Isle of wight
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2022
- Messages
- 6
Hi
To give you some background. I have built a little off grid system for my garage. It consists of 4 x 120W panels in serial. 1 x 1500 watt Pwer inverter with low voltage disconnect. 2 x 110mh batteries ( these were old ones that charged up fine but I have no idea as to their performance) a Votlmeter to read the power output of my Inverter a MPPT 30A charge controler.
I am running
6 x 7W DC lightbulbs directly from the controller
4 x Motorcycle chargers, 1 drill charger, 1 vacume charger, that are constantly drawing 1.5amps
I also have a PIR floodlight that takes 3 more amps when its on.
I also run power tools occasionally which the system has been happy with.
So here come the questions.
One of the panels glass is shattered. I cover in clear plastic to hold this together. Will this effect my array? Would I get better perfomance by removing it and just running 3 x 120V ? Could I then on a seperate cable run attach it to my controler to al least get a little bit more coming in?
How can you test these old batteries to see how efficiant they are? Like on my phone is shows my battery degrading so its currently all good at 92%. Again would it be better to have one 110 new battery than a matching pair of old ones.
As we are coming to winter, and I live in a very windy location, I thought I would add a small wind turbine claims 800w but most only get 100W from it.. Can I add this to the batteries with a seperate charge controller. I asked the dealer if i needed a 'dump kit" and he said "the controller of the wind turbine has an unloading resistor, which can automatically brake." which left me confused.
Fuses. None of this small system is fused. Do I need to on such a small one? If yes what do I need and where to you plug it in?
Thanks all in advance.
To give you some background. I have built a little off grid system for my garage. It consists of 4 x 120W panels in serial. 1 x 1500 watt Pwer inverter with low voltage disconnect. 2 x 110mh batteries ( these were old ones that charged up fine but I have no idea as to their performance) a Votlmeter to read the power output of my Inverter a MPPT 30A charge controler.
I am running
6 x 7W DC lightbulbs directly from the controller
4 x Motorcycle chargers, 1 drill charger, 1 vacume charger, that are constantly drawing 1.5amps
I also have a PIR floodlight that takes 3 more amps when its on.
I also run power tools occasionally which the system has been happy with.
So here come the questions.
One of the panels glass is shattered. I cover in clear plastic to hold this together. Will this effect my array? Would I get better perfomance by removing it and just running 3 x 120V ? Could I then on a seperate cable run attach it to my controler to al least get a little bit more coming in?
How can you test these old batteries to see how efficiant they are? Like on my phone is shows my battery degrading so its currently all good at 92%. Again would it be better to have one 110 new battery than a matching pair of old ones.
As we are coming to winter, and I live in a very windy location, I thought I would add a small wind turbine claims 800w but most only get 100W from it.. Can I add this to the batteries with a seperate charge controller. I asked the dealer if i needed a 'dump kit" and he said "the controller of the wind turbine has an unloading resistor, which can automatically brake." which left me confused.
Fuses. None of this small system is fused. Do I need to on such a small one? If yes what do I need and where to you plug it in?
Thanks all in advance.