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diy solar

diy solar

An Enphase Ensemble Installation

The good news is it means I must have saved even more money than reported! ;)
I know how that goes. Each time they raise the rates here, it is such a mixed feeling. It's like, "REALLY, another hike?". But then I do the math, and my pay off is shorter as I am "saving" even more.
 
Updated the numbers in the OP for January. We've had an unusually wet/cloudy January so down almost 150 kWh :cry:, I blame El Niño.
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Solar produced from Enlighten for January:
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No cold days here in paradise (so far) so you'd think we'd be exporting power like crazy, but not so much. We have gotten a smidge under 60°F a couple of times, but after living in CO for decades I don't think of that as cold, but my neighbors would argue). Despite it not being cold, it's not only been wet, but so humid the air is actually hard to breathe (could just be I'm getting old) and I've been running the dehumidfier upstairs which I don't normally do. It's not super efficient, so we're not actually banking power as much as we usually would for January.
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Happened to notice the wind patterns were interesting. Basically, it went 360° throughout the course of the day for the first couple of weeks:
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Saw some changes (or just stuff I hadn't noticed before) in the 23.9.0 Enlighten app:
  • Mainly it adds the EV charging stuff.
  • Warranty expiration dates are now displayed on the Devices page.
  • But, it also has a Monetary Impact which doesn't seem to add a lot of value until you switch to the month or year view. Then it's kind of interesting!
  • Under "settings" there's a new Clear Local Cache, but I'm not sure what it does and couldn't find any information. Anyone know?
  • Maybe it was always there, I noticed the "App Information" section has release note information!
From release 23.7.0 I saw Storm Guard is supposed to have three system profiles, but I only see one profile. So possibly it's only for newer battery systems. Saw the 5P WiFi notes about improvements and extended range (yes, I'm green with envy... can't be algae, the dehumidifier is on! ; -)

Software Updates!​

Haven't checked in a while, looks like the microinverters are not auto-updating, same rev as last July.

IQ Gateway (Envoy): D7.3.517 D7.3.621
IQ System Controller (Enpower): 1.5.5229_rel/22.13 1.5.5592_rel/22.14
IQ Battery (Encharge): 2.0.5663_rel/22.13 2.0.6532_rel/22.14
Microinverters:
  • 540-00142-r01-v04.40.04 → no change
  • 520-00082-r01-v04.40.40.01 → no change
    Profile Set (IEEE 1547:2015-WHB)
 
Updated the OP with February's numbers. Despite being a leap year with an extra day, lowest February yet. Cloudy month? Seems like it:
It's Florida's Cloudiest Winter, Due To El Niño.

I didn't get any alerts, my system is setup to alert me if the power from the panels is off from the solar meter. But possibly it's not working? Probably all is fine... but an expedition to the roof to see if they're pollen-coated or not shouldn't hurt (much).

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Preliminary forecasts say that El Nino will rapidly switch to El Nina in the middle of hurricane season. The water temperature in Hurricane Formation Alley is already a degree warmer, so could make for an exciting fall (if not sooner).

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Talked to an installer the other day to see if I could find out anything on the bi-directional charger... but they hadn't heard anything. So, still no practical solution to power the house from the EV battery. Pity, would really like more emergency backup power for hurricanes, my 13 kWh is pretty good, but with the Car I could run the Air-Conditioner. ; -) Enphase's bi-directional charger is still showing "early 2024", but right now I doubt I'll have it for hurricane season.
 
Lowest March ever... software was updated... 3 power cutover events from storms.
1712236713373.pngIQ Gateway (Envoy): D7.3.621 D8.2.127
IQ System Controller (Enpower): 1.5.5592_rel/22.14 1.5.5729/22.15
IQ Battery (Encharge): 2.0.6532_rel/22.14 2.0.6727/22.15
Microinverters:
  • 540-00142-r01-v04.40.04 → no change
  • 520-00082-r01-v04.40.40.01 → no change
    Profile Set (IEEE 1547:2015-WHB)

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Windy month, starting to wonder if a 50' tower with turbine might be better than more panels? Here's 2023 at roof level:
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From https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/wind/maps/202305, it looks like at 10m I could generate power from a wind turbine at 10m during the winter months. Unfortunately, unlike my northern friends, I consume most of my power in summer. From the maps that doesn't look viable. Seems like it's on the edge in other years, might work year-round at 20 or 30m but that's pretty high.
 
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Entered the April numbers in the OP, highest April to date! It's been warmer than usual, so the AC has been running and we didn't get a net power gain this month like last year (usually we run positive in winter and negative in summer with yearly negative balance). Overall a dry month that was party cloudy on most days.

No power outage events, but I have ramped the battery down to 85% for the summer storms after a week at 100% for balancing. Storm Guard is on, so it'll automatically ramp up to 100% if a storm is coming (in theory anyway ; -).

IQ Gateway (Envoy): D8.2.127 no change
IQ System Controller (Enpower)
: 1.5.5729/22.15 → no change
IQ Battery (Encharge)
: 2.0.6727/22.15 → no change
Microinverters
:
  • 540-00142-r01-v04.40.04 → no change
  • 520-00082-r01-v04.40.40.01 → no change
    Profile Set (IEEE 1547:2015-WHB)

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Another breezy month... the repetitive wind patterns might be shifting as we slide into hurricane season.
 
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Today is the third day of an NWS heat advisory... and finally Enphase Storm Guard woke up... just got this email...
Heat Advisory alert has been issued for your locality by National Weather Service (NWS). Your system profile will be set to ”Full Backup”. After the alert ends the system profile will return to its previous setting.
With hurricanes and such Storm Guard is usually when the NWS issues the warning. Not sure what they delay was about it.
The heat index is 118°F right now. Yesterday it peaked at 120.7°F. It's hot out there!
 
Updated the OP with June's production, lowest numbers yet. It's been hot, humid, and rainy. We only got one NWS extreme heat warning at the end of June, still 4 so far this year is better than last year. Finally learned we only get warnings when it's over a certain temp/humidity for a specific duration, was wonder why we didn't get them on some days. Beryl broke the record for earliest cat 4 and cat 5 records, I was surprised by that given the Saharan dust and shear winds.

IQ Gateway (Envoy): D8.2.127 no change
IQ System Controller (Enpower)
: 1.5.5729/22.15 → no change
IQ Battery (Encharge)
: 2.0.6727/22.15 → no change
Microinverters
:
  • 540-00142-r01-v04.40.04 → no change
  • 520-00082-r01-v04.40.40.01 → no change
    Profile Set (IEEE 1547:2015-WHB)
PC died, got one of those post boards to figure out what was wrong. It sorta told me what was wrong... it caught fire so I figured I needed a new MB and a few other parts. Lost about 10 days of data. : -( Windows isn't reactivating like it should, help desk told me to re-buy it from the windows store... looks like I need to dig up my keys.
 
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New version of Enlighten self-installed and won't let me switch the battery back to Savings mode, at least not easily. Previously I'd been using that mode to keep the max charge of the battery between 60% (winter) to 80% (summer) to extend the battery's shelf-life (once a month letting it go up to 100% for balancing). But, now if you don't live in a zip code that has a TOU you cannot enter the TOU data Savings mode needs. I suspect I could change the zip code, but then the backup Stormguard provides to charge them up to 100% when needed would be lost. I'll probably just leave them at 100%, hopefully they'll last until bi-directional charging is available.
 
This July wasn't the best or worst for production, the OP was updated with the numbers. Power usage was up, I'm going to start tracking this more carefully just in case it's not just more air conditioning (We've had many back to back days of NWS extreme heat warnings, the hottest heat index being 121.2°F and the highest humidity actually hitting 99%). No software updates to any of the components. Not much rain for July, but we had a lot of clouds.
 
Hah! Had some time and finally puzzled out how to reprogram the screens so I could manually adjust the SoC of the battery so it wasn't at 100%.
Why is that important? Well, see this video...

So, how to do it...
Settings->Electricity Rate
Then switch to manual, and the trick is to down-click the arrow on the rate structure as shown below:

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From there you can check the boxes as shown above to select two rates, just set the higher rate during the daylight hours:
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Then edit your battery profile to Save mode and set the reserve to be your desired state of charge. There was also another new switch:
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So, the logic is a bit odd... but basically you run from solar and battery during the higher rate and the battery cuts out at the reserve. The battery can't charge during the day as that is the "high" rate unless the reserve drops below the threshold you set. So, during the day the battery stays at the reserve. At night, during the low rate, the battery could charge from solar...but being nighttime there's no solar to charge it ... so again it stays at the reserve. It'll probably break again when I get a bidrectional charger ; -).

Don't forget if you do this the battery only cell balances at 100%, so about once a month you should put it back in Full Backup for a while. If you have stormguard on, it might do it for you.
 
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Updated the OP with August data, worst August to date. :cry:
I'd suspect dirty, but we've had too much rain. Just to be sure I checked the theoretical solar from the weather station vs actual and it looks good.
No new changes to software revs.
 
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A bit late updating the OP with November's production, best November ever!

Quite the gusty month, but the wind speed was mostly under 10 mph, so I doubt I could have made power with a wind turbine.

IQ Gateway (Envoy): D8.2.127 D8.2.4378
IQ System Controller (Enpower)
: 1.5.5729/22.15 1.5.6361/22.33
IQ Battery (Encharge)
: 2.0.6727/22.15 2.0.7854/22.33
Microinverters
:
  • 540-00142-r01-v04.40.04 → no change
  • 520-00082-r01-v04.40.40.01 → no change
    Profile Set (IEEE 1547:2015-WHB)
You can get this data from: https://envoy.local/info.xml

Found a list of brief profile descriptions at https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/manager/dashboard/profiles

MIne reads:
Profile-based on IEEE 1547:2015. UV2 set to 60 V 50 ms. AGFs disabled. Wide range of adjustment available in derived profiles. MC disabled. Shall only be used for Ensemble systems having Enpower. Ensemble 1.0 Compatible. PIM Disabled
 
This November here in So Cal was not so good. We had several storms move through and a lot more clouds than usual.

My worst Nov. was actually my first year with solar. I had 3 huge palm trees right in front of my house. They were not an issue in summer when the system went in, but it was obvious they were bad news in winter. I only produced 304.4 KWHs that first Nov. Got those three trees cut down a few months later.

The next 3 years were about what I was expecting based on the solar insolation charts. 517.2, 511.3, and 501.1 KWHs for 2020 - 2022. A 2% drop each year is a little more than it should fall, but the panels were also getting dirty, and the weather might not have been as good. It dropped a bit more in 2023 to just 450.9 KWHs for a nearly ten percent drop from 2022. I think that was the remaining trees starting to grow enough to shade the lower set of panels a little.

But now this year, OUCH, down to just 415.5 KWHs. Nearly an 8% drop in power from the already bad 2023, and 17% off of the 2022 results. Those 2 remaining trees grew a bit more, but I did have them trimmed back, but the shadow still hits all 8 panels on my lower roof, and even hits the upper roof ones but only very late in the day. Add in the stormy weather, and the rain that made those trees grow so much, and it was not a good combination. I really just need to have those trees cut down, but that costs over $1,000 per tree now. So $2,000 would mean I need to produce an extra 6,000+ KWH's to pay for the tree removal. That is 3/4 of a year of full production. Instead, I plan on buying $2,000 worth of solar panels to put on a pergola in my back yard. The increase in production will be far better. I will put 2 or 3 panels on Enphase microinverters. My export still won't hit my limit due to constant draw in my house. The rest of the panels will be DC coupled to charge the battery bank. I plan to start a new thread in "Show and Tell" as I start that build.

I will have to check if any of my firmware has been updated, I don't think so though.
 
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Updated the OP with Decembers numbers and am working on the totals now for how much I saved. Down 0.5 MWh for the year. 😭

I have noticed that although I paid and used about the same amounts, the $/kWh dropped from a 2023 high of 10.674¢ to 7.5¢. I'm guessing the cost of natural gas has fallen as renewables replace it. Pity the cost of inflation more than made up for it in terms of the other costs. But, as those costs are fractions of usage, I'm still counting it as part of the payback. ; -)

IQ Gateway (Envoy): D8.2.4378
IQ System Controller (Enpower)
: 1.5.6361/22.33
IQ Battery (Encharge)
: 2.0.7854/22.33
Microinverters
:
  • 540-00142-r01-v04.40.04 → no change
  • 520-00082-r01-v04.40.40.01 → no change
    Profile Set (IEEE 1547:2015-WHB)
 
Updated the OP with my actual savings. The cost calculated for power soup-to-nuts was 12.6574¢/kWh, which is down 0.2¢ from last year.
Looks like my payback is going to ~10 years now with the 2023 changes. Last year Florida voted away NetMetering, but there was such a fuss it was vetoed. My guess is it'll happen this year so I'll really get to belly-ache about it next year ; -)
 

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Updated the OP with January's numbers. Not as bad as last year, but nowhere as good as 2023.

I started cycling my battery down to 20% nightly, primarily to test the system, but I do see an odd behavior. During the night it drains as you'd expect, but the Envoy and the batteries get out of sync. It switches back to grid when the system hits 20%, but when sunlight hits the panels the system gets updated and the values jump downwards by as much as 15% (graph to the left shows 7%). As the batteries aren't cutting themselves off at their 10% minimum (it's 5% for the next generation). I suspect the "truth" is in the middle. Called Tech support and they said they fixed it, but it did the same thing next day. I'm going to leave it like that for a week and see if the system doesn't straighten itself out. It is hitting 100% around noon so should be balancing.

IQ Gateway (Envoy): D8.2.4378 → no change
IQ System Controller (Enpower)
: 1.5.6361/22.33 → no change
IQ Battery (Encharge)
: 2.0.7854/22.33 → no change
Microinverters
:
  • 540-00142-r01-v04.40.04 → no change
  • 520-00082-r01-v04.40.40.01 → no change
    Profile Set (IEEE 1547:2015-WHB)
 

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