Hi all,
New to solar and putting in a new system for our small, existing rural midwest USA residence.
We’re doing a (Sinclair, season-adjust rack) ground mount array with 32 bifacial 400W Canadian Solar panels (CS3W-400PB-AG) connected to a newly-built insulated shed (190 feet away) next to the existing utility meter. Inside the shed will initially be an EG4 18k hybrid inverter and a rack of 6 EG4LL batteries. The shed is sized to accommodate another rack of 6 batteries and another 18k, and we’ll be pulling double the necessary wire through our bored conduit between the array and shed in case we later decide to put up an additional array.
We have an electrician experienced with solar installs who will be doing the wiring and we contracted out the production of a system diagram which I am attaching here.
I am an experienced DIYer and software engineer comfortable with tech but I have no experience at all with solar power or high voltage systems like this. I’m hoping some experienced eyes in here could offer feedback on anything in the diagram that doesn’t make sense or leaves you scratching your head.
My simplistic description of what we want to accomplish is that we want to power the whole house from the following sources in order of priority:
1. solar generation
2. batteries
3. grid
We’re looking to sell excess solar back to the utility when available, but this is a low priority due to the shamefully low rate our utility pays.
Based on our pretty modest usage, I think the single 18k will cover our needs but we’ll be prepared to add another if needed. Our design includes a 200A manual transfer switch so we can effectively flip back and forth between straight grid and the inverter powering the house …just in case.
New to solar and putting in a new system for our small, existing rural midwest USA residence.
We’re doing a (Sinclair, season-adjust rack) ground mount array with 32 bifacial 400W Canadian Solar panels (CS3W-400PB-AG) connected to a newly-built insulated shed (190 feet away) next to the existing utility meter. Inside the shed will initially be an EG4 18k hybrid inverter and a rack of 6 EG4LL batteries. The shed is sized to accommodate another rack of 6 batteries and another 18k, and we’ll be pulling double the necessary wire through our bored conduit between the array and shed in case we later decide to put up an additional array.
We have an electrician experienced with solar installs who will be doing the wiring and we contracted out the production of a system diagram which I am attaching here.
I am an experienced DIYer and software engineer comfortable with tech but I have no experience at all with solar power or high voltage systems like this. I’m hoping some experienced eyes in here could offer feedback on anything in the diagram that doesn’t make sense or leaves you scratching your head.
My simplistic description of what we want to accomplish is that we want to power the whole house from the following sources in order of priority:
1. solar generation
2. batteries
3. grid
We’re looking to sell excess solar back to the utility when available, but this is a low priority due to the shamefully low rate our utility pays.
Based on our pretty modest usage, I think the single 18k will cover our needs but we’ll be prepared to add another if needed. Our design includes a 200A manual transfer switch so we can effectively flip back and forth between straight grid and the inverter powering the house …just in case.