diy solar

diy solar

Off-grid house with a shop

Might as well share an update. I've had the system set up and running for 2 months now. Sol-ark 12k and Fortress eVault in the shed. 14 445W panels (7 East, 7 West) on the roof. 14 more panels will go on a South facing ground mount once I find time to dig post holes. Still have to finish the conduit inside the shed for the PV wires. RPi sitting on top of the Sol-ark, is running Solar-assistant to log and monitor the status.

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Looks really nice. Anytime I see conduit, that gets a thumbs up from me. Did you split your array into two strings? Running a single string, all in series, but having them mounted on different angles is going to hurt the power output greatly.
 
Looks really nice. Anytime I see conduit, that gets a thumbs up from me. Did you split your array into two strings? Running a single string, all in series, but having them mounted on different angles is going to hurt the power output greatly.

The 14 panels on the roof are wired in two parallel strings of 7, then into a combiner and into MPPT1 on Sol-ark. It was a compromise, since I already had a roof and it was close to my solar shed, so I made the decision to do an East/West set-up to extend the collection time.
MPPT2 will be maxed out with a South facing array, but it would be shaded till about 9am, while the roof mounted panels will catch the sun as soon as it rises.
 
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