find this irritating as this means while the BMS is working on balancing the battery pack, the charger is slowly considering it *full* when it is in fact not.
I do have some issues with the battery, though, as the BMS works hard at keeping it balanced. I've been swapping around cells trying to find matching sets to make sure they charge/discharge correctly. Unfortunately I can't simulate the kind of power the charger/inverter can dish out with my current equipment. My discharge tester can only do about 10A max. I can push to 13A if testing a single cell, tho. But the charger is set to max out at 35A, and this is only because of the wire gauge I'm currently using. That'll be upgraded soon.

I tested the Inverter with about 600W for a few months. A few days ago I put the server rack and the aircon (the window unit mentioned earlier) on the circuit with the inverter, so that's why consumption is now up to 1400W. Yesterday the aircon was working a lot to bring the room down to temps, which is why the lot of high spikes in the bottom left graph. Today it did a lot better. I had to replace the aircon because the previous one the blower fan motor bearings were going out.

Umm, what else. Ohhh, so the fiasco I dealt with getting more cells. I ordered from a multi-year store on AliExpress to get some EVE 304AH cells. After almost 2 months the tracking said they were delivered, which they were not. I put in an inquiry about it (maybe the shipping courier delivered to the wrong house). Instead of getting an email from the store about the situation, AliExpress sent an email telling me that my purchase was being refunded and when I went to the store page, it was gone. :rolleyes:
Now I'm in the process of buying directly through AliBaba. CALB cells this time, 314AH cells, just a little over $800 shipped. 2 weeks into the order, they tell me that shipping rates have changed and they have to get updated information from the courier :mad: Stupid bs US tariff crap!!

I'm hoping to not have to pay much more for them to get shipped. The contact at the AliBaba store did say they have updates, but not sure what's going on but they are waiting. Maybe they are trying to make a deal and get the costs lowered. Let's hope. If they are too high, I'm going to have to cancel the order and see about getting used cells from within the US, because brand new cells are way higher than $50/cell for 300-ishAh.

Ok, a bit more than just a quick update :p
 
Up late enough to see EoD stats live:
1745121252553.png

I'm liking those numbers so far 😎
 
Yeah, I have more panels to put up, just need to build the structure for them. That location will have more direct sunlight as it'll be higher than the house roof and further from trees, and larger area.
I have another 12 panels of 250W and 100 panels in the 150W range (these were actually gotten for free for a solar panel recycling program in Orlando, Fl). These I randomly tested a few and after almost 20yrs of production, they still output >80% power. They are rated for 170W and I was able to get close to or over 145W
 
1745282970999.png


Nearly 4kW of production!!! 😎 ☀️

1745283042810.png

Looks like power usage from the grid is a little lower overall than last year, even tho not level past few months like last year. Cold snaps I think did it
temps are higher this year tho

1745283072612.png

1745283082011.png


So, can you tell when I moved my server rack from grid to solar??? 😝
 
I've added another PowMr 5kW Hybrid Inverter. This has allowed me to take the 3 strings on the roof and split them where 2 are paralleled to the primary charger, and the 3rd string goes to the second charger.

I was able to run most of the evening and to about 2-3am as long as we had full sun for the day. However, I've now added more loads to the Inverter, and obviously power capacity doesn't last as long. I run out around 11pm now if we had a perfect sunny day.
The chargers are both hitting about 40A max each with the current setup. I think this is actually the max of the panels in the current arrangement more than anything else.

So, with that, I introduce Operation 4th String:
1753140053944.png
1753140103190.png
1753140081962.png


Another 12S @ 250W should give me another 3000W of solar collection. The added bonus of this particular location is that they will be in the sun for about 2 more hours than the ones on the roof as the camera facing direction is actually West, and in that direction, the shade from the trees will be around 7pm.

Here's today's power production. We did have a storm come in around 2pm for a cpl hours
1753140485919.png

1753140500872.png

You can see that the Primary charger did get to about 3700W. I have actually seen it get to about 4200W. The Second charger reached 2000W briefly. That array is actually on the North facing portion of the roof, so it doesn't get exactly same direct sun as the Primary's 2 strings

I do notice a weird blip on the Second charger around 2pm. Not sure what's going on there why the graph isn't continual. The other major break in the middle of the night, the unit actually goes to sleep as it's not currently outputting to AC loads at this time. Still need to some rewiring to enable that.
 
Operation 4th String is operational!
1753224734314.png


This was at 445pm and still making juice. sweet!

And then at 650pm:
1753224794540.png


the other roof mounted string on the East end of the house still has some sun on it, so it's actually producing ~300W, or about 5.3A
the 4th String isn't Due East/West set up. I should have verified that before building it. But I might be able to move it after I put the cross-member supports in to make it more East/West aligned
 
OffGridInTheCity said:
I've lost track - how much PV overall now?
And you mentioned running out by 11pm - is this due to a smaller battery/what are you're plans battery wise.
Click to expand...
I have 3 strings in operation atm. The one string is offline atm as I wanted to see the potential of the 4th alone.

Each string is 12S. So in total I have 48 panels installed. I do have another 12 I think. I need to recount. However, some of them are not performing very well. I had some of them installed on the 4th String, but when I hooked up the Panel Tester, 4 of them were showing 40-80W lower than the rest. I'm not sure if it's because of diodes, or connectors. I'll have to check them out later.

So, just for some quick numbers. The 1st/2nd strings can output about 4kW total, as these are connected in parallel with the 1st controller. The 3rd string can do about 2800W alone, but the duration is short lived because of their placement. I'm expecting the 4th String to also do that kind of output, but for almost 6-8hrs. Hopefully clear skies tomorrow to give a good test.

I'm running out of stored power because my loads have increased to about 2kW/hr from the 1kW/hr I had when I first built the system. So that's a big reason right there. And because the panels haven't been able to keep up, they don't get the battery fully charged by the end of the day. I've been running on <60% SoC for the past couple months. Battery voltage gets to about 54V, or 3.375/cell, and the inverter switches to grid at 46V, or 2.875V/cell.
I would like to get up to 57V, or 3.56V/cell, to get fully charged and to make sure to be fully balanced.
The battery was upgraded from 70Ah to 310Ah about 4 months ago. I just haven't been able to fully utilize the capacity yet :p

Good thing is that my grid power usage has dropped drastically. During the day most things are on solar. I love being able to cook on my induction or the nuker and it's all free power!! 😎 I also just recently installed another window airconditioner and that is connected to the solar as well. So during the hottest part of the day, the aircon is running for free. At night don't have to worry about it so much as it runs far more efficient after the sun isn't baking the units. I do still have 2 other units on grid but they are 240V, and I don't have 240V output yet. Still working on that.

Today the clouds were horrid. We had pretty heavy rains past few days, and today was super cloudy until about 3-4pm. So this morning I switch the inverters to run on grid mode and let all available solar power go to the battery instead. I'm sure there's gonna be a tower spike on my grid usage chart for today :LOL:
 
Yeah, took a look at it. Definitely can see there's been a lot more grid usage today:
1753232167371.png

Not much of a drop off today. Big block

Just for reference, here's the past 12 months usage:
1753232314955.png

Definitely a huge drop compared to last year.
 
Well, that sucked. Only had a couple hours of good sun yesterday and then had some massive storms role through. So overall, not sure full day production.
The 4th String was able to hit peaks at around 2200W. Which is pretty decent overall considering they aren't new.

However, today seems to be doing good. 1:30p and still pretty clear. Hit 2400W as well around noon.
1753379423561.png

1753379273160.png

This was at 145p.

Looks like now I can actually get the battery almost fully charged now, too. The 3rd String I'll get put back online at some point. I'll still need them especially when there's overcast weather.

Rough calculations shows I've saved about $400 since I've installed them. That just about pays for one of the charge/inverters.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top