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diy solar

diy solar

My 44kW vertical and bifacial set in Finland plus now 15kW roof mounted too.

Got FIL's panels installed yesterday. 12x550W=6,6kWp. It wasn't fun with extremely brittle roof tiles at 7-8m high with steep slope, but it's done. Had to use plywood sheets to be able to move around roof.

Later opened one of my older rack batt as it had runner cell (low voltage this time so original crappy passive balancer can't catch it). Installed Neey wiring and let it balance through night while cell voltages were 15x 3.335-3,336V and that one was 3,194V. After 8 hours of 4A active balancing there's still 0,088V delta while being on the flat area of charge curve so no wonder ~50mV original balancer is useless. Of course after I get things closer in the flat area, I do normal top balancing.

Can't be sure for this one, but so far after one Neey run, those original passive balancers are capable of keeping top balance from that on. That's why I only have one actual Neey balancer (~80e) and just have installed wirings (~11e) on few batts.
 
I just got my new panels connected.
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Usually my old array produces only about 8-10kW this time of day (16.30) because it is parallel to sun. Now I seem to have additional ~13kW on top of that. In the evening new panels get shaded around 20.30 but if sunny my old panels produce about 15kW up to 22.00. I think this is going to work just as I intended and the "big dip" gets leveled out.

Neey 4A has been top balancing now some three days and @56,4V there is still 220mV deviation. Doing top balance only after 3,47V cell voltage so maybe some 8-10 hours a day. Neey will balance it eventually and new panel array will help to keep batts full longer every day thus giving Neey more balancing time.
 
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Barn roof array is working nicely. Here's one Deye production from two days ago as weather has been cloudy/rainy otherwise.
Screenshot_20240808-230936_SOLARMAN Smart.jpg
Upper curve is total production (have seen 15,6kW peaks but not on that day). Far from ideal but 112kWh still. Middle one (left) is my old vertical array (11kWp) and lower (right) is new roof array (half of it = 7,7kWp). MPPT2 seems to clip for almost six hours at 6kW. Afternoon "big dip" is cured.

Here's vertical only production curve from almost ideal summer day (~75kWh).
10th June 2023.jpg
 
Just wanted to thank you for this thread. Its inspired me to try out an (18) 400W vertical panel setup on my farm. Nothing compared to yours, but appreciate the inspiration.

You are most welcome. Just keep in mind that verticals will loose you some summer production, but they will excel in winter so for me they are perfect, but I'm some 4000km more north than you. To get most of them adjustable racking is needed plus white reflective surroundings. Otherwise overpanel like I do as panels are usually cheapest part of build.

I'll be watching your thread. :cool:
 
Well, not quite that far... but quite a bit <smile>. I'm roughly 40 degrees north and Finland is what, about 64 degrees north? So about 2650km... but quite a bit. Seeing the Aurora requires very special conditions here - like once in lifetime conditions. Fortunately actually had that happen this year, all it took was 5 active sunspots simultaneously delivering their payload over a 48 hour window. At 65 years old, that is the first I've ever heard of it happening.

Still, our winters have much shorter days than our summers, and are generally overcast - so yeah, I'm tuning everything for winter. When all three strings are active, I should have about 10800 watts of panels active for a load I'm still learning, but believe to be slightly over a 1kW/hr average load. If that ends up grossly overpowering my office/workshop, then I'll move a string up to the house when I start that project.

Thanks again, and please feel invited to comment on my journey thread - it would be an honor.
 
My nerd friend installed Home Assistant today to my system and while I think it'll be awesome someday, now it's just intimidating.:sick: To make my two Deyes to work even somehow sensibly was hard enough and there's still two Bluesun inverters to connect (don't know if that's even possible) plus all programming for automation. Don't have time to study this now.

I hate computers and they seem to hate me back...
 
My nerd friend installed Home Assistant today to my system and while I think it'll be awesome someday, now it's just intimidating.:sick: To make my two Deyes to work even somehow sensibly was hard enough and there's still two Bluesun inverters to connect (don't know if that's even possible) plus all programming for automation. Don't have time to study this now.

I hate computers and they seem to hate me back...
Nah, just talk nice to them, be nice to them, and they will do what you ask of them ;)
 
20240818_133803.jpg

While HA is really nice, there are still many hiccups in my system. Biggest problem so far is flow chart halting after few seconds (both Firefox/Edge). I think this might be due to too fast refresh time reading my Deyes and combining some numbers to get total values (like total PV not shown on this picture though). There are others like Deye 4 showing grid disconnect all the time, different daily grid sell numbers, daily charge/discharge with MWh when it should be kWh...

Other than that my system is awesome with those new roof panels. Let's see if I can make them to heat for snow shedding in winter. I'd hate it if I had to clean them. Barn roof is pretty steep (50-60 degrees maybe) though so don't know how much self cleaning there is.
 
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While HA is really nice, there are still many hiccups in my system. Biggest problem so far is flow chart halting after few seconds (both Firefox/Edge). I think this might be due to too fast refresh time reading my Deyes and combining some numbers to get total values (like total PV not shown on this picture though). There are others like Deye 4 showing grid disconnect all the time, different daily grid sell numbers, daily charge/discharge with MWh when it should be kWh...

Other than that my system is awesome with those new roof panels. Let's see if I can make them to heat for snow shedding in winter. I'd hate it if I had to clean them. Barn roof is pretty steep (50-60 degrees maybe) though so don't know how much self cleaning there is.
If you have surplus power in the winter maybe just heat the whole barn?
 
If you have surplus power in the winter maybe just heat the whole barn?
I had many days last winter under 10kWh produced and even few days only 2kWh produced with my 44kWp system, so with current 60kWp It's going to be only marginally better. Certainly no surplus.:cry:
 
More battery! :)
Maybe, but for Nov-Dec-Jan I'd need something like 20MWh battery to make it off-grid. Last Dec my production was 0,4MWh and my consumption was ~7MWh. Doubling or even tripling my array wouldn't have any significant effect. For summer my current battery (110kWh usable) is quite enough and I haven't been buying electricity since middle April. Today I sold ~170kWh back to grid after getting my batts full. Made only something like 6e, but it's better than nothing.
 
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Bought a Battery Bank Manager System ver2. (BBMS2) today. With it I'll try to connect my 30kWh(C5) lead acid to some of my LFP and operate those together with single Deye. Let see how it goes.

Also LFP prices are low so decided to get 15kWh pack on wheels.
How's the BBMS integration working out, shadowmaker? What do you think?
 
How's the BBMS integration working out, shadowmaker? What do you think?
Haven't had any time to fiddle with it yet. There has been enough sun to be "off grid" so have been focusing on more important tasks so far. Winter is coming though so I hope I find time for that project too.
 
My Nibe Fighter 1330 GSHP has broken A-compressor (it has A and B compressors with on/off control). Found out that soft-start board is burned and 2-phase was missing and also overload relay is shot.

Got shitload of new white plastic film for free. Trying to lay it around my verticals before winter.
 
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Haven't had any time to fiddle with it yet. There has been enough sun to be "off grid" so have been focusing on more important tasks so far. Winter is coming though so I hope I find time for that project too.

Very cool. It's such a unique product, I can't tell what to think. The longevity angle may or may not be relevant - although for someone such as yourself harvesting energy to sell back to grid, the long term cost per kWh might make it more attractive. I'm doing a marine install.
 
Let's see if I can make them to heat for snow shedding in winter. I'd hate it if I had to clean them. Barn roof is pretty steep (50-60 degrees maybe) though so don't know how much self cleaning there is.
I got a "shaker" - from a bakery that we did some work on. They were tossing out the old one and electrician asked me if I wanted it.
(These are used in production bakery for keeping the flour moving/prevent sticking}

I bolted the shaker to the back side of my main array 10 440W CS PV - the array tilts up to 72-degrees for winter, and with the shaker on the back on a switch I can clear the snow in about 15-seconds, as long as there isn't any freezing rain layer on the PV glass.
I have thought of putting it on a timer to just run 10-20 seconds every morning at sunrise, but hey lots of other projects lined up ahead of that one.
Will see if I can find a picture of this thing for you to see what it looks like and how it is mounted.
 
I got a "shaker" - from a bakery that we did some work on. They were tossing out the old one and electrician asked me if I wanted it.
(These are used in production bakery for keeping the flour moving/prevent sticking}

I bolted the shaker to the back side of my main array 10 440W CS PV - the array tilts up to 72-degrees for winter, and with the shaker on the back on a switch I can clear the snow in about 15-seconds, as long as there isn't any freezing rain layer on the PV glass.
I have thought of putting it on a timer to just run 10-20 seconds every morning at sunrise, but hey lots of other projects lined up ahead of that one.
Will see if I can find a picture of this thing for you to see what it looks like and how it is mounted.
Haven't measured tilt of my roof array, maybe 50-60 degree. Powder snow maybe, but any other kind snow won't clear with shaker. I'd love to get them heat up for few minutes. My engineer friend is looking to this.
 
At 72-degrees, wet snow slides off pretty much on it's own, although the shaker does get it moving. And during the depth of winter all the snow is dry power stuff when it's cold out so the shaker works well for this snow.
The only trouble spot was a December late afternoon freezing rain, that turned into ice on the panels as the sun went down. Then it snowed over the frozen layer - that was trouble and the shaker had no effect at all really. Those panels are bi-facial and a few days later we got a bright enough day that the frozen layer melted just enough to slide off.
Interesting thing I have found between a layer of Ice and a layer of Snow - the ice layer still allows decent production while a layer of snow kills production.
Heat will definitely work, but how to heat a solar panel up on a roof is the issue, and at what cost. I have thought about heat trace cables attached to the alum frames, but only thoughts, not installed...
 
At 72-degrees, wet snow slides off pretty much on it's own, although the shaker does get it moving. And during the depth of winter all the snow is dry power stuff when it's cold out so the shaker works well for this snow.
The only trouble spot was a December late afternoon freezing rain, that turned into ice on the panels as the sun went down. Then it snowed over the frozen layer - that was trouble and the shaker had no effect at all really. Those panels are bi-facial and a few days later we got a bright enough day that the frozen layer melted just enough to slide off.
Interesting thing I have found between a layer of Ice and a layer of Snow - the ice layer still allows decent production while a layer of snow kills production.
Heat will definitely work, but how to heat a solar panel up on a roof is the issue, and at what cost. I have thought about heat trace cables attached to the alum frames, but only thoughts, not installed...
I think some push power to the panels to warm them up and get them to shed snow/ice
 
At 72-degrees, wet snow slides off pretty much on it's own, although the shaker does get it moving. And during the depth of winter all the snow is dry power stuff when it's cold out so the shaker works well for this snow.
The only trouble spot was a December late afternoon freezing rain, that turned into ice on the panels as the sun went down. Then it snowed over the frozen layer - that was trouble and the shaker had no effect at all really. Those panels are bi-facial and a few days later we got a bright enough day that the frozen layer melted just enough to slide off.
Interesting thing I have found between a layer of Ice and a layer of Snow - the ice layer still allows decent production while a layer of snow kills production.
Heat will definitely work, but how to heat a solar panel up on a roof is the issue, and at what cost. I have thought about heat trace cables attached to the alum frames, but only thoughts, not installed...
Panels act like radiators when you push power into them. This needs to be done carefully so I don't trust my understanding of it, hence my engineer friend is looking to it.
 

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