Post your Ground Mount Setup: No questions or comments on the setup. (pictures only)
- Thread starter drps10
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B-Mod
Solar Addict
I think this is my final, no more planned additions (added 15kw earlier this spring). 74kw total.
Gold Country Russ
Solar Enthusiast
Temporary ballasted ground mount 7ea 400W CS bi-facial driving EG4 24K heat pump. Welded .120" x1.25" Sq. Tube
ShirBlackspots
Solar Enthusiast
Panels in winter config
Nobodybusiness
Solar Sponge.
42OhmsPA
What's in a title?
Hopefully I'll get this one finished by Saturday. 3.7KW facing SW.
Edit to add -
Used C channel pallet racking, unistrut and lots of concrete. Still debating extra bracing.
Edit to add -
Used C channel pallet racking, unistrut and lots of concrete. Still debating extra bracing.
HighDesertOffgrid
Solar Wizard
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2022
- Messages
- 853
They don't actually touch the ground.
ShirBlackspots
Solar Enthusiast
Some more work, first set angled
42OhmsPA
What's in a title?
Pretty much done, verified wiring and closed the breakers this morning; need to finalize the tilt bracing and backfill the trench.
Left was put up last year, right is newest.
doityourself2021
Never Growatt Again - Ever
Very Nicely Done... Your going to catch up to Andy in AU.. LOL
ShirBlackspots
Solar Enthusiast
And tilting done. Today's result in mid fall, is 5.92kWh and peak of 1094W (since the one on the right was flat all day)
Wessss77
Solar Enthusiast
Integra rack ir-30 wip. Will have 7ea 405w ESE facing for the morning kick start in the winter.
Edit: And the 7 panels wired up... The extra wire is for when we want to do double Dutch with friends...
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Brucey
Emperor Of Solar
Moved the ten Aptos 370Ws to a sunnier spot facing south east. And tried out the Sun Locator app, going to need to do some trimming for winter.
Brett V
Mad Scientist
Finally finished my solar buildout. No more big projects for me, I'm done.
The roof mount is a SolarEdge grid tied system that's been working very well for nearly 10 years.
The off grid system started with the ten 325 watt panels to the left. They're 72 cell commercial panels and work great in a 2s 5p configuration.
Phase 2 began with the purchase of eight 410 watt split cell panels and a pair of eG4 Brightmount racks with the intention of using them in a 2s 4p arrangement. Well I didn't check the math ahead of time and the 2s voltage was too low to keep the mppt happy. I explored going 4s but determined that I was flirting with going over voltage on a cold morning and don't want to fry the mppt in the Growatt. My only option to use these panels without a new mppt was 3s and I only had eight panels. Fortunately I was able to source one more panel locally that's got the same electrical specifications.
The original plan was to combine everything at the mounts and run a single set of cables to the house. Since the 9th panel had to be mounted somewhere else, (you can see it tucked in the upper right corner of the first rack next to the porch) I had to run three separate runs of cable and put the combiner under the porch.
It's finally all done and working great! The brightmount racking system is surprisingly solid and aesthetically pleasing to the warden. Digging eight 12" holes down to 34-36 inches was a ball buster and I'll never do that again. On the advice from a few electrician types here, I went with 1" conduit and am glad I did. Pulling six strands of 10 awg THHN plus a ground wire was easy.
The roof mount is a SolarEdge grid tied system that's been working very well for nearly 10 years.
The off grid system started with the ten 325 watt panels to the left. They're 72 cell commercial panels and work great in a 2s 5p configuration.
Phase 2 began with the purchase of eight 410 watt split cell panels and a pair of eG4 Brightmount racks with the intention of using them in a 2s 4p arrangement. Well I didn't check the math ahead of time and the 2s voltage was too low to keep the mppt happy. I explored going 4s but determined that I was flirting with going over voltage on a cold morning and don't want to fry the mppt in the Growatt. My only option to use these panels without a new mppt was 3s and I only had eight panels. Fortunately I was able to source one more panel locally that's got the same electrical specifications.
The original plan was to combine everything at the mounts and run a single set of cables to the house. Since the 9th panel had to be mounted somewhere else, (you can see it tucked in the upper right corner of the first rack next to the porch) I had to run three separate runs of cable and put the combiner under the porch.
It's finally all done and working great! The brightmount racking system is surprisingly solid and aesthetically pleasing to the warden. Digging eight 12" holes down to 34-36 inches was a ball buster and I'll never do that again. On the advice from a few electrician types here, I went with 1" conduit and am glad I did. Pulling six strands of 10 awg THHN plus a ground wire was easy.
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PG_NZ
New Member
6 x 400w panels mounted in landscape, plus 3 x 440w panels added later. Location: New Zealand. Latitude: 41 deg south.
Adjustable legs, 3 per panel. I move them four times each year. 30, 45, 60 degrees above the horizontal.
30 deg, 5 months 15 Oct to 15 Mar
45 deg, 2 months 15 Mar to 15 May
60 deg, 3 months, 15 May to 15 Aug
45 deg, 2 months 15 Aug to 15 Oct
Note the linear actuator laying on the roof. Manually undoing the grub-screws each time and moving them by hand wasn't such a pain, so I decided not to bother automating it.
Adjustable legs, 3 per panel. I move them four times each year. 30, 45, 60 degrees above the horizontal.
30 deg, 5 months 15 Oct to 15 Mar
45 deg, 2 months 15 Mar to 15 May
60 deg, 3 months, 15 May to 15 Aug
45 deg, 2 months 15 Aug to 15 Oct
Note the linear actuator laying on the roof. Manually undoing the grub-screws each time and moving them by hand wasn't such a pain, so I decided not to bother automating it.
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Last edited:
Martin Maat
New Member
I need writing to clarify what I did and why. Please bare with me.
Backstory
I had some panels on a roof in an east-west orientation that did not quite cover my electricity consumption (they did about half) so I wanted more.
I do have some more roof surface facing south (top right of photo) which would be ideal but that is on the main house and the wife has a particular opinion about aesthetics which renders most of that surface unusable. The next best thing was a narrow strip at the edge of the property, the looks of which she declared not to care about. So an in-line groundmount it would have to be.
I started looking at off-the-shelf groundmount solutions for solar panels and soon found that even the cheaper ones would cost me more than all electrical components combined, which seemed pointless, so I would have to make my own rackmount. After comparing material options it appeared that steel would still be rather expensive and for most of the available beam types, impractical. Whatever I could get as reclaimed parts was either not enough, too heavy or more than I needed and still expensive. It would have to be timber for me.
I had about 18 meters to spare but not much depth. I should have taken a picture before I started building, here's the earliest one I have. Note the electric fence along the grass border. At the far end along the back of the shed it gets even narrower.
The theoretical average yearly optimum tilt angle for my latitude would be problematic. Considering my east-west set covered my usage most of the summertime and the new set was to fill the gap in wintertime, I would be better off with a more vertical mount anyway. My initial thought was to just fix them in between poles, totally vertical. This would require the least mounting material, would be quick and easy to build and certainly could not be any cheaper. This would give me relatively good yields on the darkest days when the sun is low in the sky. In retrospect this still seems like a good idea. What kept me from doing this was my fear of storms. I am out in the fields, we do get the occasional storm and I had a particular type of pole in mind that did not convince me strengthwise without some kind of structure. Of course I could have just gone for thicker poles, like 10 cm square ones. On the other hand I would loose some yield and a slight tilt would allow me to build a rack with triangles which would be a lot stronger, given reasonably sized poles and beams. A 60 degree angle seemed like the sweet spot, this is what I ultimately went for.
Clearing the Site
Tree branches were hanging over the strip where the rack was to be build, into the neighbor's field. It was time for some serious pruning anyway. Some of the branches almost touched the grass and inhibited mowing. The neighboring field is for grass production and grazing. The neighbor had not complained yet but given the situation he had every right to. I had to cut a lot, not just to make room for the cows and the mower but also to not obscure the sun during summer. And then there was my beloved wife again complicating things by expressing she did not want me to be too radical. Every thick branch became a negotiation. But in the end it looked like we had a clear path for the build, the sun and the marriage.
Requirements
I set the following requirements for myself:
The cheap requirement was more of a sport thing than a necessity. It just feels more like a win to me if I can get a quick ROI.
Durability pertains mainly to the rack. It was going to be wood and I did not want to see it rot away within a couple of years.
When I drive up to my home the array would be very visible so I wanted it to look good. To me this means all black panels and preferrably no visible nuts or bolts.
My existing system is a SolarEdge one, installed in 2016. I have had about half of the optimizers fail on me since. They gave me headaches, considerable downtime and a lot of work. Their benefits have been proven questionable at best, the whole experience put me off regarding the brand and the technology.
Gear
So, after doing a fair amount of reading I ended up buying 16 Hyundai-HG-435Wp-PERCIUM-Shingled-Full-Black panels totalling 6960 Wp and a 5000 Watt Goodwe inverter. I did not expect to ever saturate the inverter given the 60 degree angle. I considered buying the "battery ready" version inverter that Goodwe offers which would have been 900 Euros instead of 600 Euros. The supported battery brands are limited though and would I ever make use of it? I figured if the time would ever come, I would be better off selling or repurposing that plain inverter and buying whatever would be most appropriate by then. Or go with an AC coupled system which would make the whole consideration moot. So I settled for the plain one, a GW5000-DNS-30.
Rack Construction
I started with 15 68x68 mm poles measuring 3 meters in length. 270 cm might have done also. The latter is the more common length in my area. With a bit of trigonometry and Pythagoras I figured out a workable way to get one shorter front pole and one longer back pole out of a single 3 meter pole, such that each part goes into the ground the same number of centimeters and the 60 degree slopes at the top align perfectly. In my case this meant putting the front and back poles 60 cm apart. The distance of these pole sets apart from each other (in the long direction) are to be chosen taking into account the stiffness of the horizontal bars to be fixed on the poles and the panel width plus gap width. You do not want the rims of a panel to align with a pole set if your choice of fixing relies on putting a bolt through the horizontal layers. In my case 125 cm seemed workable.
To get the 60 degree angles you need to first cut the pole at a right angle because a miter saw cannot cut more that 45 degrees midway. With an adaptor it can saw sharper angles from beam ends. YouTube has several instructional videos up on how to do that.
Your timber will be most sensitive to degradation at ground level and somewhat further down depending on the type of soil and wetness. In most cases you would want some kind of protection. My poles were of the greenish, impregnated with arsenic stuff type. I know from experience this only helps a little for a couple of years so I added a layer of black tar. I am not sure about the translation here. The stuff I used was disappointing, more on that later. There are better solutions, sleaves that can be shrunk onto the pole with a blow torch. I found these too expensive though so I will rely on prayers instead.
I placed the poles as accurate as I could, first puting some sticks in the ground for reference, marking them all at the same height using a laser level. You should not assume your ground is level over the length of your rack. If you don't have the laser level you can use a transparent hose with water or a long straight aluminium beam (that I cannot find the proper English word for) and tape a spirit level to it. This will be less acurate because you will need several hops but then again, we are not building a Hadron collider. You best place the fist pole sets further apart so you can look past them to get the inner sets aligned. I used a simple manual auger to drill holes in the ground. If the soil is really dry or sandy your hole will be filled again as you pull up the auger. A bit of water will make it better. You may need to widen the hole a couple of times and kick the pole a bit to get it both in line and straight up (use a spirit level).
If you did well you should be able to put beams on the sloping parts of the poles in a straight line without wandering off. I used long (100 mm) screws and predrilled just the beam part.
Then you have to decide how you are going to fix your panels to the rack. You can do this the smart and easy way or the stupid and hard way. The latter yields a slightly better looking result and is more theft proof than the former. Whether this is worth the trouble is of course a personal matter.
The thing is, if you go the easy way, how you go about the rest of your build won't matter much. If you choose the hard way, you can easily make it extra hard to fix your panels. But let's build that rack first in the most defensive way possible.
[to be continued...]
Backstory
I had some panels on a roof in an east-west orientation that did not quite cover my electricity consumption (they did about half) so I wanted more.
I do have some more roof surface facing south (top right of photo) which would be ideal but that is on the main house and the wife has a particular opinion about aesthetics which renders most of that surface unusable. The next best thing was a narrow strip at the edge of the property, the looks of which she declared not to care about. So an in-line groundmount it would have to be.
I started looking at off-the-shelf groundmount solutions for solar panels and soon found that even the cheaper ones would cost me more than all electrical components combined, which seemed pointless, so I would have to make my own rackmount. After comparing material options it appeared that steel would still be rather expensive and for most of the available beam types, impractical. Whatever I could get as reclaimed parts was either not enough, too heavy or more than I needed and still expensive. It would have to be timber for me.
I had about 18 meters to spare but not much depth. I should have taken a picture before I started building, here's the earliest one I have. Note the electric fence along the grass border. At the far end along the back of the shed it gets even narrower.
The theoretical average yearly optimum tilt angle for my latitude would be problematic. Considering my east-west set covered my usage most of the summertime and the new set was to fill the gap in wintertime, I would be better off with a more vertical mount anyway. My initial thought was to just fix them in between poles, totally vertical. This would require the least mounting material, would be quick and easy to build and certainly could not be any cheaper. This would give me relatively good yields on the darkest days when the sun is low in the sky. In retrospect this still seems like a good idea. What kept me from doing this was my fear of storms. I am out in the fields, we do get the occasional storm and I had a particular type of pole in mind that did not convince me strengthwise without some kind of structure. Of course I could have just gone for thicker poles, like 10 cm square ones. On the other hand I would loose some yield and a slight tilt would allow me to build a rack with triangles which would be a lot stronger, given reasonably sized poles and beams. A 60 degree angle seemed like the sweet spot, this is what I ultimately went for.
Clearing the Site
Tree branches were hanging over the strip where the rack was to be build, into the neighbor's field. It was time for some serious pruning anyway. Some of the branches almost touched the grass and inhibited mowing. The neighboring field is for grass production and grazing. The neighbor had not complained yet but given the situation he had every right to. I had to cut a lot, not just to make room for the cows and the mower but also to not obscure the sun during summer. And then there was my beloved wife again complicating things by expressing she did not want me to be too radical. Every thick branch became a negotiation. But in the end it looked like we had a clear path for the build, the sun and the marriage.
Requirements
I set the following requirements for myself:
- Cheap
- Durable
- Nice looking
- Technically robust (no optimizers)
The cheap requirement was more of a sport thing than a necessity. It just feels more like a win to me if I can get a quick ROI.
Durability pertains mainly to the rack. It was going to be wood and I did not want to see it rot away within a couple of years.
When I drive up to my home the array would be very visible so I wanted it to look good. To me this means all black panels and preferrably no visible nuts or bolts.
My existing system is a SolarEdge one, installed in 2016. I have had about half of the optimizers fail on me since. They gave me headaches, considerable downtime and a lot of work. Their benefits have been proven questionable at best, the whole experience put me off regarding the brand and the technology.
Gear
So, after doing a fair amount of reading I ended up buying 16 Hyundai-HG-435Wp-PERCIUM-Shingled-Full-Black panels totalling 6960 Wp and a 5000 Watt Goodwe inverter. I did not expect to ever saturate the inverter given the 60 degree angle. I considered buying the "battery ready" version inverter that Goodwe offers which would have been 900 Euros instead of 600 Euros. The supported battery brands are limited though and would I ever make use of it? I figured if the time would ever come, I would be better off selling or repurposing that plain inverter and buying whatever would be most appropriate by then. Or go with an AC coupled system which would make the whole consideration moot. So I settled for the plain one, a GW5000-DNS-30.
Rack Construction
I started with 15 68x68 mm poles measuring 3 meters in length. 270 cm might have done also. The latter is the more common length in my area. With a bit of trigonometry and Pythagoras I figured out a workable way to get one shorter front pole and one longer back pole out of a single 3 meter pole, such that each part goes into the ground the same number of centimeters and the 60 degree slopes at the top align perfectly. In my case this meant putting the front and back poles 60 cm apart. The distance of these pole sets apart from each other (in the long direction) are to be chosen taking into account the stiffness of the horizontal bars to be fixed on the poles and the panel width plus gap width. You do not want the rims of a panel to align with a pole set if your choice of fixing relies on putting a bolt through the horizontal layers. In my case 125 cm seemed workable.
To get the 60 degree angles you need to first cut the pole at a right angle because a miter saw cannot cut more that 45 degrees midway. With an adaptor it can saw sharper angles from beam ends. YouTube has several instructional videos up on how to do that.
Your timber will be most sensitive to degradation at ground level and somewhat further down depending on the type of soil and wetness. In most cases you would want some kind of protection. My poles were of the greenish, impregnated with arsenic stuff type. I know from experience this only helps a little for a couple of years so I added a layer of black tar. I am not sure about the translation here. The stuff I used was disappointing, more on that later. There are better solutions, sleaves that can be shrunk onto the pole with a blow torch. I found these too expensive though so I will rely on prayers instead.
I placed the poles as accurate as I could, first puting some sticks in the ground for reference, marking them all at the same height using a laser level. You should not assume your ground is level over the length of your rack. If you don't have the laser level you can use a transparent hose with water or a long straight aluminium beam (that I cannot find the proper English word for) and tape a spirit level to it. This will be less acurate because you will need several hops but then again, we are not building a Hadron collider. You best place the fist pole sets further apart so you can look past them to get the inner sets aligned. I used a simple manual auger to drill holes in the ground. If the soil is really dry or sandy your hole will be filled again as you pull up the auger. A bit of water will make it better. You may need to widen the hole a couple of times and kick the pole a bit to get it both in line and straight up (use a spirit level).
If you did well you should be able to put beams on the sloping parts of the poles in a straight line without wandering off. I used long (100 mm) screws and predrilled just the beam part.
Then you have to decide how you are going to fix your panels to the rack. You can do this the smart and easy way or the stupid and hard way. The latter yields a slightly better looking result and is more theft proof than the former. Whether this is worth the trouble is of course a personal matter.
The thing is, if you go the easy way, how you go about the rest of your build won't matter much. If you choose the hard way, you can easily make it extra hard to fix your panels. But let's build that rack first in the most defensive way possible.
[to be continued...]
Attachments
Last edited:
Martin Maat
New Member
[second and last part]
It appeared messages cannot have more than 10000 characters on this forum so I had to split mine. That wasn't too hard but the attached images remained with the first part, apparently causing the second part not to display images inline. It is just links now but images can be viewed by clicking the links.
I did two things wrong. To make the structure rigid, I screwed beams to the sides of each short and long pole pair. This works in the sense that it serves the purpose but it is not the prettiest and more importantly, it creates a bigger chance for getting in trouble when fixing the panels using carriage bolts. The better way to do this is to cut the beam at 60 degrees on both sides using the miter saw, pre-drill holes and screw **onto** the poles rather than to their sides, as I did with the first one:
View attachment 252952
The other mistake I made was in the way I connected the horizontal beam parts. This creates parts where the beam is twice as thick.
View attachment 252953
If that is where a panel rim ends up, you will need a longer carriage bolt and it will be harder to hit the rim at the right spot with your drill. So the way to go here is to use the top and the bottom of the horizontal beams for connecting them rather than the back for the spots that have panel transitions. I used both timber glue (the outdoor type that is water resistant) and screws.
About the quick and easy way versus the stupid and tedious way: all of the potential problems outlined above are non-existent when proceeding by buying one of these:
View attachment 252954
Chop it up in 10 cm pieces, screw them onto the horizontal beams at the panel transition spots and then use regular, standard fixtures to clamp the panels down onto the aluminium pieces. I recommend to do it this way. The only downsides, if you can call it that and it applies to your situation, are that the clamps can be perceived as ugly and the panels are quite easily removed (stolen). On the other hand, if you are the one to remove the panels later for whatever legitimate reason, you will appreciate this.
Of course I wasn't that smart and figured it wouldn't be so bad to use carriage bolts instead. I will skip the ways I tried to do this that were nearly impossible and give you just the sort of workable way. You put a panel against the rack where you want to have it. Then shove it up into position and use glue clamps on the rims and the lower beam to keep it in position. Put a spirit level on the bottom rim and bump the panel until you're satisfied. Put another clamp on the top beam, tighten them both. You may need a helping hand for the first panel.
Once fixed in place you can drill holes, from the back of the horizontal beams, through the beam and the rim of the panel. Steer clear from any existing holes in the rim. Do not try to use existing holes. Use a drill bit the same size as the carriage bolt. I used 6 mm.
Be sure to either keep something in the rim to catch the drill bit when it shoots through or prepare your drill bit with some sort of ring that prevents it from going too deep. The white back is really thin and vulnerable, if you hit it you will chip off both the white layer and the black front leaving a peeping hole into your panel. I did this once, fortunately just clear from the active cells. A couple of millimeters off and I might have ruined the panel. If your drill bit is sharp it won't be hard to go through the aluminium rim. If it takes a long time or requires a lot of force, sharpen your bit first. Another thing to be aware off is to make sure you don't drill too close to the side. If you do you won't be able to fit a ring over the bolt anymore. Once through, you can push your bolt in, put a ring and nut on the other end and tighten it using a wrench. You do this on every corner (four bolts per panel).
View attachment 252957
View attachment 252958
If you have a lot of panels you will need to keep some space in between the panels to allow them to expand and shrink a bit. With 16 panels like I had, a possible 60 degrees Celcius temperature difference will result in several millimeters total size difference. I used self-adhesive window strip (draft proofing) to keep the panels apart. This looks really nice and it closes the entire gap.
View attachment 252960
I wanted to keep things as dry as possible underneath the panels to protect the rack where it enters the ground. It may have been overkill but afterwards I also sealed the gaps from the back with black PUR foam. This may prevent the window strip from coming loose in time and it makes it water tight. Or so I figured. It was not a success, it was just messy to apply and did not stick to the aluminium. I would have been better off using caulk.
Finally you will need to electrically connect the frames of the panels to one another and then to the chassis of your inverter. This prevents static build-up on your panel and prolongs their life span (the experts say). The panels have predrilled holes meant for this. You can buy wire clamps that fit these holes. It would have been nice had they come with the panels. I found out how to use these holes too late, I drilled my own holes, screwed parkers in them, wrapped the ground wire around them once and fastened the parkers. Not the prettiest solution but the contact is good. The black coating on the rim seemed to be an insulator. So whatever you do, make sure you have good contact with the bare aluminium.
View attachment 252961
To tidy things up at the back you will need a way to attach the wires to the panel. Unfortunately my panels have plus and minus leads coming out of the back of the panel on opposites sides lengthwise. Great for landscape mounts I guess, not so much for a portrait array. I had to run the leads mostly diagonally from the bottom of one panel to the top of the next. Leads attached to the panel are not long enough to tug them away behind the rim all the way. Fixing the leads to the back proved to be a bit of a problem. Duct tape is ugly and comes off within a day under the least of pull. I ended up using these which appear to hold up nicely.
View attachment 252969
The Final Result
View attachment 252962
View attachment 252963
The wood trim at the bottom which I added later is just an extra attempt to keep the wetness away from the poles and it looks nice. I am happy so far.
Afterthoughts, experiences
The years ahead will tell how the rack will hold up. I am still a little weary about the rot resistence of the poles in the long run. I did paint the lower ends with stuff sold as "Black tar" which has already proven to be rubbish. It is reduced to dry powder under a bit of sunlight in a matter of weeks. The parts where the poles enter the ground are mostly shadowed by the panels though so they may be alright for some time after all. The thing is, local laws have banned the poisonous stuff that really works a couple of years ago and the industry has come up with safe alternatives that are really just wastes of time and money.
I could have added a story about cable routing and trench digging (the thing is quite a bit away from where I could hook it up to the grid) but that's off topic here and probably less interesting. Same about the inverter and the panels, suffice to say I am not disappointed. I get over 5 kW power on a good day, even in October. I have seen yields well over 30 kWh per day and I'm very pleased with that. I spent under 2500 Euros for new panels, a new inverter, some new timber and small stuff like screws and bolts. I must say I also used some left-over timber that I just happened to have lying around and I bought some left-over timber form locals on the cheap. I did not include the wood chips I used to cover the ground, I didn't pay for these, I had some trees pruned and the guy who did it chopped up the cut branches with a shredder and left the output for me to use. But that's the whole point, right? Use as much junk as you can to make it work.
View attachment 252968
It appeared messages cannot have more than 10000 characters on this forum so I had to split mine. That wasn't too hard but the attached images remained with the first part, apparently causing the second part not to display images inline. It is just links now but images can be viewed by clicking the links.
I did two things wrong. To make the structure rigid, I screwed beams to the sides of each short and long pole pair. This works in the sense that it serves the purpose but it is not the prettiest and more importantly, it creates a bigger chance for getting in trouble when fixing the panels using carriage bolts. The better way to do this is to cut the beam at 60 degrees on both sides using the miter saw, pre-drill holes and screw **onto** the poles rather than to their sides, as I did with the first one:
View attachment 252952
The other mistake I made was in the way I connected the horizontal beam parts. This creates parts where the beam is twice as thick.
View attachment 252953
If that is where a panel rim ends up, you will need a longer carriage bolt and it will be harder to hit the rim at the right spot with your drill. So the way to go here is to use the top and the bottom of the horizontal beams for connecting them rather than the back for the spots that have panel transitions. I used both timber glue (the outdoor type that is water resistant) and screws.
About the quick and easy way versus the stupid and tedious way: all of the potential problems outlined above are non-existent when proceeding by buying one of these:
View attachment 252954
Chop it up in 10 cm pieces, screw them onto the horizontal beams at the panel transition spots and then use regular, standard fixtures to clamp the panels down onto the aluminium pieces. I recommend to do it this way. The only downsides, if you can call it that and it applies to your situation, are that the clamps can be perceived as ugly and the panels are quite easily removed (stolen). On the other hand, if you are the one to remove the panels later for whatever legitimate reason, you will appreciate this.
Of course I wasn't that smart and figured it wouldn't be so bad to use carriage bolts instead. I will skip the ways I tried to do this that were nearly impossible and give you just the sort of workable way. You put a panel against the rack where you want to have it. Then shove it up into position and use glue clamps on the rims and the lower beam to keep it in position. Put a spirit level on the bottom rim and bump the panel until you're satisfied. Put another clamp on the top beam, tighten them both. You may need a helping hand for the first panel.
Once fixed in place you can drill holes, from the back of the horizontal beams, through the beam and the rim of the panel. Steer clear from any existing holes in the rim. Do not try to use existing holes. Use a drill bit the same size as the carriage bolt. I used 6 mm.
Be sure to either keep something in the rim to catch the drill bit when it shoots through or prepare your drill bit with some sort of ring that prevents it from going too deep. The white back is really thin and vulnerable, if you hit it you will chip off both the white layer and the black front leaving a peeping hole into your panel. I did this once, fortunately just clear from the active cells. A couple of millimeters off and I might have ruined the panel. If your drill bit is sharp it won't be hard to go through the aluminium rim. If it takes a long time or requires a lot of force, sharpen your bit first. Another thing to be aware off is to make sure you don't drill too close to the side. If you do you won't be able to fit a ring over the bolt anymore. Once through, you can push your bolt in, put a ring and nut on the other end and tighten it using a wrench. You do this on every corner (four bolts per panel).
View attachment 252957
View attachment 252958
If you have a lot of panels you will need to keep some space in between the panels to allow them to expand and shrink a bit. With 16 panels like I had, a possible 60 degrees Celcius temperature difference will result in several millimeters total size difference. I used self-adhesive window strip (draft proofing) to keep the panels apart. This looks really nice and it closes the entire gap.
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I wanted to keep things as dry as possible underneath the panels to protect the rack where it enters the ground. It may have been overkill but afterwards I also sealed the gaps from the back with black PUR foam. This may prevent the window strip from coming loose in time and it makes it water tight. Or so I figured. It was not a success, it was just messy to apply and did not stick to the aluminium. I would have been better off using caulk.
Finally you will need to electrically connect the frames of the panels to one another and then to the chassis of your inverter. This prevents static build-up on your panel and prolongs their life span (the experts say). The panels have predrilled holes meant for this. You can buy wire clamps that fit these holes. It would have been nice had they come with the panels. I found out how to use these holes too late, I drilled my own holes, screwed parkers in them, wrapped the ground wire around them once and fastened the parkers. Not the prettiest solution but the contact is good. The black coating on the rim seemed to be an insulator. So whatever you do, make sure you have good contact with the bare aluminium.
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To tidy things up at the back you will need a way to attach the wires to the panel. Unfortunately my panels have plus and minus leads coming out of the back of the panel on opposites sides lengthwise. Great for landscape mounts I guess, not so much for a portrait array. I had to run the leads mostly diagonally from the bottom of one panel to the top of the next. Leads attached to the panel are not long enough to tug them away behind the rim all the way. Fixing the leads to the back proved to be a bit of a problem. Duct tape is ugly and comes off within a day under the least of pull. I ended up using these which appear to hold up nicely.
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The Final Result
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The wood trim at the bottom which I added later is just an extra attempt to keep the wetness away from the poles and it looks nice. I am happy so far.
Afterthoughts, experiences
The years ahead will tell how the rack will hold up. I am still a little weary about the rot resistence of the poles in the long run. I did paint the lower ends with stuff sold as "Black tar" which has already proven to be rubbish. It is reduced to dry powder under a bit of sunlight in a matter of weeks. The parts where the poles enter the ground are mostly shadowed by the panels though so they may be alright for some time after all. The thing is, local laws have banned the poisonous stuff that really works a couple of years ago and the industry has come up with safe alternatives that are really just wastes of time and money.
I could have added a story about cable routing and trench digging (the thing is quite a bit away from where I could hook it up to the grid) but that's off topic here and probably less interesting. Same about the inverter and the panels, suffice to say I am not disappointed. I get over 5 kW power on a good day, even in October. I have seen yields well over 30 kWh per day and I'm very pleased with that. I spent under 2500 Euros for new panels, a new inverter, some new timber and small stuff like screws and bolts. I must say I also used some left-over timber that I just happened to have lying around and I bought some left-over timber form locals on the cheap. I did not include the wood chips I used to cover the ground, I didn't pay for these, I had some trees pruned and the guy who did it chopped up the cut branches with a shredder and left the output for me to use. But that's the whole point, right? Use as much junk as you can to make it work.
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drewintoledo
New Member
JohnGyver
New Member
Here is my version of a tilt array. This was a one person build at 6ft tall with full motorized tilt range to capture sun optimally all year long. It can be flattened out ahead of a storm to reduce wind load on the panels. It holds 12 - 400/500 watt Bifacial Hyperion panels for roughly 4.8kw of solar.
I ran the wiring inside the frame lip to hide the wiring. I hate dangling wires so an effort to make it look clean, and possibly prevent any issues from accidental wiring damage. The solar frame is bolted directly to the Unistrut from the underside of the array at the factory bolt hole locations using short 1" bolts, washer and lock-washer. It is hidden from site so much better looking than an exposed bolt. A little bit of a pain to install, but worth it!
All panels are directly bolted at 4 points each into the Unistrut using sliding Unistrut 1/4" anchor nuts. This was to eliminate spacing between panels for a tighter fit and to help stiffen the array vs using front sided screws going between panels (creating a gap). This also naturally grounded the panels at 4 points to the Unistrut for an easy grounding run at one end of the array connecting the 4 Unistrut runs together with a solid 8 gauge ground wire. Posts are 6x6 sunk 3 feet deep with 400 pounds of concrete per post. All wood is stained to match the rest of my property aesthetically as well as protect the wood for a longer period of time.
Three Eco-Worthy 16" linear actuators (motors) were added which tremendously added strength to the array. The array had a "Jello-like" wobbliness to it when pushed at one corner. After the linear actuators were added it became very solid to the point where I do not have concerns for most wind conditions outside a hurricane. If a hurricane hits the Houston area I will flatten out the array then add 4 2x6 legs at the corners to lock the array into the flat position to help weather the storm. The 3 actuators are currently controlled by an Eco-Worthy remote linear actuator controller that I can operate from the inside of my home 120 feet away.... or from inside the large gray box on the nearest post which houses the control module.
I know these tilt arrays are popular. I loosely followed the videos from Rodney Hunt and Tech4U on YouTube... just added my modifications and features to make it work for me in the ways I was wanting. Shout out to those two guys for posting videos and helping the rest of us copy cats out in the world!
The linear actuators cost $46 each off Amazon with 300 pounds of push power each. I could have used just one to actually move the array but I wanted the added stability of 3, one on each post.... and it improved the structures rigidity by 1000%. The controller was bought from ebay for $20... found a good price on it so I jumped on it. I may add a N/S solar tracker to the motors to further improve the functionality, but at a later date. I recommend this route not only for the stability... but jacking around with a manual brace is not practical or fun.... I tried that for a few weeks then opted to spend the extra dollars on the linear actuators, which I now totally love from an ease of use standpoint. I did also add a magnetic angle finder to help me determine the correct season pitch when I need to adjust it using the solar seasonal sun angle chart. That way I can have the optimal sun angle year round.
My next project will be a 4.8kw solar pergola.... I have a lot of trees, so trying to hit the best spots on the property for sun capture.
I hope this helps someone out there looking to build a tilt array. Watch those YouTube videos a few times... those guys helped me get off my butt and go for it! Good luck!
I ran the wiring inside the frame lip to hide the wiring. I hate dangling wires so an effort to make it look clean, and possibly prevent any issues from accidental wiring damage. The solar frame is bolted directly to the Unistrut from the underside of the array at the factory bolt hole locations using short 1" bolts, washer and lock-washer. It is hidden from site so much better looking than an exposed bolt. A little bit of a pain to install, but worth it!
All panels are directly bolted at 4 points each into the Unistrut using sliding Unistrut 1/4" anchor nuts. This was to eliminate spacing between panels for a tighter fit and to help stiffen the array vs using front sided screws going between panels (creating a gap). This also naturally grounded the panels at 4 points to the Unistrut for an easy grounding run at one end of the array connecting the 4 Unistrut runs together with a solid 8 gauge ground wire. Posts are 6x6 sunk 3 feet deep with 400 pounds of concrete per post. All wood is stained to match the rest of my property aesthetically as well as protect the wood for a longer period of time.
Three Eco-Worthy 16" linear actuators (motors) were added which tremendously added strength to the array. The array had a "Jello-like" wobbliness to it when pushed at one corner. After the linear actuators were added it became very solid to the point where I do not have concerns for most wind conditions outside a hurricane. If a hurricane hits the Houston area I will flatten out the array then add 4 2x6 legs at the corners to lock the array into the flat position to help weather the storm. The 3 actuators are currently controlled by an Eco-Worthy remote linear actuator controller that I can operate from the inside of my home 120 feet away.... or from inside the large gray box on the nearest post which houses the control module.
I know these tilt arrays are popular. I loosely followed the videos from Rodney Hunt and Tech4U on YouTube... just added my modifications and features to make it work for me in the ways I was wanting. Shout out to those two guys for posting videos and helping the rest of us copy cats out in the world!
The linear actuators cost $46 each off Amazon with 300 pounds of push power each. I could have used just one to actually move the array but I wanted the added stability of 3, one on each post.... and it improved the structures rigidity by 1000%. The controller was bought from ebay for $20... found a good price on it so I jumped on it. I may add a N/S solar tracker to the motors to further improve the functionality, but at a later date. I recommend this route not only for the stability... but jacking around with a manual brace is not practical or fun.... I tried that for a few weeks then opted to spend the extra dollars on the linear actuators, which I now totally love from an ease of use standpoint. I did also add a magnetic angle finder to help me determine the correct season pitch when I need to adjust it using the solar seasonal sun angle chart. That way I can have the optimal sun angle year round.My next project will be a 4.8kw solar pergola.... I have a lot of trees, so trying to hit the best spots on the property for sun capture.
I hope this helps someone out there looking to build a tilt array. Watch those YouTube videos a few times... those guys helped me get off my butt and go for it! Good luck!
whiteshepherd
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2022
- Messages
- 12
Using a t-posts mounted 11.4kW of Aptos solar panels for $600 parts. Used a bracket on the T-posts (spaced every 5 feet) to hold 2x4s which the solar panel z-brackets were screw mounted. Wires still need done.
Front view.
Angled front view.
Back view.
Building.
Front view.
Angled front view.
Back view.
Building.
Integrarack IR30's earth ballasted with 4.5 cubic yards of gravel crusher run still need to trench conduit and install the weatherhead and IMO Disconnect... Another 16 to be installed and then onto the solar pergola
Metal Edging from Edgeright to match the front of the house coming soon as well: https://edgeright.com/
Metal Edging from Edgeright to match the front of the house coming soon as well: https://edgeright.com/
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BlueMarblePA
Solar Enthusiast
Offgridcamp
New Member
Tamarack kit with custom 5' frost post footings for high snow load and winds.
Drunkin Solar
Solar Enthusiast
Installation of a small Uni-Rack ULA ground mount setup completed yesterday.
As you can see we didn't finish till it was dark outside but we did finish.
Array consists of Mission Solar 385w panels, total 2.35kw, to feed a small offgrid cabin.
As you can see we didn't finish till it was dark outside but we did finish.
Array consists of Mission Solar 385w panels, total 2.35kw, to feed a small offgrid cabin.
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KShomestead
New Member
Currently in winter configuration. For summer time, the 2x4s in the back fold down, and panels face ~30°.
Each pair is hinged, so I can remove 3 bolts per pair and fold in half, face to face, for severe weather protection. (Last 2 pics are summer angel, before I added the rear framing for winter use.)
Each pair is hinged, so I can remove 3 bolts per pair and fold in half, face to face, for severe weather protection. (Last 2 pics are summer angel, before I added the rear framing for winter use.)
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