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And finally last weekend my wife and I installed the panels. They were hefty, about 63lb apiece, and were stored in our old house about 75 yards from the array, so it was a chore getting them up to the site and then mounting them. She held them roughly in place while I fastened them onto the...

Am I the only one who who is constantly drawn back to my inverter to see how much power it's pulling in?? I go do something else in the house but I'm back to the solar closet again. It's like a spectator sport for me. Ooh, look it's pulling in 3,000W!! Oooh, look at that charging current! Oh...

Built this last winter/spring. We're in NE Kentucky. Eight Canadian Solar 445W bifacials for a total of 3.65KW. Panels are 84x42x1.2", and weigh about 63lb apiece. This array feeds a single EG4 6500 inverter which feeds a critical 120v loads subpanel. No batteries with system yet. Here's a link...

I agree Jim, most folks seem to be in a state of denial and/or blissful ignorance. Things seem to be careening downhill in a hurry, even over the course of a few years, and folks seem oblivious, and get offended if the subject is broached. Yeah it's a bad situation for those people in the...

We got about 4 inches of snow overnight, and it's still flurrying some now. Even tho it's mostly cloudy the snow on the ground has helped get us some production today. The other day when it was single digits temps the array hit 413V with no load. Never seen it that high before. Today it's been...

Hello all, I had posted a thread regarding ground mount grounding and posted a few pics of it. So, I wanted to start a new thread on here showing the progress of my system. We are situated in a rural location NE Kentucky, and wanted to have a supplemental/backup solar system in case of frequent...

Jack of all trades, master of none.. I've done just about all the mechanical work on all our vehicles, tractor, mowers, weed eaters, chainsaws, etc. My biggest mechanical endeavors include changing the timing belt on my 2003 V6 Honda Accord. At first I thought there's no way I want to attempt...

Well, it took about a year to get here, but we got here nevertheless. 1 MILLLLLLYUN watt-hours generated, baybee!!

Well February is off to a ripping start, it's was mostly sunny the first couple days, and we got about 7.5kwh. Today it's been sunny since dawn and we're taking advantage of it, already got about 5k at noon. Running a space heater, doing a lot of laundry, in addition to charging the battery...

There was a strange large yellow orb in the sky today, don't know for sure what it was, but at the end of the day, I ended up with 3.6KWh. Heard rumors that for the next week it'll be visible more, so that's good to know..

More pics of the detail work. System has been online in this completed state since early May, altho it was running a month before this date with the wires not buried or solar panel frames grounded. Lack of of panel frame ground to inverter/electrical home system ground caused about 120-180VAC to...

He is my Congressman, glad to have him. He lives in the same county we do, he graduated from the county school, went to MIT, later developed some VR tech stuff, sold the company and moved back home. He built his home using local materials, i.e. rock and timber. He claims his house's wood...

Sounds like certain professors. Have tons of knowledge but no common sense, real world knowledge. I'm an electronic technician by education and 30 years of experience. It's good to have an education in a field but there's no substitute for real world experience. I've always had a curiosity in...

Just started on this journey and have been pretty fortunate to not do anything really bad. But I guess so far it was using half inch conduit and trying to run three 10 gauge solid wire thru 50ft of it. Imagine taking clothes hanger wire times 3 and trying to run it thru a half inch pipe. I did...

Just a anecdote relating to grounding of arrays. I got a small zing one day out at the array when I was checking some things on the frames while the inverter was running. At that time, I didn't have the frames grounded. I later measured about 180VAC between the frames/rails and a small rebar...

Yeah I wanted the 250-1 kit but what I had was fine. My favorite circuits were anything with an alarm, like a light or noise activated one. It had a little PV cell on it and a speaker to make that possible. Also thought the hearing aid circuit was cool, using the speaker as the mic. I miss...

Some pics of the finished product, and some views of the farm on a beautiful spring day.

To anchor both ends of the rail support posts, I used a cap plate on the front posts, using 3/8" lag screws to attach the support posts to the cap, and 1/2” lags to attach the caps to the front posts. For the top of the support posts, I anchored them in place using 8" mini struts, cut in thirds...

As a non-binary, pro-biotic, native-American white man-of-color, who identifies as a hexadecimal-gendered cis-feline trapped in a human body, I applaud your bravery.

Thanks. Yeah it figures they dropped the price another $100 after I ordered mine Sat. But the shipping ($230) isn't free now, so it'd actually cost more now in total. Also saw those Canadian Solar 390W panels drop even more, now at $1435/10. WIsh I didn't live so far away, it's about 850...

Yeah I was doing that yesterday. I was in the living room doing stuff, and then I'd see the sun reappear and hear the inverter roar, and run into the closet to see if I could catch one of those +4K spikes. My wife just doesn't understand..

Yeah I had some discussions about the subject there. @Adam De Lay did a video on the frame voltage issue also. I just like passing along my real world experience. I've mentioned to Adam that we're really just beta testers for a lot of this stuff. Hopefully we can all learn something as we go.

My array consists of eight 445W Canadian Solar bifacials, so total rated power would be 3560W. Since my single battery (Lifepower4 48V) BMS limits the max charge current to 50A, the max power from the PV would be about 2.8KW, so up until recently I've never seen max power out of the array...

Thanks, it's been a lot of work, still not totally done, but after I get the PV wires run in conduit and ground the panels I will be. Plus, I'll need to switch over the critical loads to the sub-panel. The weather was the biggest impediment, plus I got sick a couple times, otherwise I would...

Hey all, I just finished building a ground mount array with 8 445W bifacials. I used wood for the support structure and unistruts to place the panels on. The struts are galvanized steel and are joined together with a splint plate. There are 3 10ft unistruts joined by the splints, placed in...

Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that you might have some Tesla coils in your basement??

Well I had to take advantage of SS 's free shipping and splurged on another Lifepower4 battery. Ordered it on 2/29 and it showed up last Thursday (3/7). Got some new cables for it made and hooked everything up last Saturday. Everything seems to be playing well with each other since then. Now...

Been a while since I updated on this thread. But since then I put up hardibacker in my solar closet and hung up the inverter (EG4 6500). After doing some capacity tests over a few weeks, I laid conduit and pulled wires from the inverter output to the critical loads sub panel, and today, I pulled...

Some pics of my progress. Pic 1, inverter hung with conduit installed. Output goes to sub panel seen in Pic 2. Pic 2, 12/24 sub panel. Will transfer critical loads to it soon from house panel, via hole in wall above house panel seen to the right. I opened up a 1.5 inch knock out on the top of...