diy solar

diy solar

Funny story about the east-west panel spread-out idea

Can’t. Mature trees would cast shade there in the mornings and evenings. I’m not taking out the trees (already took out a bunch). The top two thirds of the roof remains unshaded though.
Mount them on the trees then...

 
Mount them on the trees then...

Might take a good chunk of a forest to fill out the capabilities of a SB 7.7. It could easily handle 12 370w (ish) panels in series pointed east and two sets of 12 pointed west. Possibly more if you wanted to get into paralleling them and over paneling.
 
What I am testing this year;

Summer time - rotate extra panels towards the west 45deg tilt for a few extra hours of A/C in the evening.

Winter time- rotate same panels east/south 45deg tilt for early morning heating with heat pumps.
 
Here's a question! I'm building a system to run the well and pressure pumps for one of our apartment buildings. The well pump is 3hp and the pressure pump is 1hp. The well pump runs mostly from 5AM till 11AM, sporadically during the day, then from 4PM till 10PM. The pressure pump runs from about 4:30AM till about 9AM, sporadically during the day, then from about 3PM till about 9PM. We will need our battery power early morning and late afternoon mostly and I want a backup system to the utility which often produces power under 160v in the morning. Winter sun here usually starts generating power at about 6:15AM and stops at about 6PM. Summer at about 6:45AM till about 7PM. I'm planning on using a Growatt 12kw inverter, 2 batteries with 16, 280ah cells each. I'm thinking of putting 2 sets of 9, 400 watt panels at very steep angles maybe 60 or 70*, facing ESE and 2 sets of 9 400 watt panels facing WSW (14* toward S from E and same for the W). This might sound nuts but I was thinking of connecting one E set and one W set to each controller in the inverter, connected in parallel so the voltage is the same only increasing the number of strings on each, so that as power dropped off from the E set the power would come up on the W set having it make about the same amount of power all day to charge the batteries, but give a big boost to the AM and PM production. Right now I'm using one of those inverters with 2 sets of 12 400 watt panels and it works great just clipping the excess midday when ever there is full sun all day. I also use 2 extra 100 amp charge controllers for extra power to help charge a very large battery bank. I know I'll be buying a lot of extra panels, but I get them direct from the manufacturer for about $100.+ shipping and I'll already be shipping 24 so it won't be much more. All of your thoughts and comments will be appreciated. the dog
 
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