I Just Cant Anymore
New Member
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2022
- Messages
- 23
Wow. Very nice work and beautiful site. Love those mountains. I’m more than a little jealous of your generator. ?
Have you thought about using industrial-grade inverters yet? Sol-ARk has a 30K and a 60K coming soon.They will pull 500 MCM to the meter. So instead of this:
Pole -> 200' MCM 350 -> House -> 200' MCM 500 - > Shop
It will just be:
Pole -> 170' MCM 500 -> Shop
When I'm ready, they will just move my Net meter from the old base at the house, to the new one at the shop.
My main challenge will be disconnecting and relocating the 400A disconnect and transfer switch from the house to the shop, while keeping the house powered.
Those are 3 phase invertersHave you thought about using industrial-grade inverters yet? Sol-ARk has a 30K and a 60K coming soon.
One thing I have begun to notice is just how much "power" we can harness versus how little of the area we are covering. I have a much smaller setup (13kWp) but capture more than twice what I use on barely 12% of my dirt.
Are you allowed to take the federal tax credit more than once? I want to stage my solar installation, but I have been confused by this.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 string inverters as I'm running about 400 VDC as opposed to 250 VAC for the runs to the inverters.
I think I have talked myself out of adding panels to the roof on the house. The shingles there are coming up on 25 years, so I would be forced to change them out too. I'd rather put that off for a while longer. Besides, I barely have any south facing roof surface on the house.
So instead, I'm thinking I'd add a 48 ish panel array here:
View attachment 110566
Sat view:
View attachment 110567
It would be a fairly short DC run to the "power room", and they would out of view given how steep the slope is there.
Give how steep the slope there is, I'd love to go with single pole mount for each array and then have more than 2. Like maybe 4 of 12 panels each, or 6 with 8 panels each. Are there any reasonably priced single pole mounts out there?
This would be a project for next year as I've maxed out my federal tax credit for this year with the string inverter upgrade and that extra row of 15 panels on the pole barn.
That is a question for a tax professional but my gut says NOOOOAre you allowed to take the federal tax credit more than once? I want to stage my solar installation, but I have been confused by this.
Are you allowed to take the federal tax credit more than once? I want to stage my solar installation, but I have been confused by this.
Why did you dump the inverters at the pv and go with others?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 fun at all, although it was not nearly as bad as the 300 MCM feeding the solar sub-panel.
View attachment 110474
Next I decided to pour a pad and make a "power room" where the service enters the house.
View attachment 110475
Structure done:
View attachment 110476
The roll of cable is a 24 strand fiber cable that I ran down to the shop building since I had ditch dug anyway.
20 kW Kubota generator installed and wired:
View attachment 110477
Last month I decided to ditch all the micro inverters and go 100% SMA SB string inverters. Doing all the ground mounted arrays was easy since I had easy access to the inverters, but the 56 panels on the roof were a different story.
I hauled a pallet up onto the roof, got it level, and the moved the top row of each array section onto it, and then shifted the remaining panels in each row, up one:
View attachment 110479
Inside the shop, I build a frame to hold all the inverters along with the 225A sub-panel. Here's a shot from when the shop roof arrays were still on micro inverters:
View attachment 110481
All done:
View attachment 110483
Closeup of solar sub-panel:
View attachment 110484
Getting that 300 MCM Cu cable to make the turn into the 225A breaker was a real challenge!
All PV wire going into the inverters are 10 AWG and the A/C output of the inverters going to the sub-panel is 6 AWG. The feeder wire from the solar sub-panel to the converted 400A shop meter base is 300 MCM Cu.
Output when the sun is out:
View attachment 110485
Production for the last 30 days:
View attachment 110486
Got it. I didn’t realize that the failure rate is so high…. Even the New micros? Iq7-8?I dumped the micros for the following reasons:
#1 was the main reason as it was a huge pain to replace failed inverters on the roof mounted panels. It would be a 2-3 hour ordeal (or more) to replace failed inverters in the middle of the roof, since all the panels around it would have to be removed first.
- 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
It was an entirely different brand of device.Got it. I didn’t realize that the failure rate is so high…. Even the New micros? Iq7-8?
Those inverters were from a brand UBIQUITI that normally makes network equipment (ethernet switches/routers/wifi equipment) former on ubnt.com now ui.com. CEO/founder Robert Pera (used to work at apple) sometimes make projects that he thinks will make a lot of $$$ and utterly fail. They always have one thing in common: looks great, functions sub par.Got it. I didn’t realize that the failure rate is so high…. Even the New micros? Iq7-8?