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I ditched my 3D printed face plates and used some a guy in town laser cut for me. They turned out awesome!!!

I've not posted much lately because I've been spending all my free time on my build. The weather has been terrible so getting on the roof to install the mounts has been a pain but I've made a lot of progress on the batteries. I have my first battery pack assembled and the BMS works! Got the...

Ha! No one will want the old lights. (Well almost no one, I'm giving them to my sister and she's going to mount them in her barn.) There's 30+ yrs of dust/etc on them. I'm just happy I don't have to trash them. My IT rack uses about 900w which also powers my main TV and whole house audio...

I'm pretty happy with the results so far! I've used very very little grid power in the last 30 days.

I got the BMS and Sol-Ark talking with the BMS in parallel. It turned out to be super easy, just set the master dipswitch to 0 and the first to 1 and it worked. It reports up to the Sol-Ark everything that's needed. I got my roof mounted transition panel and the conduit up to it ran but I...

Right now I'm running with it grid connected and zero export. At the rate I've been going, I doubt I'd export more than 3-10kwh a day while the AC is running. It's almost noon and my batteries are at 57% and getting about 11kwh right now. I have an application in to allow me to sell back...

I couldn't help myself... 32 more EVE 304 cells. Two cases coming. The batteries showed up in 2 days, I was blown away! The cases are on the slow boat, it'll be 3-4 weeks before they're here. That'll give me around 1800 AH.

Hello Everyone! I'm working on my first solar install / design and wanted a place to document it. I've got about 3/4 of my parts in and am eager to get started. Parts Overview - Inverter: Sol-Ark 15k Battery: Custom 4 x 16S EVE LF280k with JK BMS battery packs Panels: 54 Q.PEAK DUO BLK-G6+...

It's been brutal. I woke up to 10% battery this morning and ran "on grid" most of the night. It was kind of a bummer but yesterday was a terrible solar day so we weren't even at 50% before the end of the day. I'm using about 6.5kwh when the AC is running, peaking to 11kwh for short intervals...

I'd say the issue is resolved for me. Just need a little more :)

I've got the inverter based JK BMS so it has the ability to parallel the communication between the BMS's then connect the primary to the Inverter. As a result, I've got closed loop communication between the BMS and inverter. It allows them to communicate to, hopefully, more efficiently charge...

Woot! SolarAssistant did an update and now I can see all 4 of my batteries off one cable!!

I've got a Sol-Ark and I use their cloud service. More than once I've considered disconnecting it. The fact that I can change the settings scares me but I'm also in the initial setup/monitoring phase. If you've seen their cloud migration, it's not been smooth and I got hit by a bug that...

Well that wasn't a fun process but it's done! The ATS is now my primary N-G bonding point and all the grounds have been separated from the neutrals at my main panel. At the same time, pulled new 2/0 copper to my inverter and I would say the cleaning up the N/G issue took longer than pulling...

My batteries came yesterday!

Finished my 3rd battery pack!

2nd battery pack up and running! Got the JK BMS and the Sol-Ark to talk over CAN. Still need to figure out how to get the BMS's to talk in Parallel but I can actually test it now.

No, it's been in the low to mid 70's most of last week, getting into the low 60's at night so we had the windows open. I ran it yesterday when I got those numbers. I use around 60-70kwh most days and yesterday was 90kwh. My batteries are at 40% right now and it's supposed to be cloudy this...

It's basically done! I still have to wait for my interconnect but I'm able to generate power and run off my batteries. Used a forklift to raise the panels over the roofline so we didn't have to carry them back and forth. I even got the 2 wire start hooked up to my generator. Just need to do...

Yep, it's the 2601-3S-95. The thing was expensive. I ended up putting on cinder blocks as well to elevate it in the room. We have our water treatment in the same room so I wanted to give it a little extra safety factor.

I know what you mean. My whole project started as "a way to run my well pump if the grid was down." Now I can basically run my whole house in a limited fashion with dreams of much more. Good luck on whatever you decide to do!

There are a ton of resources out there. You said you know nothing of electrical and solar but didn't mention any of your other skills. I just went through the same thing but I also re-wired my house when I remodeled so I didn't find it challenging. The basics are the same but there are many...

My inverter came today! Woohooo!! 😁

Thank you! It's been a lot of fun doing all this. 1. Extremely easy - configured the JK and got it communicating with the others, connected it to the Sol-Ark, enabled sol-ark battery coms. 2. From what I've seen you can have a max of 16. Each JK connects to the next in a daisy chain...

I bought 56 just in case there were any issues but all 54 are installed on the roof. I've hit higher production than I thought I would with 8 total panels facing E / W. (4 each) My main roof section has 36 panels, then 9 on each side. 5 S facing and 4 E/W depending on the side. I'm not...

Well, I decided to just rip the bandaid off. I did some quick measurements and the panels I've been watching at Santan fit my roof nicely in 3 rows so I ordered them today! Model: Q.PEAK DUO BLK-G6+ 340W

All sound like great moves forward. I looked into mini splits for another project that got shelved. There are quite a few DIY friendly units now. I want to eventually build a detached garage and put a room in it with one. Keep your eyes out for panels, you'll never know when you come...

I looked when it started and I didn't see any grid spikes in the UI, it did pull a little extra from the battery it appears. I'm not 100% sure how it works with the passthrough but so far, aside from very little grid power being used, I haven't noticed anything. We've had 2 power outages so...

I've got a 2400sq ft house that was setup for traditional power. I got tired of $300-$600/m electric bills so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I have a terrible tendency to upgrade right after finishing something so I thought I better basically start with full panels and decent...

I just looked at Solar Assistant and May I used 139kwh and my bill was just under $26. My meter is read around the 20th so I don't think all of the 139kw was counted. So far for June I'm at 158kwh. Thankfully not too much more. Most of my usage was at night or during short spikes during the...

18650 Battery Store (https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/eve-lf280k) The shipping was expensive but they arrived in under 2 weeks from the time I ordered them.

I just completed an install with an ATS. I left it in place and converted my generator to be 2-wire start. In the event the grid goes down, my ATS kicks in then when the sol-ark needs extra power, it can use the 2-wire start to fire up the generator. I haven't fully tested it yet but we had...

The plot thickens a bit... I ran my new ground rods already and am going to hook them to my main for a total of 4 rods. I looked a little more closely at the grounding of the ATS and it has wires going to the ground lugs but none of them connect to anything grounded! There is a large ground...

The 304 cells are rated at 4000 cycles but my 280's were 6000. All the 280's tested over 300AH. I haven't tested any of the 304's yet. My first 4 packs are not compressed. I had 2 built before I really started researching it. The next 2 packs will in pre-fab cases from Shenzhen Yixiang...

I've been conditionally approved for my interconnect as well! I can finally "install" my system! :ROFLMAO:

I recently went through the process. If you follow their directions which were posted above, it's very easy to get started.

I think I figured out what it is. There's a goof on the new my-solark site and it forced my max PV to 12k and took that as a system wide setting. I can't adjust it back now. I've got a call in to Tech Support to help. It sucks because I'm probably leaving 2-4kw on the table at a min right now.

I hope so! Sounds like you will too! We didn't. One of the tornadoes touched down about 10 miles from our place. I swear I saw the funnel cloud forming to the north but my wife was in town heading home at that time, so I was a little preoccupied. A couple weeks later a car hit a pole or...

You don't need the batteries to be the same make, as long as they're the same voltage, there should be no problem in connecting them together. During optimal times, each system will feed the the rest of the system it's power. Think of it this way, if you're drawing a load from a 2nd inverter...

I'd say that's a no go. If you had a separate panel just for those load, yes. Otherwise you'll be bridging the two connections together. Sol-Ark supports a sub panel that is powered off the load side then can back-feed on the grid side using the CT's as a way to measure how much needs to be...

For my DIY batteries, I made sure all my internal connections were the same length. I cut all the connecting cables at the same time to make sure they were that way. I also oversized my cables to reduce loss from resistance.

The fun begins again soon...

If it's 6kwh / day, you'd still generate 3kwh during hours when the sun is down. That'd help my batteries a little at night. They don't mention what kind of wind speeds they'd need to generate that however.

That's a good thought and something I hadn't considered. It should be pretty easy to tell, if I change the setting then it changes right back, I'll know. Thanks!

Thanks! I really wanted to be done by 5/15 and I was able to do it! Yep, I used the JK Inverter BMS that has COM built in. It seems to be working well. Once I got the dip switches set, I set the com protocol to pylontech and plugged it in, then it just worked. There has only been a couple...

Thanks! We're about an hour or so south of Toledo. From what I understand, the epicenter is supposed to be in Forest and I'm about 25 min from there. We've only heard a little about it but from what I've heard, people said it'll be a big deal.

Since the pool is running, they run to about 36% every night. A couple nights they got down to 20% which is where my TOU settings tell it to stop and run off grid. I run as much as my house as I can off the system right now. My average use is about 2.6kwh constant with spikes to 7.7kwh...

We try to use our clothesline whenever possible but not much planning goes into when laundry gets done vs the weather. Sounds like you need to upgrade your sub panel! :cool: I knew I'd be in a simialr boat if I started small so I just went for a maxed out single inverter right out of the...

Yep, they were $90 ea. When I first budgeted for them they were $105, the price difference basically covered shipping.

The optimizers are supposed to work without the TAP, I believe they call it blind mode or something like that. I believe your warranty/support changes if you run in that mode. I recently did a full install with the Tigo optimizers, tap and all. They seem to help. Is 5kWh over 87.4kWh worth...