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The next day the POCO came out and killed the power to the house, and moved the cables from the pole into the new meter base and energized the new panel and left. It then took me about 3 hours to mount the transfer switch and run new 3/0 Cu to the sub-panels in the house. Bending 3/0 Cu is no...

Lol, yeah, I'm pretty addicted you could say. Looking at my usage, I'm almost where I need to be now, but winter is coming... Last 30 days: House consumes an average of about 100 kWh a day, and the shop building around 200 kWh. The reason the shop consumed to much is that I run crypto...

I just joined the forum a few days ago, but have been doing solar since fall of 2016. I figured I'd share the journey with you guys. I started out with 80 panels with micro inverters (Ubiquiti SunMax inverters and panels). 56 of them went on my shop roof and the other 24 on a ground mount...

Pole barn outer frame done: Done: View from inside: That one was a mix of another SMA SB 7.7 and 9 more SunMax micro inverters. I then decided I should have added just one more row along the bottom: Areal view prior to adding the bottom row to the pole barn: Prior to starting...

Yeah, I figure the wood in the concrete won't last forever, but I'm hoping to get 20+ years out of it, but who knows. I do have lots of gravel in the bottom of each hole, and in the case of the pole barn, it is on pretty sloped ground, so I'm hoping water will drain quickly. Frost line here in...

I actually have an old dual axis STS tracker. It was used to track a 12' satellite dish from back when those were a thing. It is very stout and mounts on a 4" diameter pole. One day I'll see about mounting 6-8 panels to it and figured out how to control the motors in it to track the sun...

Here are some better closeups of each enclosure going left to right. GND wires are all 1/0 Al. Everything else is 300 MCM Cu or 500 MCM Al, with the exception of the wires going through the wall in the junction box to the 200A shop sub-panels. Those are 3/0 Cu for L1, L2 and N. Oh, and the N...

I dumped the micros for the following reasons: High failure rates (1 or 2 per month on average out of about 140 micros) Ubiquiti no longer supports SunMax platform and software is outdated No shading to speak of on any of the arrays Voltage loss on long 240VAC runs #1 was the main reason as...

So here's a copy of my latest electric bill: Imagine what it would have been without any solar! September of last year is when I started expanding my mining operation again and the days of double digit monthly kWh bills was over. So my total kWh from Sep 2021 through Aug 2022 was 37,877...

Yeah, the ideal system I think would be to load up on the EG4 rack batteries and hope that the Sunny Island 8.0H will be able to communicate with it. Not in a great rush to run out and buy batteries and a charger, so I'll wait things out a bit longer to see what else comes to market. My...

I have taken the federal tax credit in all the years I have expanded my system, so 2017, 2018 and 2021 and will again in 2022. I don't see why you couldn't claim the credit more than once if you are staging your solar. But like Quattrohead said, you should not take the word of some stranger on...

Yeah, it seems that industrial-grade inverters are all 3 phase unfortunately. The Sol-ARK 15k is about as big as they come for regular single phase residential. I'm happy with my SBs, although I sure wish they made some larger than 7.7k. Anyway, I got the disconnect and transfer switches...

@Hedges I edited the post to detail the L1/L2 and N wiring gauges as well, just to make everything clear. @Bluedog225 Both the horizontal and vertical pipes are 3" from the local plumping supply store. The mounting is all Ironridge.

Rated load details are: Power Rating 5kW, 0.8 pf @ 4000ft/120°F; 110% Max Power; De-rate: 3.5%/1000 ft from 4000 to 8000 ft I'm testing into a 5kW dummy load (1.0 pf) at 760 ft and temps around 70F. So it makes sense that I'm doing a little bit better than 0.57 gph. I also have a...

@Kruncher Yes I would say the roic was worth it. Coming up on 7 years since I started and its all paid for. Of course part of that was from mining and selling crypto to pay for the solar expansion as I grew. Yeah, the reason I went with the Ubiquiti inverters is that I have a "few" of their...

Lol, yeah. That was my plan last fall, but profits kept going up, so I kept getting more rigs. But THIS time, there is going to be a lull of a few years, right?

@BradCagle Yep, Voskcoin came out and did a couple of YouTube videos with me. @z_zk_z Combination of lag bolts and structural brackets to attach the struts. I believe both horizontal and angled struts are 2x12s. I'll double check and also take some close up photos. Yes, the posts are 6x6s...

I dropped the micro-inverters because they had a pretty high failure rate and replacing the ones on the shop roof was a huge pain. Also, I don't really have any shade issues except for that one array that sees shade in the am during summer. I think the overall efficiency is better with the...

Yeah, I started out with 80 SunMax micro inverters, then talked Ubiquiti into sending me 56 spares for free to have on hand given my high failure rates. I ended using 48 of them on 2 new 24 panel arrays, leaving me 8 spares to swap out as needed and RMA'ing those as they were died. I finally...

Yep, voskcoin came out a couple of times shooting videos for his channel. The 2nd one went into a bit more detail about the solar. AFAIK, my 8 Sunny Boy inverters can't operate at 100% without grid power. They do all have a 2000 watt 120V emergency power output however, that do function...

@ArkRob Sure. So the rails that the panels are attached to are 10' sections of superstrut. I used regular flat brackets to connect to struts together: The panels are attached via cone nuts and stainless 1/4" bolts with insulated washers on the panel side: The rails of superstrut are...

Just to be clear, just the ground wiring is 1/0 aluminum or less (except the 3/0 copper going to the house sub-panels). The L1/L2 wires are all 300 MCM copper except the last few feet going into the 200A sub-panels, where it it 3/0 copper. The 225A solar sub-panel has 300 MCM all the way to...

Yeah, I know the EG4s won't communicate with the current gen Sunny Islands sold in the US. Hoping that the next gen ones can and/or that there will be other low frequency inverter options that can AND also regulate the output of Sunny Boys by regulating the frequency on the AC side.

Those are very cool clips! Not sure I can apply those after the fact since I already installed the panels. Loosing each pair of adjacent bolts and slipping one of those under the frames is going to be much more involved than just running short jumper cables between the frames. But for any...

Ha, I love that quote! That is so true. I've been in it since early 2017 and caught 2 waves so far and HODL'ing as much as I could and just kept mining throughout it all.

Ah ok, I had my drawing above all messed up then. This would be more ideal I believe: That way, the Shop and House sub-panels are going to take what they want before any excess solar production is pushed through the SIs back into the grid, so WAY less than 54A x 4. Too bad about the...

Just had a 4 hour outage today, which was not unexpected, given the rain/sleet/wind we have had over the last 48 hours. I haven't completed wiring in the Kubota yet, so I had to drag out the 10 kW military unit since temps were in the teens and dropping, so just waiting for the power to come...

@Hedges @Shimmy Below is the requirement the POCO gave me: The county required 2 8' ground rod spaced 4' apart, which I have at both the shop building and the house. Ground conductors are as follows: #4 bare copper looping through clamps on both rods to the new meter base #6 bare copper...

I don't have any THHN exposed to the sun. That pic above was taken before the solar panel was placed over top of it. Here's a before pic when the 4 AC strings were going into it: That's a flexible rubber boot going down through the roof. Never had a single leak since the initial install in...

Downloaded the manual and looked at the diagram and the connectors. So the SI doesn't actually have any MPPT input but is designed to work in a system that also contains SBs. So from looking at this diagram: I currently have each of my 8 SBs individually connected to an Ethernet switch on...

I'm exploring adding a pair (or 4) 6500's to act as a whole home UPS, along with about 20 kW worth of PV strings as well. But first a little background since I'm new here. I installed solar arrays on my property in back the fall of 2016 and have a Net Metering agreement with my local POCO...

I'm cheap and didn't want the additional expense of a 22' x 48' metal roof, plus the panel hardware that I would then also have to get. furthermore, I would not have been able to get to the wiring which was a huge pain on my shop mounted panels when I was running micro inverters. Having direct...

So Unifi used to be 24V only, but that was proprietary and now they do regular PoE, which is 48V. I have an older 1st gen PoE switch that does both 24V and 48V, and the PSU in it died, so I picked up some cheap PSU's on eBay to get it going again. One adjusted for 24V and the other for 53V...

Maybe I'm not interpreting this diagram correctly then: I would have the grid connected to the Utility input (fed from the transfer switch load side) and my house feeder to the Load output. I know that if I have solar panels connected to the MPPT inputs, those will only charge the battery...

I have a MEP-802A diesel generator. It burns 0.5 gallons of fuel per hour with a 5,000 watt load. I also have a Kubota 17 kW generator. It has a 4 cylinder turbo charged diesel. Next time I load test it, I'll see about collecting some fuel consumption data.

@Hedges Definitely looking forward to seeing what SMA comes up with next. There are starting to be a lot of high frequency options out there, but I think most would have trouble getting my 7.5 hp compressor going and my car lift. I would prefer a solution that does NOT have PV inputs since I...

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I was looking at those in the first link above. Actually spoke to the guy and he was willing to sell to me directly, but we did not quite agree on a price for 4 of them. Was looking at these as well: Its not real clear to me if they allow back feeding to the grid like the SIs.

I'll know shortly as my next bill will be in the middle of Jan 2023.

Thanks for the responses! Solar Assistant sounds like a very interesting product and I see now how it differentiates itself from HA. That's a pretty clever arrangement you have setup!

That does look like a decent package deal. So what BMS units are compatible with the SIs? I looked at the list of approved lithium-ion batteries and they all look like VERY expensive turn key solutions. Can I roll my own DIY raw LiFePO4 cells with, say Overkill BMSs? Alternatively, can I use...

@kundip That's a very interesting setup he has with those 4 inverters wired in parallel like that. So if I was to apply what he did, basically wire the solar panels and inverters in parallel, thus allowing the inverters to be located remotely from the panels. I guess the downside to that is...

I have a pair of cracked panels that I use for testing. I plan to start testing each inverter (even though they were just removed from service 30 days ago), to make sure they are ok. Here's one of the large arrays showing the inverters. You can see that there were 2 failed inverters when I...

Is the main function Solar Assistant bring to the table over Home Assistant alone, the ability to configure supported inverter(s) directly? That and I guess also that you don't have to do all the integration and Grafana work yourself like with HA?

Yeah I saw the frequency input and output would be compatible with the 60Hz, but didn't catch that the 8H series will not accept 120 VAC. Would definitely want series connected 120 VAC versions. Figured it was too good to be true...

Yeah, I agonized a while over how to wire the strings after removing all the micro-inverters. I did not want to pull all new wires through the conduits out to the various arrays, so I was limited by the wiring that was already in the conduits and I just reused the THHN wire already in the...

No annual true up as far as I know, at least that was the case back in 2016 when I went to a local meeting sponsored by the COOP. The question was asked and the answer was that if someone build up a significant balance, they would issue you a check (at retail pricing) so they did not have the...

I have a about a 20 acre property with an open field about 1000ft from the house with a river bordering the open field. Location would be as follows: (red line) The pine trees visible above the red line towards the South will be felled, so there will be plenty of sun all year with little...

How about $2,000 for the lot? Here's what I paid: 137 Inverters @ $92 126 Landscape cables @ $21 9 Portrait cables @ $19 4 Gateways @$51 10 End run connectors @$20 6 AC extension cables @$16 So a grand total of about $16k. Pick up some decent used panels and you can have a 35 kW system on...

I have a pretty big setup consisting of 8 Sunny Boys (1 is a US-40 the other 7 are US-41 models). Total AC capacity if about 55 kW. I just changed how the grid feeds into the whole system and it now looks like this: Before the grid fed into the House which is where my disconnect, transfer...