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Full day: Sure wish communication didn't cut out in the middle.

Indiana, mostly clear day, almost perfectly centered in the path of totality.

Great. Sounds like a solid plan. I wish you the best and will aim to keep an eye on your progress. Amazing find on the insulation it seems. May or may not be helpful, but the idea I've been tossing around in my head is an insulated 2 chambered cistern effectively. Using water reduce excavated...

What is the free insulation you have access to? One of the annoying things I found in my planning is a lot of the material I'd traditionally want to insulate with under ground starts to break down around these temperature over the years. And to be clear what I mean with direct, I get you are...

@skyking1 are you planning on heating the house directly from your thermal energy storage or running a heat pump between? I have put a massive amount of thought into such a system over the last year. My current observation is: 1: If you don't heat your home directly from the thermal energy...

Also noteworthy, I used to run the same SMA inverter, same TIGO parts, literally purchased together so as close of lots as possible, and I never had the same issue. The difference of my setup to his was only 1 of my 3 strings ran optimizers where all 3 of his did. I now run the EG4 18kpv and...

I have a buddy with a SMA SB 7.7 with a TIGO optimizer on every panel who also get arc faults on the inverter. So it's not an exclusively sol-ark thing for sure. He spent lots of time discussing with TIGO, who seemed to mildly accept it was a re-occurring issue with the optimizers but the only...

If your only goal is to audit the PoCo, just put a secondary cheap meter on the garage and occasionally subtract that number from what the inverter thinks it's exporting. You can get a cheap one for $20 on amazon, or get something fancier and wifi like the emporia vue. Unless you use the garage...

You may have already seen this but you should be able to set this very easily I'd highly recommend just reading the manuals for the sol ark and 18kpv top to bottom. It's a lot of information but will do a good job of keying you in on the unique differences and capabilities of each.

Both the sol ark 15k and eg4 18kpv have the ability to hook multiple strings in parallel to one MPPT. There are limitations of course but since you're already using a DC combiner you probably are already meeting these limitations. Check out the MPPTs on the 18kpv - of the 3 one has 10A extra...

I've got the 18kpv and LL batteries. I don't know of any issues with the 18kpv that would cause me to not recommend it for your purposes. There is potential to maximize your MPPTs in different combinations depending on exactly what your max voltage and current of your panels are, but otherwise...

Sure, good ideas depending on the end use. Just need to make sure there's adequate lock outs if you're doing maintenance on a partially energized system. For me I'm grid tied with a bypass so I can bypass my 18kpv for maintenance and would rather have a completely de-energized system while...

I did something like this with a rack I got for free. Put some thick boi bus bars along the sides, drilled and tapped, put on isolated standoffs, and covered for protection. I had to fabricate some mounts out of angle steel to hold the weight of the battery.

Maybe try it regardless, it shouldn't hurt. I'm on LLs but changed all mine.

I get the point of wanting a direct before and after, but how do you compare a system when no two days are the same? In the 3 years I've had my system up I've varied by several percent per year with nothing changing. I have the Tigo Optimizers on my string that's on the roof, and I've got a...

Unfortunately I was still finishing all this up after my wife's due date so I did a terrible job of taking pictures. Here's a couple. Idk why but I have almost none of the copper bus bars which live under the grey covers. It's just some bar I got off mcmaster that I drilled and tapped to take...

I don't think that's an inconsistency at all, saying "Full Power MPPT voltage range" isn't saying it can max out the inverter, think of it more like being able to max out the amperage rating. Below 230v it probably can't actually do 15 and 25 amps. IIRC there's also a spec for minimum startup...

To bring the last two answers together, when you're on grid you can pass through and run 20kw just fine. If you aren't on grid, the 18kpv can only provide 12kw continuously. So, even if your panels are able to generate over 12kw and/or you have battery power, you still can't generate over 12kw...

This video should be pretty helpful for you:

Hello again everyone. Sorry for my absence. I blame this baby. Just wanted to pop in and claim 8MW gang No further issues in this time. Wifi is still super spotty, that's really the only thing that bothers me now. Still running older firmware, haven't updated since 0E0E. Super happy to have...

That's all fine, I don't see why the Tigo system wouldn't work you'd just need the TAP and CCA to complete the setup. I get you're trying to be cost effective, but $200 for the CCA and TAP is going to be hard to beat elsewhere.

What's wrong with the CCA/TAP for you? they aren't all that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and the 12v output of the 18kpv can power the CCA directly which is convenient.

I don't view that as "will at least work", I read that as "it might work, we don't know, you won't know, and we won't help you if it doesn't". The optimizers already cause weird fluctuations of voltage and current due to the optimization, and since "Blind optimization via PIV (Predictive IV...

How important is the whole home backup in the case of a power outage? If you want that feature you HAVE to install it upstream of any breaker panels you want backed up. Export is monitored via the CTs that connect to the 18kpv, so you just have to be able to install those and run wires to...

I'm running the TS4-A-O and CCA/TAP on one string going to my 18kpv. I don't believe you can get the optimization working without CCA and TAP. No issues with all of that on my setup, works great. I think there's a good chance you wouldn't be able to run two strings into input 1 with those...

Is it closed loop? I believe the batteries are actually what throttle charge. They send out a max charge current they can accept, the 18kpv adds them up and charges at that rate at most. Possibly you had more solar this time than last? Possibly one or two of your batteries hit 100%, the others...

Should fit 10. I think it would be fine with the weight but I'd probably add some bracing if I really start pumping up the numbers. I've already got some beefy cross braces for holding up the batteries. Ampacity of bus bars isn't all that simple, but with reasonable temp rise I calculated...

IMO, if you have a 200A breaker panel it's hard to beat the 200A pass-through models like the eg4 18kpv. Installation is a bit more straitforward then multiple smaller models and doesn't require an external transfer switch. As far as the load balancing brought up, a few of us have tested that...

IMO, depending on a few details, net metering is 100% worth losing TOU for EV rate. You can offset your entire bill (asterisks apply?) with net metering but you never will be able to offset your entire bill with TOU EV rate. Net metering is a dying breed, so if it's actually 1:1 rate (you get...

Lol. Literally the only thing my local inspector looked for in my battery rack was that it wasn't lead acid to ensure I didn't need a vent. I'm not too worried about them noticing I have a few more than I'm supposed to according to a regulation I don't think my area has even adopted yet...

I agree with hwy17, that would make for a much more expensive product. The advantage they ARE making use of with the server rack platform is that it's stupid cheap. It's all low precision, off the shelf products shoved into a cheap box. Maybe someday they'll dive into that market, and it's...

IMO, Vehicle to Grid is going to be a gamechanger in the economics for people like us. Huge battery bank to soak up days with extra solar, huge capacity to help get through dark days. Ability to (once you get a charging station nearby, and you will) go fill up if you ever have equipment failure...

Lol I'm bad at 5 year olds but I'll do my best. The 60hz waveform you see here is the output of the current transformer I have added to the output of the 18kpv. I don't have this calibrated, but it's directly proportional to the current going through the wires. When we say some line has 100A of...

Just got the o-scope hooked up. Turns out I only had enough connectors to hook into one CT. Got another one on the way, so for now all I can really show is a single channel. Here is the output of the inverter a few different times of turning off my EV charger. So this is removing a 7.68kW load...

Respectfully, you've proven through this thread you don't understand the feature set of the 18kpv or the emporia. You have neither, so that's fine, but your calls of bs hold no weight. We're all learning here so I'll do everything I can to test with the equipment I have access to and educate...