December PV starting off crappy again.

[Subdood]

Bought one two weeks ago, installed last weekend, it is amazingly quiet!
I’ve not measured the startup current yet. Except I paid $369
Edit: Just checked walmart.com, added to cart to view price, it was $357.
YMMV

8k U in window

Yeah I just saw that. Figures. Maybe it'll change back. Or not.

Yes, please let us know how it does. How big a room is it in, and does it do a good job cooling?

 

[ricardocello]

How big a room is it in, and does it do a good job cooling?

16x12 foot room, lots of computer gear generating heat

It cools extremely well, has an eco mode, and is quieter than the box fan we used to have to circulate air.
Solar load on that side of the house in summer will determine how effective it really is.

 

[42OhmsPA]

Wow, it's almost twice that now. Actually the 10K costs $420 now, your 8K costs $357 now. But that's still a substantial increase.

Yeah it costs quite a bit, but it would save us having to use the old outdoor split unit as much.

How reliable has yours been since you bought it, any issues? You said it keeps a double wide living room plenty comfortable?

Just checked our total power consumption for this 30 day billing period (ends in a couple days), and it's about 650kwh ATM. We generated about 113kwh during that billing period.

Most of our consumption is from our electric heat and dryer.

I used it nonstop the first summer I got it, I put it in the master bedroom and let the door open during the day with the temp set about as low as it could go, had no trouble keeping the bedroom in the upper 60s and living room / kitchen in the 70s. I didn't have to turn on the central air.
I installed a mini split last spring and gave the midea to my brother, he used it nonstop in his office at his shop. We both barely noticed a dent in electric bills.

 

[42OhmsPA]

Record day today
~10.8kW of panels.

Darned clouds in the morning...

 

[ricardocello]

Record day today

Same here! Darned trees! 29.2 kWh

 

[Subdood]

We got about 11kwh today, but couldn't run the space heater all day because it was getting a bit too toasty. Regardless we had our best weekend with 24kwh total, plus we topped 100kwh for the month already.

 

[Brucey]

We got about 11kwh today, but couldn't run the space heater all day because it was getting a bit too toasty. Regardless we had our best weekend with 24kwh total, plus we topped 100kwh for the month already.

Thinking of getting a couple window midea units and running them off my inverters instead of running the central air.

 

[green mountain boys]

We had snow, rain, ice, then snow again. Because we knew there would be ice I bumped our battery bank up from grid overnight in case it turned bad. Of course nothing happened and today was 100% Clear skies.

So I probably would have made 60kWh, but instead I hit 100% after only 30kwH because I had bumped the batt overnight. Sigh....

View attachment 204445
View attachment 204446

I am a little bit north of you PreppenWolf. We got 18" here in the bottom of the valley. The mountains got 24" I heard Ludlow, VT had 27"

 

[Subdood]

16x12 foot room, lots of computer gear generating heat

It cools extremely well, has an eco mode, and is quieter than the box fan we used to have to circulate air.
Solar load on that side of the house in summer will determine how effective it really is.

I used it nonstop the first summer I got it, I put it in the master bedroom and let the door open during the day with the temp set about as low as it could go, had no trouble keeping the bedroom in the upper 60s and living room / kitchen in the 70s. I didn't have to turn on the central air.

Thanks for the replies. I'm just about sold on them, I talked to my wife about it and she seems to be somewhat interested. I'd probably put it in the dining room/kitchen window, which faces somewhat NW, so it wouldn't get beat on by the sun much, other than in the middle of summer later in the afternoon.

But, we do live on an east facing hillside, so we do get a lot of sun starting when it comes up. So it does get warm in here later in the day. Saying that, I think the 8K unit ought to be sufficient for our 14 x 20ft living room/kitchen area.

I do like the app part of it, so I'm guessing you could control it via your phone or tablet? I'd like to be able turn it on and off remotely, and maybe program it to run at certain times of the day.

 

[ricardocello]

I do like the app part of it, so I'm guessing you could control it via your phone or tablet? I'd like to be able turn it on and off remotely, and maybe program it to run at certain times of the day.

It has an old school physical remote (works fine from across the room).
And allegedly a WiFi app. Haven't tried it yet, my expectations are very low for that sort of thing, nor do I want my A/C to be "in the cloud"

Being a DIY guy, I would be ecstatic if I could programmatically turn in on/off over Modbus TCP.
But they don't build these things for us.

 

[PreppenWolf]

I am a little bit north of you PreppenWolf. We got 18" here in the bottom of the valley. The mountains got 24" I heard Ludlow, VT had 27"

View attachment 204477

I would have loved all snow. The ice is everywhere and dorking up my endless projects schedule

 

[Subdood]

Record day today
~10.8kW of panels.
View attachment 204459
Darned clouds in the morning...

Nice.

What's those +6KW load spikes, dryer, stove? Do you have everything on the inverter, or most of the house? Guess you're digging that SRNE inverter?

Your bell curve looks wider than ours, I guess that's because you have some west facing panels?

We start losing max power around 5:30, but we're also in the hills, so the sun comes up and goes down earlier than normal.

 

[PreppenWolf]

I would have loved all snow. The ice is everywhere and dorking up my endless projects schedule

Exhibit A. I had to chip out 6" of slush turned ice to water the pigs this morning.

 

[42OhmsPA]

Nice.

What's those +6KW load spikes, dryer, stove?

That would have been the dryer plus other loads running.

Do you have everything on the inverter, or most of the house?

Everything except the stove, I have it disconnected because cooking is done with the smaller convection oven, induction top and pressure cooker. It dawned on my I should hook the oven back up, I have the power so why not use it.

Guess you're digging that SRNE inverter?

Really am impressed with it. Haven't seen anything close for the price.

Your bell curve looks wider than ours, I guess that's because you have some west facing panels?

I would assume that's it, ~2.8kW on the garage roof facing W.

We start losing max power around 5:30, but we're also in the hills, so the sun comes up and goes down earlier than normal.

I'm in between big hills, fortunately S facing is farm fields. The W arrays get cut off by the row of white pines and green giant arbs I planted, I'll take the privacy over the lost production.

 

[Subdood]

That would have been the dryer plus other loads running.

Everything except the stove, I have it disconnected because cooking is done with the smaller convection oven, induction top and pressure cooker. It dawned on my I should hook the oven back up, I have the power so why not use it.

Really am impressed with it. Haven't seen anything close for the price.

I would assume that's it, ~2.8kW on the garage roof facing W.

I'm in between big hills, fortunately S facing is farm fields. The W arrays get cut off by the row of white pines and green giant arbs I planted, I'll take the privacy over the lost production.

From what I've read in your system thread, the inverter has been pretty solid? I was curious what the idle power draw was. Did you get that from Alibaba? I haven't seen it sold anywhere else.

If we can, we use our 120V toaster oven on solar/battery to do any basic cooking or baking. Can't remember the last time we used the oven, it's crammed full with skillets and pans, so we try not to use it. We do use the stove top elements tho. There's 3 smaller ones and a large one. The small ones use about 1400W, the large one 2500W, all on 240V.

Our one 3.6KW array faces due south. We have a large hill on the opposite side of the valley, so the sun doesn't clear it until maybe a half hour after official sunrise. We have clear views of the sun until about 6pm now, but it's getting close to the opposite hills. So now we get about 9 hours of unobstructed sun.

The array has a copse of tall trees about 50ft just to the north of west of the array. So in the middle of summer, when the sun tracks higher and further to the west, those trees block the sun. I'd like to cut a lot of them down, but they also provide shade to the house that time of day.

Bad planning on my part by having the array that close to those trees, but we'll still get 9 hours of good sun, which is more than enough to charge the 10kwh battery.

 

[gotbeans]

It has an old school physical remote (works fine from across the room).
And allegedly a WiFi app. Haven't tried it yet, my expectations are very low for that sort of thing, nor do I want my A/C to be "in the cloud"

Being a DIY guy, I would be ecstatic if I could programmatically turn in on/off over Modbus TCP.
But they don't build these things for us.

For foolproof DIY the buttons on the remotes generally just short two pins. In those cases I connect any controller board / esp32 / esp8266 / raspberry pi / etc to the remote itself and just interface with the buttons there

 

[ricardocello]

For foolproof DIY the buttons on the remotes generally just short two pins. In those cases I connect any controller board / esp32 / esp8266 / raspberry pi / etc to the remote itself and just interface with the buttons there

Yeah, that’s an awesome idea!

 

[42OhmsPA]

From what I've read in your system thread, the inverter has been pretty solid? I was curious what the idle power draw was. Did you get that from Alibaba? I haven't seen it sold anywhere else.

It's been extremely solid. 1 random common error that went away on its own and 1 recent overload, it rebooted and kept on trucking.
Ordered direct from SRNE alibaba store, ~$1400 DDP, delivery in under 10 business days.
There are a few relabels out there, powmr and sungold come to mind quickly.

If we can, we use our 120V toaster oven on solar/battery to do any basic cooking or baking. Can't remember the last time we used the oven, it's crammed full with skillets and pans, so we try not to use it. We do use the stove top elements tho. There's 3 smaller ones and a large one. The small ones use about 1400W, the large one 2500W, all on 240V.

Thanks for that info on the stove tops, that will be no problem for me to run and have a balanced load... . My oven is the same way but it would be nice to start using the pizza stone again...

 

[Subdood]

Thanks for that info on the stove tops, that will be no problem for me to run and have a balanced load

Keep in mind these are regular electric heating elements. I measured them using my new toy, a Klein C390 clamp/voltmeter. I took off the door from our house electrical panel and carefully took some AC current readings.

Some other readings-
Dryer - 25A (6kw)
Water heater - 15A (3.7kw)
Oven - 11A (2.5kw)
Electric heat - 50A (?!?!) (12kw)

So, yeah we try not to run the heat too much. If you don't like a cold house, don't stay with us, we usually keep it around 65F in the winter. That's why I try to take advantage of sunny days and use the space heater for free.

 

[Brucey]

If it's 30F or so ambient I can heat the 1300 sqft house with two portable oil filled heaters, 1500W each, 72F. Once it drops to 20F need to throw an extra blanket on.