chrisski
Solar Boondocker
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2020
- Messages
- 5,210
I have a grid tied Outback Radian that has been operational for three days now And I’m going to leave some notes In this thread. I have installed an off-grid 3 kW Inverter 2.5 kw panel and 13 kWh battery packl assembled out of cells, and I had considered doing this myself, but I honestly was not up to task on this And got a contractor to do it, nd am happy for that.
Above is a picture about how it was assembled from the factory complete as a UL certified piece of equipment. Once the town inspected it, they had the contractor change the charge controller wiring thicker.
When I bought this, I thought I was just getting the inverter and did not realize all the other components. There is the load center on the bottom, three shunts on the inside, a Mate 3 interface, and an DC Flextech that tracks data, and the charge controllers on the right are have an AFCI attached to them. Had I done this myself, I probably would have bought those components individually, probably one at a time, not realizing I needed it for the build. The grid tied stuff has a lot more going into it.
Here is a drone shot of the panels on the roof. I would have done a much sloppier job doing this myself and getting each panel 50 LBS on the roof would be difficult. Putting it on the roof and runing the line through the conduit, I’d be teaching myself on the fly. To me that sucks, and that would be the easy part compared to the permitting and drawing up the plans.
I had been on a fixed rate plan prior to the install, but found I was on a TOU plan after the install I was pretty surprised to see a super off peak rate. Today was heavily overcast and raining, so with proably onlu 1kWh coming in today, I charged the batteries at lunch and that will take me from 4 PM when the inverter kicks on from the battery until 5 am, when it switches to the grid so the battery can charge and selling back starts.
Lastly, at least for today, the interface is not the one I’m used to, and I am learning it, but I take to new stuff a bit slow. This Outback Interface has so many more options than what I had been used to.
Above is a picture about how it was assembled from the factory complete as a UL certified piece of equipment. Once the town inspected it, they had the contractor change the charge controller wiring thicker.
When I bought this, I thought I was just getting the inverter and did not realize all the other components. There is the load center on the bottom, three shunts on the inside, a Mate 3 interface, and an DC Flextech that tracks data, and the charge controllers on the right are have an AFCI attached to them. Had I done this myself, I probably would have bought those components individually, probably one at a time, not realizing I needed it for the build. The grid tied stuff has a lot more going into it.
Here is a drone shot of the panels on the roof. I would have done a much sloppier job doing this myself and getting each panel 50 LBS on the roof would be difficult. Putting it on the roof and runing the line through the conduit, I’d be teaching myself on the fly. To me that sucks, and that would be the easy part compared to the permitting and drawing up the plans.
I had been on a fixed rate plan prior to the install, but found I was on a TOU plan after the install I was pretty surprised to see a super off peak rate. Today was heavily overcast and raining, so with proably onlu 1kWh coming in today, I charged the batteries at lunch and that will take me from 4 PM when the inverter kicks on from the battery until 5 am, when it switches to the grid so the battery can charge and selling back starts.
Lastly, at least for today, the interface is not the one I’m used to, and I am learning it, but I take to new stuff a bit slow. This Outback Interface has so many more options than what I had been used to.
