Less than perfect off-grid system

[boondox]

So if we say those panels are 250 watts you have around 3kW worth of panels. How many hours of full sun do they get in winter?

Do you have any idea what your night time load is in kWh? If not then you will need to do what is called an energy audit. This means finding out hoe much power every electrical device you use at night uses and then multiplying it by the number of hours used. If we have this information, the sun hours and your battery capacity we will be able to see if you are generating enough power for your needs and have a charging fault or if your system simply isn't sized correctly for your needs. I suspect the latter.

 

[sparrowhawk]

Lived in Ramona (San Diego Country Estates) for 18 years and loved the weather. Sunny pretty much year round and should generate lots of watts with properly angled panels provided you aren't shaded by one of the many hills present throughout the area. Hated to leave but an ex wife and lousy politics drove me to the east coast.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

reason your system if failing you is because you don't have a handle on the numbers involved

you probably draw more Wh/day in winter than you produce

I get maybe 5% in winter a lot of days. But I’m in a different place.

It can’t be the outback if it consistently doesn’t work the same time of year that has reduced sunlight

 

[MichaelK]

OK, I see the problem now. That is a massive L-16 battery bank. Those are 250W panels? 3000W is nowhere near enough to keep something that size charged. Let's say each 48V string is ~350Ah in size. That's 350Ah X 4 = 1400Ah total. At 1/8C charging, that works out to be 1400Ah/8= 175A. Charging at 50V, 175A X 50V = 8750W. Account for losses and throwing in a 85% fudgefactor, that works out to be 8750W/85% = 10,290W of panels.

So, you don't even have 1/3 of the panels you'd need to have to properly charge the system as assembled. Even at a more conservative 1/10C that's still 8240W of panels. This is the classic mistake of matching a far too large battery bank to a far too small solar array.

Was it Elite Solar that selected and installed the batteries, or were more added after installation. If they expected 3000W of fixed orientation panels to charge that, you did not get your money's worth. I started out with just one string of L-16s, and I charged them with 4500W. A company doing business in the solar industry should know better! I think what they did was go cheap, and tried to get only as many panels they could fit on a single 60A charge controller.

It looks like you have a lot a bare ground on the south side of your home, so what I would do is start investigating into upgrading with MUCH more solar. I would look into at least doubling , or better tripling what you have for solar input right now.

 

[grandmaoffgrid]

1500 feet

 

[grandmaoffgrid]

OK, I see the problem now. That is a massive L-16 battery bank. Those are 250W panels? 3000W is nowhere near enough to keep something that size charged. Let's say each 48V string is ~350Ah in size. That's 350Ah X 4 = 1400Ah total. At 1/8C charging, that works out to be 1400Ah/8= 175A. Charging at 50V, 175A X 50V = 8750W. Account for losses and throwing in a 85% fudgefactor, that works out to be 8750W/85% = 10,290W of panels.

So, you don't even have 1/3 of the panels you'd need to have to properly charge the system as assembled. Even at a more conservative 1/10C that's still 8240W of panels. This is the classic mistake of matching a far too large battery bank to a far too small solar array.

Was it Elite Solar that selected and installed the batteries, or were more added after installation. If they expected 3000W of fixed orientation panels to charge that, you did not get your money's worth. I started out with just one string of L-16s, and I charged them with 4500W. A company doing business in the solar industry should know better! I think what they did was go cheap, and tried to get only as many panels they could fit on a single 60A charge controller.

It looks like you have a lot a bare ground on the south side of your home, so what I would do is start investigating into upgrading with MUCH more solar. I would look into at least doubling , or better tripling what you have for solar input right now.

Thank you.

 

[schmism]

As a point of reference. These represent half my system. (half the solar, half the load - I have dual growatts in parallel)

I have ~400ah of battery which I can not charge fully with my current 5500w of pannels. (then plan is to boost that to 8k total this spring)

You'll note that my typical 24/7 consumption bounces between 1000-1500w continuous.
A typical day in winter only gets me 8-10hrs off grid.
A nice sunny day in winter might get me 16-18hrs
A nice sunny day in spring gets me 24hrs
A nice sunny day in summer back to 16-18hrs because my continuous is high and I loose power to hot panels.

 

[Wellbuilt]

OK, I see the problem now. That is a massive L-16 battery bank. Those are 250W panels? 3000W is nowhere near enough to keep something that size charged. Let's say each 48V string is ~350Ah in size. That's 350Ah X 4 = 1400Ah total. At 1/8C charging, that works out to be 1400Ah/8= 175A. Charging at 50V, 175A X 50V = 8750W. Account for losses and throwing in a 85% fudgefactor, that works out to be 8750W/85% = 10,290W of panels.

So, you don't even have 1/3 of the panels you'd need to have to properly charge the system as assembled. Even at a more conservative 1/10C that's still 8240W of panels. This is the classic mistake of matching a far too large battery bank to a far too small solar array.

Was it Elite Solar that selected and installed the batteries, or were more added after installation. If they expected 3000W of fixed orientation panels to charge that, you did not get your money's worth. I started out with just one string of L-16s, and I charged them with 4500W. A company doing business in the solar industry should know better! I think what they did was go cheap, and tried to get only as many panels they could fit on a single 60A charge controller.

It looks like you have a lot a bare ground on the south side of your home, so what I would do is start investigating into upgrading with MUCH more solar. I would look into at least doubling , or better tripling what you have for solar input right now.

Hi mike , it sure looks like that inverter in the pic is a new outback 8000watts inverter /charger with 2 100amp charge controllers ?

 

[boondox]

@grandmaoffgrid We really need the details requested if you are going to get any meaningful help. Otherwise we have to spend $10.99 a minute for Dionne Warwick's Psychic Network.

 

[MichaelK]

Hi mike , it sure looks like that inverter in the pic is a new outback 8000watts inverter /charger with 2 100amp charge controllers ?

Yes, I think that's right. I didn't notice the second charge controller at first, but now I see it. So, there's enough capacity to install far more panels.

I can see two routes to take at this point. Either upgrade the solar to the levels the batteries need, or scale back consumption down to the 3-4kWh range. We need to know what loads are actually being run? If there's an electric stove, then I'd say forget the second choice.

 

[Wellbuilt]

Hi mike , it sure looks like that inverter in the pic is a new outback 8000watts inverter /charger with 2 100amp charge controllers ?

Allso I think the generator is not charging the battery , it’s just running the house until the sun comes up ?
I’m thinking the charger is not set to the. Correct settings . Outback’s units will charge with dirty power .

 

[MichaelK]

Allso I think the generator is not charging the battery , it’s just running the house until the sun comes up ?
I’m thinking the charger is not set to the. Correct settings . Outback’s units will charge with dirty power .

That might be right, it seems the OP knows very little about the operations of the system. With my own 6848, I have the generator going straight into ACin, it is not directly connected to the cabin panel at all. I find that the Schneiders are a bit fussy about the power they get, and I needed to fiddle with the charge settings to get it to accept the power. I would guess that is beyond the abilities of the OP to do?

 

[WYtreasure]

Hey Grandma, I have a nickel's worth of advice. Don't let someone haul away your "dead" batteries quite yet. I can see a scoundrel "helping you out" in the wrong way. When all this gets sorted out, someone may suggest how to bring them back to life.

 

[Hedges]

LDC-Series-Welcome to LEOCH Lead Acid Battery, VRLA battery, UPS Battery, Motorcycle Battery, Car Battery, Golf Cart Battery,Gel Battery

Leoch mainly produces reserve power batteries, SLI batteries and motive power batteries and they include series products such as AGM VRLA batteries, VRLA-GEL battery, pure lead batteries, lead carbon battery, UPS high rate batteries, marine batteries, railway batteries, start-stop batteries...

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Hey Grandma, I have a nickel's worth of advice. Don't let someone haul away your "dead" batteries quite yet. I can see a scoundrel "helping you out" in the wrong way. When all this gets sorted out, someone may suggest how to bring them back to life.

Start by recharging them, one at a time. Got a 6V charger you can plug into your inverter's AC output?
If not, how about two at a time (12V) with one solar panel and one adjustable solar charge controller?

 

[Wellbuilt]

The out back has all kinds of settings in the mate that are very confusing .
There is a grid power setting and generator setting .
The generator setting is adjustable for voltage .
The mate also gos screwy if you don’t keep up with the updates ?
I had a mentor helping me in the beginning . And my system came from AWS the engineer that design the system Really knows his equipment .
He walked me thru the set up in the beginning .
I would bet that is a new system and the installer Dosent know how to set it up .
That why I buy from AWS they don’t leave you hanging

 

[MichaelK]

LDC-Series-Welcome to LEOCH Lead Acid Battery, VRLA battery, UPS Battery, Motorcycle Battery, Car Battery, Golf Cart Battery,Gel Battery

Leoch mainly produces reserve power batteries, SLI batteries and motive power batteries and they include series products such as AGM VRLA batteries, VRLA-GEL battery, pure lead batteries, lead carbon battery, UPS high rate batteries, marine batteries, railway batteries, start-stop batteries...

www.leoch.com

Start by recharging them, one at a time. Got a 6V charger you can plug into your inverter's AC output?
If not, how about two at a time (12V) with one solar panel and one adjustable solar charge controller?

Another option is to disconnect three of the four strings and just charge one at a time. If those panels are 3000W, then they should put out an honest 50A for a couple of hours around noon. Get one bank fully charged, evaluate it's remaining life, and then decide if the other strings can be salvaged. Right now at the end of February, I'd guess you might get around 3 sunhours in San Diego, so that would be 9kWh of power into one string.

What GMOG is going to need to do is cut consumption down to a bare minimum. I'd say with just a few lights, the TV and computer off and unplugged, but leaving the refrigerator running, she could limp by with about 2.5kWh of consumption. So, that would leave 6.5kWh to go into the string?

The next couple of days is going to be clear and sunny in San Diego. If charging just one string works, she can repeat this over the next four days to get each string charged up. I would very much not like to see tons of battery lead carted off the the recycler.

 

[Hedges]

Following recharge of a 48V string of 6V AGM batteries, disconnect from system and let voltage settle for a day.
Measure each battery, see how much voltage differs.

Based on SunXtender technical manual, I've tried to recharge and then equalize (they call it "conditioning") 12V AGM starting batteries (of other brands) that had become weak (automotive charging system doesn't deliver high enough voltage).
I first recharged with automatic charger, then charged with 14.5V CV/CC supply, then equalized with 15.5V CV/CC supply.

http://sunxtender.com/pdfs/Sun_Xtender_Battery_Technical_Manual.pdf

Perhaps some of the batteries got to a lower state of charged and were wrecked by sulfation, but with so many, maybe enough survive to have a few good strings.

 

[Ozark Tinkering]

@grandmaoffgrid We really need the details requested if you are going to get any meaningful help. Otherwise we have to spend $10.99 a minute for Dionne Warwick's Psychic Network.

Lucky for me I get her senior discount.

 

[Wellbuilt]

Another option is to disconnect three of the four strings and just charge one at a time. If those panels are 3000W, then they should put out an honest 50A for a couple of hours around noon. Get one bank fully charged, evaluate it's remaining life, and then decide if the other strings can be salvaged. Right now at the end of February, I'd guess you might get around 3 sunhours in San Diego, so that would be 9kWh of power into one string.

What GMOG is going to need to do is cut consumption down to a bare minimum. I'd say with just a few lights, the TV and computer off and unplugged, but leaving the refrigerator running, she could limp by with about 2.5kWh of consumption. So, that would leave 6.5kWh to go into the string?

The next couple of days is going to be clear and sunny in San Diego. If charging just one string works, she can repeat this over the next four days to get each string charged up. I would very much not like to see tons of battery lead carted off the the recycler.

It looks like she has new battery’s in her pic already

 

[MichaelK]

It looks like she has new battery’s in her pic already

Yes, but it looks like it hasn't yet been put into service. But that does not answer the root cause of the problem here, that her solar is inadequate for the winter months. GMOG has not given any indication of what her loads are like, but it's easy to see that she does not understand the basic concepts of input and output with her power consumption

I would guess she uses big-ticket items like electric heat, or an electric stove, which is sucking up every watt she produces. She also doesn't understand how to economize her consumption in the lean winter months because she has no handle on what's coming in and what's going out.