It's Working!!! Sol-Ark 15K, 33.52kW with 67 Panels AC+DC PV, 25kW SOK Batteries - Photo Diary

[Ryushin]

Holy Export Batman!!!

Hit 28kW PV today. My export limit is 25kW with my utility so, that is about as high as it's going to get with the Sol-Ark before it starts curtailing the output.

 

[Ryushin]

I guess I never thought my battery wouldn't be full by the time the cloud lens hit. So it would have a place to dump the excess energy. 30.2kW spike today today and it's totally cloudy out as we are expecting snow this afternoon.

Sometimes this just seems to defy logic.

 

[Ryushin]

First negative power bill! -$44.94

Something that did not occur to me, my taxes are a negative value too. So hopefully I will never see power bill again, only credits. Then once a year, maybe around April, I'll get the power company to write me a check for the balance.

It's working!!! Amazing to finally get here!

 

[1201]

First negative power bill! -$44.94

Something that did not occur to me, my taxes are a negative value too. So hopefully I will never see power bill again, only credits. Then once a year, maybe around April, I'll get the power company to write me a check for the balance.

It's working!!! Amazing to finally get here!

Such a beautiful thing. That's awesome!

 

[harjms]

I'll get the power company to write me a check for the balance.

Along with a 1099....

 

[Ryushin]

Along with a 1099....

Sure, just go ahead and pop my balloon. LOL

Yea, I'm going to get that too. More money forced to give to the government.

 

[Ryushin]

Uggg. My natural gas 50 gallon water heater started leaking yesterday and I shut it down and drained it. Ordered a 80 gallon Rheem heat pump water heater yesterday evening. Need to run a 125A sub panel into the basement to support the 30A 240V circuit for the Rheem, 15A circuit for outside for the generator battery tender, and a 20A circuit for my servers. Going to work on my my one line diagram today so I can pull a permit. Probably going to run the 30A wire to go from the generator to the EG4 Chargeverter. Going to be a busy week.

The Rheem water heater will take about a week or so to get here. So we are not going to have hot water during that time. Uggg!

 

[Brucey]

Free trial gym membership for their showers?

 

[Ryushin]

Free trial gym membership for their showers?

LOL! Just going to have really bloody cold showers I guess. Might try turning on the gas water heater for 4 hours every 2-3 days and do everything we need during that time then drain it again afterwords. It's leaking into a big drip pan so it's going into a drain. I'll see. A lot will depend on what my wife wants.

 

[1201]

Uggg. My natural gas 50 gallon water heater started leaking yesterday and I shut it down and drained it. Ordered a 80 gallon Rheem heat pump water heater yesterday evening. Need to run a 125A sub panel into the basement to support the 30A 240V circuit for the Rheem, 15A circuit for outside for the generator battery tender, and a 20A circuit for my servers. Going to work on my my one line diagram today so I can pull a permit. Probably going to run the 30A wire to go from the generator to the EG4 Chargeverter. Going to be a busy week.

The Rheem water heater will take about a week or so to get here. So we are not going to have hot water during that time. Uggg!

No hot water out of the shower but you can boil water on the stove and take warm baths.

 

[Ryushin]

Canceled my order this morning from Home Depot for the Rheem 80 gallon heat pump water heater. Learned about some heat pump advances using 120V. So I went down even deeper down the rabbit hole for water heater heat pumps.

After looking at a bunch of brands and reading so many reviews it was causing me to go bug eyed. In the end, I went the 240V 80 gallon Rheem again but added the additional Home Depot warranty for $75. Only downside to the Rheem that I can find is that the Gen5 version is a bit loud. It's going to be in the basement, so most likely it won't be a problem. So that put me a day behind.

This video will start you going down the rabbit hole:

AO Smith reviews showed a bunch of compressor failurs within two years, it was quiet though.

Really hard to find sources to buy the other brands. The LG water heater though seems to be very promising, but it's pretty much not possible to buy. It was also the only one made in China.

Anyway, going to start working on my permit plans now.

 

[XILLA]

Are you AC coupling through the gen input or through the grid? What is the benefit you were looking for in AC coupling?

 

[Ryushin]

Are you AC coupling through the gen input or through the grid? What is the benefit you were looking for in AC coupling?

I am AC coupling through the Gen input. I wanted to add more than 19kW of PV, so I did a mix of DC and AC PV to get me to 33.52kW. If I wanted to just do less than 19kW of PV, I would only use PV on the DC MPPTs.

 

[XILLA]

Got it. I have the same inverter and was wondering about ways to use the gen input/output. Currently my current panel array is only 6k but looking to upgrade to more panels and more batteries.

 

[XILLA]

Just for clarity (I am a noobie) can you get power out of the gen input, and through your regular pv input at the same time? Is the setting gen peak shaving?

 

[Ryushin]

Got it. I have the same inverter and was wondering about ways to use the gen input/output. Currently my current panel array is only 6k but looking to upgrade to more panels and more batteries.

Always need more power:

 

[Ryushin]

Just for clarity (I am a noobie) can you get power out of the gen input, and through your regular pv input at the same time? Is the setting gen peak shaving?

The Gen input can be used in several ways, Generator, AC Coupled, out to a smart load panel, etc.

But yea, in my case, the AC coupled PV and DC PV are both operating at the same time. I enabled the AC Coupled on Gen Port setting.

In the manual Grid Peak Shaving with a generator confuses me. It says the generator would be attached to the Grid input and it's talking about and shaving energy used from the Grid. A running generator and the grid can't be connected at to the same input as they both would put out the sine wave and there will be major conflicts and I don't really know what would happen, other then it being potentially very bad.

 

[Ryushin]

Finished installing the Heat Pump Hot Water Heater along with a mixing valve about ten days ago. Set the temperature of the 80 gallon Rheem to 150 degrees and the mixing valve to 130 degrees. I have it set on the Energy Saver mode which mostly uses the heat pump unless the temp gets too low and it will kick in the electrical elements, which only occurred the first day when I turned it on. On average I'm using about 3-4 kWh a day.

Everything took longer than I expected. Three days of work to get the sub panel in the basement. Two more days to add the three additional electrical circuits, water heater, computer servers, under deck for the generator trickle charger, and run the 8AWG cable for the generator to go from the garage to the back of the house. A day an a half to get the old water heater out and the new water heater in. Then a few days go get the drain/condensate PVC pipe exactly the way I wanted.

I spent pretty much the weekend putting the basement and garage back together. I picked up the pipe fittings to add the natural gas quick disconnect for generator. I should be able to get that done in the next day or two.

Also had a few 200+ kWh days last week. Totally awesome to see that.