I am in this same journey ... I have committed to some components but not the energy storage as of yet. I have a pole barn built last year facing due south with a 9/12 pitch in preparation ... Standing seam metal roof.... about 200 Ft from the house ( say 250 to the rear service entrance )
The plan 48 REC Alph 375 PV into 4 strings of 12 each No optimizers or micros .. I am looking for simplicity and low components and high reliability. I have chosen 2 Fronius string inverters after far to much searching. 2 primo 8.2's that will alternate the horizontal strings ( 1.1,2.1,1.2,2.) is Inverter.string. These units have high voltage mppt and "fit" my temperature corrected voltage well. and should start and stop well given the longer strings. They also support grid-zero that is a goal for us.
I considered MANY alternatives (tigo optimizers + string inverter SMA or Solis and HIGH mppt counts of 3/4 allowing 8 panel strings this
Tipped my choice as it makes the array layout pretty simple for me. The fronius has modbus.TCP which I used as far back as when it first appeared and I will hard lan wire the whole solution. They also have no mystery surrounding parallel setup.
So the thought was a good quality plain string inverter at the pole parn to get it into 240V/AC and run to home where any fancier storage solution will take place ( This part is not final )
I am going to test the Victron GX and have 2 power meters to monitor grid AND PV as the controller for the Fronius inverters to reduce output to grid - Zero. IF I can get a clear feedback on the Quatro in ESS mode (15KVA unit ) I will probably go this route I would love to hear any feedback !! I would love to add the quatro at the house and manage this with the ESS if it will accomplish all this ... OR 90% and add battery as needed maybe just enough to keep the microgrid/pv array alive in a true grid outage and dump my aging generator(s)
The plan is to have the main panel for full support during high PV production , I will create a NON-essential loads panel ( a bit of reversed from most of what I see ) and I will pull some of my worst draw items into it like 2 3 ton AC units (6K right there on a hot summer day ), 2x 1.5hp pond pumps, and one special add- one or two electric water tank heating elements for a custom built 1500 gal water tank used for heating our home. ( wood gasifier boiler at the moment). I am hoping to defer or minimize the battery storage costs and store the excess energy as heat lowering my wood cutting labor a bit as I get older ( and older )
for now I will proceed with my 48 PV + 2 Fronius primo 8.2 + Victron GX & 2 meters + Victron 100Amp Autotransformer. I would like to get off the ground with Grid usage to supplement PV at night or whenever needed. BUT never use grid for the non-essential loads with NO export I will use it all and heat a big chunk of water with "the excess - if any"
Looking for any warnings that I may not have thought of
