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It's Working!!! Sol-Ark 15K, 33.52kW with 67 Panels AC+DC PV, 60kWh SOK Batteries - Photo Diary

Ryushin

Ryushin

Solar Enthusiast
Joined
Mar 27, 2022
Messages
180
Location
Castle Rock, Colorado
I thought my setup with a photo diary might help others. I passed my Electrical Final inspection yesterday, now I'm just waiting for PTO.

First let me give thanks to the following people and companies:
@Will Prowse for creating his Youtube channel and this forum and selflessly helping others with DIY Solar.
@HighTechLab / AKA Dexter for helping me with questions and parts and for providing the Sol-Ark 15K and SOK batteries.
@Danke for helping me in the very beginning with sourcing parts and getting me going down the right path.
Sol-Ark and Growatt for their support staff working together to get the two Growatt Inverters working with AC Coupling to the Sol-Ark 15K.
Greenlancer for turning my rough plans into professional documents I could submit to my building department and utility for interconnection. They also went above and beyond to modify the plans as changes were needed and were always prompt, professional, and courteous. I cannot recommend them enough!

So I've been wanting to do solar for the last three years or so. But the CFO, AKA, the Wife did not want to at the time. Early this spring she gave me the go ahead and I blew it by going 40% over my estimate. The "little" stuff ends up being very expensive and electrical components are just stupid expensive. Either way, it's done now and I think she will be more approving once we start seeing a ROI and the 30% back from the government. I spent the April through mid June coming up with my plans and gave those to Greenlancer to complete. Two days later I had my plans and I submitted them to my AHJ and my electrical utility CORE for Interconnection. My AHJ approved my plans July 2nd I started ordering parts the following day.

Four months later, I'm done. Photo Diary: https://cloud.chrisdos.com/s/rAxMbpbDgCY6i6D

There were some stories along the way. Especially the rush to get the grid connected last weekend when 10" of snow arrived and covered the panels. I did every single bit of the install myself. Including wiring the new 200A Load Center.

I also don't know if my 4-Ton AC Rheem comes with a soft start or not. I did not need to install one and the AC will come on fine with just a flicker of light even if the double oven AND electric dryer is running. Very impressed with the Sol-Ark 15K. Didn't miss a beat even with my air compressor or big miter saw. Have not been able to over load the Sol-Ark 15K yet. It is bloody impressive!

Parts and Sources:
 

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That is a very cool install!

Ryushin said:
I also don't know if my 4-Ton AC Rheem comes with a soft start or not. I did not need to install one and the AC will come on fine with just a flicker of light even if the double stove AND electric dryer is running. Very impressed with the Sol-Ark 15K. Didn't miss a beat even with my air compressor or big miter saw. Have not been able to over load the Sol-Ark 15K yet. It is bloody impressive!
Click to expand...
If you have grid input, then the 15k will bypass, and any needed power will come from the grid, so it doesn't surprise me the AC starts with everything running. technically you can run 200a.

Now off-grid, that might be another story.
 
Ryushin said:
I did not need to install one and the AC will come on fine with just a flicker of light even if the double stove AND electric dryer is running.
Click to expand...

I'd consider doing an "off-grid test" of sorts. Shut off the main breaker from the grid, and re-run this test. Just to verify that it's the sol-ark handling the surge, not AC passthrough from the grid.

Other than that callout, this is a fantastic setup!

Have you tested the growatts to see if they do frequency shifting to curtail production as the batteries get near full, when the main breaker is off? (You don't want to find out during an outage, that the growatts don't throttle back, and slam your full batteries with a ton of current. So I'd verify this before you actually depend on it)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ryushin said:
I thought my setup with a photo diary might help others. I passed my Electrical Final inspection yesterday, now I'm just waiting for PTO.

First let me give thanks to the following people and companies:
@Will Prowse for creating his Youtube channel and this forum and selflessly helping others with DIY Solar.
@HighTechLab / AKA Dexter for helping me with questions and parts and for providing the Sol-Ark 15K and SOK batteries.
@Danke for helping me in the very beginning with sourcing parts and getting me going down the right path.
Sol-Ark and Growatt for their support staff working together to get the two Growatt Inverters working with AC Coupling to the Sol-Ark 15K.
Greenlancer for turning my rough plans into professional documents I could submit to my building department and utility for interconnection. They also went above and beyond to modify the plans as changes were needed and were always prompt, professional, and courteous. I cannot recommend them enough!

So I've been wanting to do solar for the last three years are so. But the CFO, AKA, the Wife did not want to at the time. Early this spring she gave me the go ahead and I blew it by going 40% over my estimate. The "little" stuff ends up being very expensive and electrical components are just stupid expensive. Either way, it's done now and I think she will be more approving once we start seeing a ROI and the 30% back from the government. I spent the April through mid June coming up with my plans and gave those to Greenlancer to complete. Two days later I had my plans and I submitted them to my AHJ and my electrical utility CORE for Interconnection. My AHJ approved my plans July 2nd I started ordering parts the following day.

Parts:
Sol-Ark 15K
Two Growatt MIN 10000TL-XH-US Grid Tie Inverters for AC Coupling to the Sol-Ark
Bluesun 37 460W Bi-Facial Panels and 30 550W Bi-Facial Panels (13 strings)
IronRidge Racking Using HUG Mounts
5 SOK 48V Batteries
Hoffman 12"x12" 4' and 3' Wireways combined for 7'.
Austin 8"x8"x6' Wire Trough.
EMT Conduit and lots of wire. Lots and lots of wire... Bloody Expensive wire!

Four months later, I'm done. Photo Diary: https://cloud.chrisdos.com/s/rAxMbpbDgCY6i6D

There were some stories along the way. Especially the rush to get the grid connected last weekend when 10" of snow arrived and covered. I did every single bit of the install myself. Including wiring the new 200A Load Center.

I also don't know if my 4-Ton AC Rheem comes with a soft start or not. I did not need to install one and the AC will come on fine with just a flicker of light even if the double stove AND electric dryer is running. Very impressed with the Sol-Ark 15K. Didn't miss a beat even with my air compressor or big miter saw. Have not been able to over load the Sol-Ark 15K yet. It is bloody impressive!
Click to expand...
Very nice setup , well done !
 
Lt.Dan said:
That is a very cool install!


If you have grid input, then the 15k will bypass, and any needed power will come from the grid, so it doesn't surprise me the AC starts with everything running. technically you can run 200a.

Now off-grid, that might be another story.
Click to expand...

Oh, I was off grid at that time. In fact, I just got my PTO a few minutes ago. Amazing that I passed my Final Electrical and get my PTO in less than 24 hours.
 
n2aws said:
Have you tested the growatts to see if they do frequency shifting to curtail production as the batteries get near full, when the main breaker is off? (You don't want to find out during an outage, that the growatts don't throttle back, and slam your full batteries with a ton of current. So I'd verify this before you actually depend on it)
Click to expand...

Yes, when I was offgrid, the Sol-Ark 15K varied the frequency between 60-62Hz and the Growatts curtailed production. Once the Sol-Ark was receiving more than 10kW from the DC PV, it actually shutdown the Growatts all together, probably to prevent the AC coupled inverters from sending a burst of power it was going to have to dump into the batteries. Right now with a sunny day, the batteries are filled by noon.

Now that I've gotten PTO, I can finally see what this system can do. Though today we are expecting snow. :(
 
Got a full day of sun since getting my PTO yesterday. The Sol-Ark 15K was limiting to 16kW to the grid. A call into Sol-Ark support and they were able to upgrade the firmware and make a change later in the day so I can send up to 32kW, but I had them reduce it to 25kW as that is what my Qualifying Facility agreement is with my utility. Generated a 101kWh today with 58.3kWh being sent to the grid. We'll see what tomorrow brings. But overall, I'm quite pleased with the system. PVWatts say I should be able to make over 80kWh during December. We'll see.
 
Finished running a Cat6A Ethernet drop to the Inverter location yesterday. Going to plug the Sol-Ark 15K and the two Growatt inverters into wired Ethernet. Punched a 1-1/4" hole into the wireway to add some conduit going up the side for the low voltage wires to run through. Going to mount the 5 port switch, Orange Pi, and get that open ended conduit run today. Have to fish some 4 wire phone cable through the 2" conduit running the battery cables to connect the SOK batteries to the Orange Pi. Ordered two cables from Solar Assisstant on Friday to connect the Sol-Ark to the Pi.

I added my full plans (redacted for privacy) to the Photo Diary link. File is called: ZZZ_PermitPlanSet_Redacted.pdf
Hopefully they will help others with their design.

Two beutiful almost cloudless days. 119 and 116 kWh generated. East and West facing panels are working well. Around 7:20am we are generating around 2.5 kW. Yesterday I saw the system generating 20 kW at one point. I geek out just watching the system. To bad I only get 5.5 cents to sell back to the grid, but better than nothing.

Hopefully early next year we can upgrade the batteries to 60 kWh. The CFO (wife) will need to be convinced of that though.
 

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Very, very nice setup.

With two growatts how do you see the data for both of the app/website?
 
How does your metering work; does the utility credit your generation at wholesale and debit your total consumption at retail, or is it a net setup?
 
Question, you went with Growatts for your AC conversion over what the SA could handle in DC from your array-was that option less expensive that individual micro inverters?

If you’re only seeing a max of 20kw from your array at any one time because of the different arrays on different roof sections did you consider and do the calculations for just running everything in DC to the SA?
 
IIRC Growatt grid tie are comparable price per W as 1500W multiport microinverters.

Though arguably the growatt is a better value because it has a storage inverter in it. OTOH it’s useless to most people.
 
zanydroid said:
IIRC Growatt grid tie are comparable price per W as 1500W multiport microinverters.

Though arguably the growatt is a better value because it has a storage inverter in it. OTOH it’s useless to most people.
Click to expand...
Which microinverters? Growatt 11.4kw inverter is $1500
 
1201 said:
Which microinverters? Growatt 11.4kw inverter is $1500
Click to expand...
Hoymiles HM-1500 is $400-500, you would save $80 in RSD devices

So I guess it's still 2-3x cheaper IF you can work with the MPPT minimums and actually leverage the full capacity. It could be way better than 2x if you come up with a clever way to overpanel, IE with orientation diversity.

For the Growatt 4 trackers 50-550V is not bad, you can have some tiny strings if you want, but that will kill the cost efficiency.

With 3x HM1500 you get 6 trackers with 2 inputs each.
 
zanydroid said:
Hoymiles HM-1500 is $400-500, you would save $80 in RSD devices

So I guess it's still 2-3x cheaper IF you can work with the MPPT minimums and actually leverage the full capacity. It could be way better than 2x if you come up with a clever way to overpanel, IE with orientation diversity.
Click to expand...
$80 rsd? The growatt uses the tigo AF rsd. $30 for the single and $46 for the dual that handles two inverters.
I have 11.2kw. the growatt 7.6k will handle that at $1049+ $644 for the rsd - total $1693.

I don't know of any micro inverter solution that comes close.
 
Wondering what the cost of this system was 'all in'.
More ESS would be in the plan to make better use of all that PV, or an EV or two!
edit: I hope you have a plan for snow removal - or don't get any!
 
1201 said:
$80 rsd? The growatt uses the tigo AF rsd. $30 for the single and $46 for the dual that handles two inverters.
I have 11.2kw. the growatt 7.6k will handle that at $1049+ $644 for the rsd - total $1693.

I don't know of any micro inverter solution that comes close.
Click to expand...
$20 per panel. Now that I think about it, I think you can use 2 panel RSDs for $15 per panel.

$30 seems high, is that with an optimizer on it?

I think if you have a lot of 4 or 8 panel arrays these 4 port microinverters are probably more cost effective. Didn't do the math carefully, but I guess you can waste 50% of the capacity and still be ahead on the Growatt 6000W). Note however with AC the wiring is simplified (no conduit needed inside the building). And with the AC coupled string inverters, you lose a lot of the performance/complexity advantage of DC coupling.
 
zanydroid said:
$20 per panel. Now that I think about it, I think you can use 2 panel RSDs for $15 per panel
Click to expand...
zanydroid said:
$30 seems high, is that with an optimizer on it?
Click to expand...


Signature solar is the lowest I've found at 30 for single and 46 for dual. No monitoring or optimization. If you know where it's lower please share ? since I'm in the market
zanydroid said:
I think if you have a lot of 4 or 8 panel arrays these 4 port microinverters are probably more cost effective. Didn't do the math carefully, but I guess you can waste 50% of the capacity and still be ahead on the Growatt 6000W). Note however with AC the wiring is simplified (no conduit needed inside the building). And with the AC coupled string inverters, you lose a lot of the performance/complexity advantage of DC coupling.
Click to expand...
If the 4 port is $400 it's $100 per panel so 28 panels would be $2800. Still more expensive than growatt but you would have per panel monitoring where the growatt would not.

I'm not sure what you mean by performance/complexity advantage
 
1201 said:
Signature solar is the lowest I've found at 30 for single and 46 for dual. No monitoring or optimization. If you know where it's lower please share ? since I'm in the market
Click to expand...
Hmm, for some reason I had $20 / $30 in my head. Was looking a few months ago. I don't see it now for the APSystems dual either.

1201 said:
I'm not sure what you mean by performance/complexity advantage
Click to expand...

Well with AC Coupling you need to buy a higher end hybrid or AIO that is capable of blending AC output between the storage and microinverter side, as well as rapidly flipping from charger to inverter mode. There's also the need to match max AC couple power with max charger / storage inverter power. (When operating off-grid.)

If you didn't have to comply with UL9540 or AFCI code you could just buy some extra MPPT and DC couple them onto the battery bus. (There isn't that a good selection of UL9540, AFCI MPPTs)
 
Shimmy said:
How does your metering work; does the utility credit your generation at wholesale and debit your total consumption at retail, or is it a net setup?
Click to expand...

Yes, my utility credits my generation at 5.5 cents and debits 11.627 cents for consumption. They also have a 4pm-8pm on peak demand charge of $2.00 per kWh. I run 100% off the batteries during that time and do peak shaving at 1500 watts during the rest of the night.
 
Balrog006 said:
Question, you went with Growatts for your AC conversion over what the SA could handle in DC from your array-was that option less expensive that individual micro inverters?

If you’re only seeing a max of 20kw from your array at any one time because of the different arrays on different roof sections did you consider and do the calculations for just running everything in DC to the SA?
Click to expand...

The Sol-Ark 15K had 16.5 kW plugged into it's DC MPPTs, that was going to be 19.8kW, but my wife vetoed the 4.5" overhang of the panels off the sides, after seeing it and I had to reconfigure the roof to remove six 550W panels.

I'm seeing a max of 20kW now, but during the summer time and with certain conditions, I think I could see more than 25kW, and the Sol-Ark will pull back the DC PV to prevent me from going over 25kW so I don't go over my Qualifying Facility agreement with my utility. Originally my system was going to be 36.82 kW until my wife saw that overhang, now it's just 33.52 kW.

I'm not a fan of micro-inverters and would rather have string inverters. This video put together my feelings I had about micro-inverters vs string inverters:
 
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OffGridForGood said:
Wondering what the cost of this system was 'all in'.
More ESS would be in the plan to make better use of all that PV, or an EV or two!
edit: I hope you have a plan for snow removal - or don't get any!
Click to expand...

Plan to grow the ESS to 60kWh and to add a single LFP EV in the future. Can't really get into costs. I budgeted $38K for the install, and I went way over. Wire, electrical components, and racking were a lot higher than I anticipated. Needed to buy two more SOK batteries as well as I was originally going with three. We'll see when my wife will allow us to buy more batteries.

Edit: Snow removal? The Photo Diary has a little video of 8-10" of snow sliding off the panels. Gravity seemed to take care of that. :)
 
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Well, I finished installing the five port switch and getting the Sol-Ark and the two Growatts connected to wired Ethernet. Got the PVC conduit bent and installed into the wire way. Ran a Cat5e cable through the battery conduit and installed it into the SOK RS232 port. Bought Solar Assistant and installed it on the Orange Pi and got the SOK batteries talking to it. So good progress today.

Still need to install a dedicated ground rod that the panels ground will connect to.

Did not need to install individual panel RSD according to my AHJ, this year (next year I believe that changes). So 13 strings are running directly to the three inverters. I don't want anything else on the roof. Getting to an individual panel to replace a DC optimizer would be a pain. Not to mention, probably not going to do that during winter?
 
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