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Hey Trevor! Today is the first rainy day since you set me straight on the Sol-Ark configuration and it's working great! All I had to do is uncheck the Time of Use checkbox and now the grid is feeding my loads while the small amount of PV generated is going into the battery. This is exactly what...

I have yet to experience a winter yet with my setup so I'm curious to see how it does. I'm thinking of adding a sunroom with enough roof space for another 16 panels to really put my PV generation over the top! This stuff is addicting!

Thanks! Good info. I would use it to quickly charge up for storms or expected grid troubles for any reason. I should not worry as much about outages as they are so rare and unless it happens during a fully cloudy day I should be fine. I see from your tagline we have similar setups but mine is a...

Thanks Trevor. That should have been obvious to me but I missed it. So now, with that unchecked (I assume I can just leave it unchecked?), I should be able to toggle to what I'll call "conserve battery mode" by unchecking the "time of use" checkbox so the battery remains at its current SOC level...

This is great info and should be in the manual. I have spent a lot of time figuring this out and it's still confusing because of all the time of use slots (And the name - Time of Use). They should have an option to just have ONE line so that changing the figures for 24/7 don't require all those...

Not sure I understand the elephant reference. If I had a gas heater I'd would change it for electric after a solar install. The new water heaters I purchased were nothing special off of Amazon but they are very well insulated and hold the heat quite well. I'm only looking to hold for a day so...

I'm going to add to this thread rather than start a new one because the title closely matches the info I was searching for (but couldn't find much). I'm about a month into my install and tweaking of my system and I have been interested in automating to make good use of the solar energy while it...

Ouch, that hurts! I just bought a new 23 Ford Mach e GTPE and now I read this from someone I respect. I did a lot of online research too and am aware of some of the downsides of this car but would like to hear if you had personal experience with this one or just the other Ford. I traded in a...

Jason, I just went to the CC website to see what their shipping is on one battery and it was 330, not 500. Still a lot but better. AND when I first hit their site they have a new lower cost SOK battery without all the bells and whistles, just a very plain front and a 1339 price. Not what you are...

Interesting Jason. I just installed a Sol-Ark 12k in my house and I paired it with 16x 400w Rich Solar panels. I also chose to start with 5x SOK server rack batteries (25 kwh - 500 ah) and also noticed the similarities in the front panel controls with your battery. Sounds like you know that and...

I have a double wide mobile home with a crawl space and a cinder block "skirt" around the crawl space. Not long after I moved in I had the crawl space "encapsulated" is what they are calling it now I think. I hate crawl spaces, wish I had a basement instead. The list of nasties was long... 1)...

Saw this thread minutes after I had a large maple tree cut down in the front yard! Feel some guilt as it only shaded for about an hour in the morning but I know when the sun gets lower in the sky come fall it would be a bigger factor. Look forward to the graph in the morning with a steady rise...

Justin, I was thinking of a much larger pit and much lower temperature to store in the sand. Does that help? I know it makes the foam much more expensive but by keeping the temperature difference down you will lose heat many time slower. I could see a simple formula that says if you have a...

I find this discussion fascinating and can sort of see both sides of the two sides of sand storage. I have a 30 x 48 garage that I had insulated very well with spray foam when it was built and I brag that the inside never gets below 45 degrees even when it's 5 degrees outside with no heat added...

I thought of doing that for real time monitoring on a Sol Ark but the screen goes dark after a few minutes. I know you can uncheck autodim but that voids your warranty! :) Why they don't have a way to get those same numbers on a phone screen at least on the local network I have no idea!

Thanks for the feedback. It's too early to decide what to do. Once i get the replacement I'll probably be anxious to mount it, wire it and test it so I'll probably at least try it in parallel and depending on how that goes either leave it that way or shut it down as a cold standby. I'm pretty...

Thanks for the feedback! I know they both have to share the same battery bank so that's the biggest single failure point I can think of. They don't share the collectors at all. If the master inverter goes out I'd have to move the solar collector wires over to the back up, no problem there. What...

I recently installed a Sol-Ark 12K in my old double wide mobile home. Since I never liked the crowded main panel they put in this home I welcomed the opportunity to install a full sized 40 circuit panel as my critical load panel. Instead of taking the 60 amp feed from the main panel directly...