Most reacted posts

I feel kinda sorry for people purely reliant upon commercial products because from what I have seen there are many many false claims especially with regard to phrases such as MPPT. The solar industry seems particularly riven with fakes IMOP Thank you for the compliment, I was lucky to spend my...

Yes I am sorry I was a bit guilty of over-generalizing there, I didnt mean to exclude analogue and indeed one of the attractions of this micro was it's analogue peripherals and indeed they were not good (or numerous) enough for all functions so there are even real op-amp chips on the controller...

Just a quick note on the IMO, I use it and it's brilliant BUT it is not suitable for use outdoors unless protected because, 1/ The cable glands are not waterproof 2/ There is no waterproof seal around the operating mechanism 3/ The seal between the case halves is very flimsy and liable to have a...

I can help you with the green slime, it is caused by sunlight. On my IBC's I used for garden irrigation I forced heavy black polythene sheet between the steel cage and the plastic container and covered the top so no sunlight could get in, result, no green slime.

The shade has various shapes, sometimes leans in from the right (East) sometimes from the left (West) & sometimes from the bottom (South), so yup I had thought of landscape but also I would run out of space that way around. Probably someones firmware! If your familiar with micro-chip PIC...

How sad, blew up the inverter while testing (the new anti-shading software) today uhuhuhu Unfortunately blew up half the primary side bridge requiring apparently unobtainium IRFB4227's (except chink fakes) but fortunately found a guy in France with some genuine ones. I have done this before in...

******************* HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY ***************** Well Warpspeed as I say I was lucky, still lots of office politics but there was always the engineering to fall back on :) Hedges sometimes commercial development costs lots more than it should do because office politics and fools...

That video way back in post #1 is very misleading. It quotes a fire authority who have no electrical engineering expertise simply based on there observations. I have personally observed in many instances incorrect equipment being used for DC breakers, most typically components designed for use...

Yes I noticed that, they are about the same ballpark 3:1 ratio so my situation is not quite as dire as I had thought. We get lost in Doncaster, it seems you have to go past the Racecourse at least 3 times to get from one side to the other :oops:

At last the replacement mosfets arrived UK post strikes allowing, replaced and waiting inverter re-installation to test. No more software breakpoints, even put a label on inside door of enclosure! EDIT 20/12 : Gahhh should have bench tested it but the gear takes a while to setup, anyway on...

Hi all I have my own inverter design and a while ago I added periodic (~ every 10mins) voltage sweep to it so the MPPT could be kicked off of subsidiary peaks caused by shading, this indeed has worked very well. Now I have added a secondary array of panels on a Pergola roof to get a little more...

Ahh yes but that would be more equipment at more cost. The purpose of the post is to show what can be done at minimal cost to improve performance, in this case by having arrays with different sky views. Depending upon the inverter it may be possible to add dissimilar strings without investing...

What you need to take into account is the distance through the earths atmosphere the sunlight has to travel before hitting your panels, atmosphere seriously attenuates sunlight due to suspended dust, water vapor et etc. So the lower the sun is in the sky the lower the panel power even if they...

I see what you mean, some call that progress, others not. I use the tools of the time at my disposal and were it not for the level of integration the project would have been impracticable given my limited resources.

Hi all, I have a completely DIY setup (excluding the bought panels) that has been running since 2015. We moved house this year and the new location is definitely sub-optimal, ground mount with bad shading from buildings and trees especially now in winter. I have looked at many options like...

Battery ??? Don't have one of those, my primary load is a 3Kw/240V water heater, so I store my energy as hot water. If I needed to I could go 6Kw in a single string within the easily available tech (MOSFETS). More than that and I would have to dust off the thinking cap :LOL: Absolutely spot...

Hello, I can add some information here as I actually designed some additional software for my inverter to do this sweep periodically, thread here The primary purpose is of course to jog the mppt off of false maximum power points when the shading diodes are in action, for my array typically at...

Have you tried east and west or sse & ssw ?

Tell me about it! You guy's have sun when you have the maximum electrical load (Air-con) I wish....... So we got a little more sun today, rushed about with the camera again and got a range of shadows and operating conditions. It locked onto true power peaks at ~30, ~60 & ~90V representing 1, 2 &...

Great, there doesn't seem to be much electronic DIY in solar. I was right about the IRS2113 it was blown despite looking good. Yup absolutely agree on the height, only got to this property last June and it was in such a state I had to spend lot's of time getting it ready for this winter...

Like all things there are many different approaches that simply pop out of fertile minds without being better or worse. In this case this is a GTI so it has to do fast multiplication, sine synthesis, phase lock, PID power control & MPP tracking, certainly not impossible in hardware but fairly...

Greetings! On a freezing cold January day I got this from my 1Kw ground mount Same old shading problems, I would love to fill in those gaps where the power production is near zero, for those with very poor solar resources every little counts. EDIT 16th Jan, I found out what the gaps are, they...

Fantastic DIY innovation :)

I think you said RF, so your talking about a very high frequency compared to grid power of only 50/60hz, when you have microcontrollers capable of hundreds of mips you dont need hardware for low frequency waveform synth. I examined and tested the micro's pwm very carefully before using it and...

Thank you, it was! I have a habit of setting myself seemingly impossible goals even though I am long since retired The only thing I would add is I cannot see the difference between multiple chips to achieve a function and multiple modules of code, surely it's the same division of a problem...

I don't think you are reading it right, it means no part of the installation can protrude more than 200mm from the roof covering (tiles or whatever) so that pretty much rules out tilting of any kind. Of course it may be out of sight out of mind but don't forget to allow for wind lift that can be...

What passes for sun at 53.5deg North in January did a brief appearance today so I rushed around with the camera and got a pic of the LH side shaded together with a couple of shots of the LCD (watts left, volts right) showing voltage agility picking much more power than if it had stayed fixed! I...

3.2Kwh from 1Kwp yesterday and average of 2.3Kwh/day over last week. Panels roughly south at 72degree slope! North Lincolnshire with obstructions to the East & West so not exactly the most favorable conditions :)

Have you got your G99 permission from your DNO yet ? If not cable sizing is the least of your problems. I suggest you try this UK based forum as they are pretty knowledgeable on UK regs UK solar

Doesn't look very "constant voltage" to me, however as illustrated by the simulation plot at the beginning of this thread this particular array's MPP voltage can vary between ~30V & ~120V depending upon conditions so no kind of "constant voltage" controller would be suitable, I don't think...