NW OH DIY Roof Mount Solar

[TechRider]

Hello Everyone!

I'm working on my first solar install / design and wanted a place to document it. I've got about 3/4 of my parts in and am eager to get started.

Parts Overview -
Inverter: Sol-Ark 15k
Battery: Custom 4 x 16S EVE LF280k with JK BMS battery packs
Panels: 54 Q.PEAK DUO BLK-G6+ 340W panels
Racking: K2 Systems roof mount
Additional: Generac 24kW Propane Generator and ATS - Will eventually be controlled by the Sol-Ark

My panels and battery packs came in as well as the inverter! I'm getting very excited.

 

[houseofancients]

Hello Everyone!

I'm working on my first solar install / design and wanted a place to document it. I've got about 3/4 of my parts in and am eager to get started.

Parts Overview -
Inverter: Sol-Ark 15k
Battery: Custom 4 x 16S EVE LF280k with JK BMS battery packs
Panels: 54 Q.PEAK DUO BLK-G6+ 340W panels
Racking: K2 Systems roof mount
Additional: Generac 24kW Propane Generator and ATS - Will eventually be controlled by the Sol-Ark

My panels and battery packs came in as well as the inverter! I'm getting very excited.
View attachment 203481
View attachment 203482

nice, looks like you got a project on your hands ....
Enjoy and do share pictures of your build

 

[TechRider]

I've not posted much lately because I've been spending all my free time on my build. The weather has been terrible so getting on the roof to install the mounts has been a pain but I've made a lot of progress on the batteries. I have my first battery pack assembled and the BMS works!

Got the 15K mounted on a cement board sandwich. (It's level, my camera was not.)


Combiner mounted - lots more to do here if the weather would play nice.


Here's the cabinet I got to hold the batteries.




First modifications...


Testing batteries... They've all tested really well so far. The lowest has been 301AH.


Victron mounted with fuses added.


Cabinet shaping up nicely.


Final placement for everything. It's a little tight but that's what you get when you're short on space. I left room to the right of the 15K in-case I need to add a 2nd down the road.


Mostly wired, still need a little wire management. The lights inside the cabinet will be powered from the battery and has a switch on the upper left side in the first cut out picture.



She lives! I'm replacing my 3D printed faceplate with ones cut from acrylic and will have the letter filled with white paint. 3D printed the light holder and it's connected to the same lights inside. Provides a little light in that dark side.


Wired up the 10awg for the solar. I'll be pulling 8 AWG from my combiner.

 

[utkvols]

I love the durham cabinet. Do you know the model number by chance? If I expand my pack I would look at getting one of these- I love that you can panel mount - it just makes everything much cleaner

 

[TechRider]

I love the durham cabinet. Do you know the model number by chance? If I expand my pack I would look at getting one of these- I love that you can panel mount - it just makes everything much cleaner

Yep, it's the 2601-3S-95. The thing was expensive. I ended up putting on cinder blocks as well to elevate it in the room. We have our water treatment in the same room so I wanted to give it a little extra safety factor.

 

[jarred125]

Im jealous of the neutral and ground bars on the newer Solark 15K. They are awful on the early models.

 

[TechRider]

So far I'm pretty impressed with the 15k, it's been easy to work with so far.

Saturday is supposed to be nice so I'm hoping to finish up getting my mounting rails on the roof and start working on some of the wiring. I'm really looking forward to throwing some PV power at the Sol-Ark.

 

[houseofancients]

I've not posted much lately because I've been spending all my free time on my build. The weather has been terrible so getting on the roof to install the mounts has been a pain but I've made a lot of progress on the batteries. I have my first battery pack assembled and the BMS works!

Got the 15K mounted on a cement board sandwich. (It's level, my camera was not.)
View attachment 208938

Combiner mounted - lots more to do here if the weather would play nice.
View attachment 208948

Here's the cabinet I got to hold the batteries.
View attachment 208932



First modifications...
View attachment 208934

Testing batteries... They've all tested really well so far. The lowest has been 301AH.
View attachment 208936

Victron mounted with fuses added.
View attachment 208939

Cabinet shaping up nicely.
View attachment 208940

Final placement for everything. It's a little tight but that's what you get when you're short on space. I left room to the right of the 15K in-case I need to add a 2nd down the road.
View attachment 208941

Mostly wired, still need a little wire management. The lights inside the cabinet will be powered from the battery and has a switch on the upper left side in the first cut out picture.
View attachment 208943


She lives! I'm replacing my 3D printed faceplate with ones cut from acrylic and will have the letter filled with white paint. 3D printed the light holder and it's connected to the same lights inside. Provides a little light in that dark side.
View attachment 208946

Wired up the 10awg for the solar. I'll be pulling 8 AWG from my combiner.
View attachment 208947

Nice build !!

 

[JoeHam]

Saturday is supposed to be nice so I'm hoping to finish up getting my mounting rails on the roof and start working on some of the wiring. I'm really looking forward to throwing some PV power at the Sol-Ark.

I’m also in NW OH and other than the Eclipse day the rain has been pouring.

Saturday and early Sunday are your best bet but whenever I get more panels up and wired it rains for a week .

Good luck from zip 43440 !

 

[TechRider]

It's been terrible! The only days it turns out to be nice, it shows rain a few days ahead so I schedule something else.

I'm about 1.5 hrs south of you! Thanks from 45814!

 

[TechRider]

I ditched my 3D printed face plates and used some a guy in town laser cut for me. They turned out awesome!!!

 

[TechRider]

2nd battery pack up and running! Got the JK BMS and the Sol-Ark to talk over CAN. Still need to figure out how to get the BMS's to talk in Parallel but I can actually test it now.

 

[TechRider]

I got the BMS and Sol-Ark talking with the BMS in parallel. It turned out to be super easy, just set the master dipswitch to 0 and the first to 1 and it worked. It reports up to the Sol-Ark everything that's needed.

I got my roof mounted transition panel and the conduit up to it ran but I didn't get any pictures. I got the inside wiring finished as well.


I cut the one tub just a little long but didn't realize it until after everything was run. I don't think it looks terrible and functions as it should.

Now time to get everything done on the roof!

 

[TechRider]

Finished my 3rd battery pack!

 

[TechRider]

It's basically done! I still have to wait for my interconnect but I'm able to generate power and run off my batteries.

Used a forklift to raise the panels over the roofline so we didn't have to carry them back and forth.

I even got the 2 wire start hooked up to my generator. Just need to do some extra testing/etc to make sure it works as planned.

 

[TechRider]

I also wanted to check that my batteries were performing well thermally. Things looked good. The heat on the actual batteries was a reflection of my body.

 

[Subdood]

Sweet set up, looks good, you got all that done quickly. So the Solark can do battery percentage with diy batteries? I don't have one, was just curious, looks like it was easy to set up. I have an EG4 6500 with a couple of their rack batteries.

Hey from NE KY..

 

[TechRider]

Thanks! I really wanted to be done by 5/15 and I was able to do it!

Yep, I used the JK Inverter BMS that has COM built in. It seems to be working well. Once I got the dip switches set, I set the com protocol to pylontech and plugged it in, then it just worked. There has only been a couple nights that I haven't fully run off battery overnight. I only generate around 4kwh during overcast/rainy days so my batteries didn't get fully recharged.

I have a pool that I run over the summer and I've started it up. Looks like the pump uses just over 1kwh constantly. I built a custom pump control solution so I could shutoff a 240v pump from 2 locations. I added a timer on to it so I'll be able to shut it off from 11pm - 5am and save about 6kwh overnight.

 

[Subdood]

You have about 56KWh of batts, right? I'm guessing they don't get too low, or are you running everything off your system?

Your pump project sounds like what I'm thinking on doing with my water heater tank. It runs on 240V at 3.6KW, but my inverter is a 120 V unit. So I'm considering adding a DPDT switch to switch it between grid and my inverter so to use some of my excess PV to run the water heater during the day.

 

[TechRider]

Since the pool is running, they run to about 36% every night. A couple nights they got down to 20% which is where my TOU settings tell it to stop and run off grid. I run as much as my house as I can off the system right now. My average use is about 2.6kwh constant with spikes to 7.7kwh because of my water heater. Then when the stove and coffee maker run, I get a nice extended use in the morning.

Here's today so far:


I've been slowly tweaking my zero export settings. I started with 200w, then to 100w, then to 50w and now I'm at 20w.

 

[Subdood]

Oh okay seems like you need all that battery capacity. You need more!

Our 10kwh bank just drops to maybe 60% overnight, but we're just running our 120V stuff off it. My 3.6KW array usually charges it back up by noon. We average about 4-5KWh of PV production a day. On weekends we occasionally get 10k a day, if we run a lot of laundry or run the space heater, but we don't need that now, obviously. Was also thinking of putting in a high efficiency window AC unit to soak up extra production.

 

[TechRider]

I've got a 2400sq ft house that was setup for traditional power. I got tired of $300-$600/m electric bills so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I have a terrible tendency to upgrade right after finishing something so I thought I better basically start with full panels and decent storage and go from there. I figure I'd need about 50% more battery to get me where I want but we'll have to see how the fall/winter goes first.

I'll turn my AC on here soon and that'll really show how things will go.

 

[Subdood]

Did you end up using all your panels? I can't imagine 54 panels on a roof, but we live in a single wide, so..

Do you think the Solark can start your A/C? Is a mini split or heat pump? Using a soft start can help lessen the inrush current on such devices.

 

[TechRider]

I bought 56 just in case there were any issues but all 54 are installed on the roof. I've hit higher production than I thought I would with 8 total panels facing E / W. (4 each) My main roof section has 36 panels, then 9 on each side. 5 S facing and 4 E/W depending on the side.

I'm not sure... My AC is a 30+ yr old Geothermal system with an extra pump. Since I'm grid tied and the 15k has a 200a pass-through, I don't think it'll be a problem, I'll just have a grid spike every now and then. Most of this I just "shot from the hip" with basic numbers and will go from there.

That being said, I'm very very happy with the way things have been performing so far. I keep making little tweaks here and there. For instance, in my basement we had 3 - 4 bulb florescent lights that I noticed were using about 3.4a while running. I bought some LED replacements and when I was replacing them, one of them the ballast was almost too hot to touch. While the lights are on, we now use about 0.8a. My kids tend to be in the basement a lot, so that's going to help. We had the same thing in a room further in the back.

My big energy draw that I need to work on is my hot water. It's running very frequently, almost too often. I'm digging into that more now.

 

[TechRider]

Well, I finally bit the bullet and turned on the AC. Looks like it uses a pretty stable 3.2kwh while it's running. There was a little spike to 4.5kw when it started but it didn't last long. It's also the first time it has ran in 6 months or so, so there could be a couple startup priming actions that used a little more power.