5th day of no sun

[pollenface]

We aren't suffering in the least.

Test to see how long battery bank lasts with consecutive days of no sun and to ensure inverters automatically switch to grid.

Ah awesome ?

 

[Subdood]

Have you checked to see if your inverter is hanging up in the 90v range? Verified with a meter? One of my 6500s hang up at 90v until voltage gets very high around 300v. If you have a disconnect on your PV you can cycle that and see if your voltage and output increases. I have latest firmware that is supposed to fix this, I will be calling Signature Solar soon to get fixed.

Thanks I'll check it out. I just have one 6500 running my 120V critical loads. I do have an IMO disconnect for my array. I think it's because it was so cloudy/rainy yesterday. It's still like that this morning with the same conditions. I'm at work but can monitor it via WatchPower. Supposed to be sunny tomorrow, so it should be okay then.

I've never updated the firmware since I got the unit last October. It's been working fine, so I'm hesitant to "update" it, if you know what I mean..

 

[Subdood]

Ya all need a three day utility outage...that was a green light to expand our system!

We had three days of clouds, then a partly sunny day yesterday.
Today it was sunny all morning, my Official Solar Tester sees that change in the weather - asks hey am I good to go with a load in the wash and then the electric dryer? - Yup good to go!

She really is getting into this solar routine now, I never imagined my wife would adjust her normal routine to the available solar - but here we are! She is into it.

You're lucky. We had an outage a couple weeks ago in the middle of the night for about 3 hours. I heard her get up and fumble around for a battery powered light, along with muffled curses. When we got up the next morning I not so subtly suggested, "you know if we had a battery you wouldn't have even noticed the power going out". She didn't seem moved. It's happened other times and I dropped the same hints but she doesn't seem to be interested. Plus she uses a CPAP, so I'm sure that would change her mind, but nope.

She wants me to fix up the chicken coop which I kinda promised her I'd do last year in exchange for the solar system, but I haven't finished it. I cleaned up all the gnarly brush around it and cleaned it out, but it still needs new nesting boxes and I have to build a new fenced in run. So I'm kinda stuck until I do that job.

I've been out of work for over a year until this month. So now that I have a job, I'm wanting to pick up one or two of the Lifepower4 batts from Sig Solar, since they're on sale, plus they have free shipping until Nov 4th.

 

[Zwy]

Sun out today with some clouds. Still manged to move from 18% battery to 71% as of 3:41 PM and it is still charging over 4000W and running all loads in house. I kicked the heat pump back on at noon. 37.4Kwh of battery charging and loads.

Should be close to 80% battery by sundown but I'll wager the wife runs a few loads of laundry.

One more 280Ah battery and I could have probably made the 6 days of no sun and ran the heat pump the whole time.

 

[Kenny_]

Sun out today with some clouds. Still manged to move from 18% battery to 71% as of 3:41 PM and it is still charging over 4000W and running all loads in house. I kicked the heat pump back on at noon. 37.4Kwh of battery charging and loads.

Should be close to 80% battery by sundown but I'll wager the wife runs a few loads of laundry.

One more 280Ah battery and I could have probably made the 6 days of no sun and ran the heat pump the whole time.

Excellent!!
Mo' Bat!

 

[Zwy]

Not bad, 47.7Kwh off PV today and it was partly cloudy.

 

[Zapper77]

Not bad, 47.7Kwh off PV today and it was partly cloudy.

 

[Zwy]

I had 3 days in a row the battery charged under 1 Kwh. Worst day was 0.2 Kwh.

 

[timselectric]

I'm rolling into the 5th day of rain, myself.
Wednesdays forecast is partly cloudy. I don't think that I will make it. lol

 

[TOU47]

Many Cities, Counties, Municipalities in the U.S.

I wonder if this still holds true if it is a property that has never had grid tied power?

I know in my area, SW Colorado, they are up to $55k to bring it to my building site which made it an easy decision to go 100% off-grid. In phase 3.2 of 4 of my off-grid solar with 5.4kw PV; it been great so far. Like the OP needed a boost here h there last winter. Hoping to avoid that this winter... we shall see.

 

[TOU47]

I'm rolling into the 5th day of rain, myself.
Wednesdays forecast is partly cloudy. I don't think that I will make it. lol

Growing up in Western Oregon & having lived in SW Washington for many years (100 days of precipitation & 200 days of overcast) ...& having seen houses with solar on them I often wonder how affective they are there???

I.E. The year I decided to move away to Utah (300 days of sun or partial sun) & subsequently SW Colorado (same) We had 21 days of 24/7 precipitation. It was then followed up with another 3 weeks of overcast. Zero direct sunlight. No regrets.

 

[Quattrohead]

October report, lowest 13kwh, highest 44kwh for a total excluding today of 962kwh.
This is from around 11kwh of panels strewn around my back yard.
Sorry

 

[Zapper77]

October report, lowest 13kwh, highest 44kwh for a total excluding today of 962kwh.
This is from around 11kwh of panels strewn around my back yard.
Sorry

Oct 2023 9 kW ground mount

Highest day 40.5 lowest 5.2
Total 711 kWh (limited by consumption)
Grid 83 kWh (60 during the last 5 days)

 

[timselectric]

I actually went to grid this morning.
And then the sun came out. 1kwh of grid was used.
I could have made it stay off grid, as I still had capacity left. But I just let it do what I have set it to do. It's good to test the system operations, occasionally.

 

[timselectric]

October for me. 23.7 kw roof mounted. (East/west)
Lowest daily production 11.3 kwh
Highest daily production 72.8 kwh
Total for the month 1097.6 kwh so far. (Half a day left lol)

 

[SajgZi]

Well I'm hoping to go full legal at some point....right now just getting everything tested, working, etc. Once I'm satisfied I'll go full boat and get it all certified/inspected/etc.

What's your plan to get things inspected/permitted? I live in Westminster, which as far as I can tell has somewhat strict requirements for permitting (they require permits for basically any household project). We have Xcel. No master disconnect at the panel (it is the old style GE panel with 4 always hot double pole breakers at the top, one of which feeds the single pole breakers at the bottom) and I don't fancy messing with giant 0 gauge wire that's hot.

 

[Zapper77]

I actually went to grid this morning.
And then the sun came out. 1kwh of grid was used.
I could have made it stay off grid, as I still had capacity left. But I just let it do what I have set it to do. It's good to test the system operations, occasionally.

Agreed

 

[Kenny_]

What's your plan to get things inspected/permitted? I live in Westminster, which as far as I can tell has somewhat strict requirements for permitting (they require permits for basically any household project). We have Xcel. No master disconnect at the panel (it is the old style GE panel with 4 always hot double pole breakers at the top, one of which feeds the single pole breakers at the bottom) and I don't fancy messing with giant 0 gaugew wire that's hot.

No plan. I was planning to get my breaker box replaced under the HEEHRA act...but can't til Colorado gets its act together next year. Was planning on getting that and transfer switch in place legally then. The rest I don't know. Need a new roof before I put panels up there. Was planning on getting quotes on both of those.
Then.... Don't know if rack mount batteries will ever pass. ???

 

[Subdood]

The sun's come out today, so my PV voltage is back up to normal (~370V). The last two days, it would spike up to about 200V, but dropped back down to 90-100V. That's how cloudy/rainy it was the last few days.

It's supposed to be around freezing the next two mornings, so I imagine it'll be around 400V (415 Voc at 0C).

 

[cs1234]

Then.... Don't know if rack mount batteries will ever pass. ???

Something that just occurred to me with all these rack batteries. Do these racks have to have some sort of UL certification in order to pass inspection? If so, what certification, and which racks popular on here actually have it?