Starting Construction My New System- Rural Calgary, Alberta Canada

[Skythings]

If you have Time-of-Use (ToU) utility rates, you may benefit from charging during off peak rate, and running your home from batteries during on-peak rate time of day.


There is a steep learning curve to it all - no doubt about that. Keep working away at it. Ask questions.

No I don't have time of use rates- but I'm sure that's coming to our Province in the near future. That's one of the reasons I decided to go solar. That and the fact our grid is becoming more and more unstable over time. Two weeks ago we had our first snowfall and our Province issued a grid alert and started restricting high usage business and it wasn't even cold yet. Last year they issued emergency alerts one January evening at -40 degree's on everyone cell phones to turn off all non essential appliances. So it's coming soon for us. My overall goal is to eventually produce as much of my own electricity as possible with solar with the grid being my backup and then having an emergency backup to both those options.

My initial thoughts were I could run the house loads from 9PM to 9AM each night on the batteries. Because my first stage of solar only includes ten 540W panels I have found there is not enough sunlight in October and now November up here in Canada to bring the batteries up to 100% and to also run most of the house loads during the day. It's one or the other - but not both right now. I have 14 more panels coming this spring which should allow me to achieve this plan at that time. Right now the ten panels are actually running most of the house loads from 10AM to about 3PM each day when the sun is out. As winter progresses with shorter days and snow cover my solar production will be minimal at best with this current setup. This winter I am going to be grid reliant with a battery back up system which is fine for now.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Skythings]

Cool. Probably no harm either way if not cycling. But I’d go ahead and disconnect, make the change, or switch them off while you decide.

I appreciate your advice. One of the issues I am considering is the fact I do intend to add battery capacity in the future. So I understand I will need to add a bus bar to do that. So I'm thinking now would be a good time to add the bus bar and reconfigure these batteries at the same time. I want to figure out a plan together with the layout of the shed and placement of future batteries etc. It's going to be this next week or at worst two weeks tops.

 

[OffGridForGood]

Winter months can be a good time for indoor solar upgrades!

 

[Skythings]

The picture you posted of your system shows your battery connection is incorrect:

S

Post in thread 'Post Battery Bank and Inverter! (pictures only)'

Sep 17, 2024

• Skythings

• 

Thread 'This is wrong, right?'

Oct 30, 2024

This was shown in the show us your batteries inverter thread. I tried to reach out to this member via private message last night, but have not heard back. I think this is the wrong way to set up for these batteries. The negative should be coming off the bottom battery. Though strangely I didn’t find instructions I was looking for in the currentconnected.com SOK rack battery manual. And I can’t find the current connected.com video that showed me how to set mine up.

I thought he should know. Will ask us not to engage in commentary in that thread so I thought I’d drop it here. If you...

• Bluedog225

• 

Just wanted to show some appreciation to everyone who pointed out my battery connection was not correct a month or so back. Thank you. I did finally get things addressed. See the updated pictures with the changes.

Had our first blast of winter in the Calgary AB, Canada, area a couple weeks back. Temperatures down to -25C/-8F with 12 inches of snow. As this was my first winter with solar power I placed a 1500W electric heater inside my insulated power shed to keep the batteries at operational temps. The heater is hooked up to a thermostat electric plug. It has a temp probe at floor level near the batteries. I have set it up so the power comes on when the sheds inside temps drop to 43F and turns off the heater when the inside temp reaches 50F. I may adjust this temp range in the future. I use Fahrenheit units as the increments are smaller and a bit more accurate. Typically the heater comes on once ever 4-6 hrs for about 15-20 minutes at a time when its cold outside at night. We will see how the system works when things go arctic at -40C and I will fine tune it once I have more data. The plan is to eventually install a propane direct vent heater into the shed next year with the electric heater as a backup.

Solar production for the last half of November and into December has sucked! My panels have been covered with 10 inches of frozen snow and I have been lucky to get 15-40W of power from my ten 540W solar panels over the past three weeks. This past 4 days we did have a Chinook weather system blow through the area and all the snow has melted from my panels but it has been cloudy with low solar production each day of the Chinook. Today I did achieve 1100W at one point of the day but it was still pretty cloudy. It did run most of my house loads from 11:00 AM to 3:30PM with the exception of when my electric water heater cycled. I was hoping to see a full sun day with the low December sun and my flat roof panels clear of snow to see my best case scenario in December. Forecast to snow again tomorrow.

 

[OffGridForGood]

yeah nearly flat PV in northern lat. with cloudy weather - you are not going to see any real solar production until Feb likely. sorry.
I tilt my panels up for winter months - sitting at 72-degrees from horizontal - and I still get a lot of crappy days in Nov Dec due to cloudy weather.
When it is sunny out, I can get 20-25 kWh with 13kW of PV but the sunny days are darn few this time of year - better in January when it gets clear and cold.
Glad to see your set up is working and you are learning some things as you go.

 

[Skythings]

yeah nearly flat PV in northern lat. with cloudy weather - you are not going to see any real solar production until Feb likely. sorry.
I tilt my panels up for winter months - sitting at 72-degrees from horizontal - and I still get a lot of crappy days in Nov Dec due to cloudy weather.
When it is sunny out, I can get 20-25 kWh with 13kW of PV but the sunny days are darn few this time of year - better in January when it gets clear and cold.
Glad to see your set up is working and you are learning some things as you go.

Nothing to be sorry about and thank you for the encouragement. I knew putting the panels on a flat roof was not going to be very productive during the winter months. But I must say it is a little different when you actually see it for real for the first time after investing thousands of dollars. This past Sept 17-Oct 31 my small system did provide 28% of my total household electrical needs so that was nice to see. Last year I did not have full house battery backup in the event of a power outage so I'm feeling good progress.

As mentioned before, this is only phase one with 14 more panels being added next year in April-May. Next winter should be a bit more productive. With the additional panels next summer I am confident I will be able to run the house overnight on the batteries and have enough solar the next day to run the house during the day and charge the batteries fully for the next overnight use. My goal with the full system is to produce 75% of my household power usage from solar between April & October. Perhaps 30% over the winter low sun snowy months.

 

[Skythings]

It's been awhile since I updated. This past January the weather in the Calgary area was very mild and it allowed me to work on my ground mount for the installation of 14 Thornova 500W panels. I was able to get half of them up along with the install of two Brightmount EG4 mounts mounted onto the top of the 4x6 beam along the front of the dog run before winter returned with a vengeance in the last week of January.



These panels are not hooked up yet but snow quickly melted off these with a 55 degree angle. The front 7 panels are only at 35 degree's and won't shed the snow as quickly as the back 7. The front ones are very accessible and I have purchased a good SnoBrum in preparation for snow removal. These panels will be my main winter source of energy as the 10 panels on my garage flat roof have produced next to nothing when covered in snow.



This week the weather improved with a Chinook and I was able to install the front 7 panels this weekend. Now just running the wiring to the inverter and rapid shutdown system and my phase 2 is nearing completion after 10 months of construction.

This summer phase 3 is planned with the expansion of battery capacity and the hook-up of a small gas generator for battery charging.

 

[wpns]

It's been awhile since I updated. This past January the weather in the Calgary area was very mild and it allowed me to work on my ground mount for the installation of 14 Thornova 500W panels. I was able to get half of them up along with the install of two Brightmount EG4 mounts mounted onto the top of the 4x6 beam along the front of the dog run before winter returned with a vengeance in the last week of January.

View attachment 280428

These panels are not hooked up yet but snow quickly melted off these with a 55 degree angle. The front 7 panels are only at 35 degree's and won't shed the snow as quickly as the back 7. The front ones are very accessible and I have purchased a good SnoBrum in preparation for snow removal. These panels will be my main winter source of energy as the 10 panels on my garage flat roof have produced next to nothing when covered in snow.

View attachment 280446

This week the weather improved with a Chinook and I was able to install the front 7 panels this weekend. Now just running the wiring to the inverter and rapid shutdown system and my phase 2 is nearing completion after 10 months of construction.

This summer phase 3 is planned with the expansion of battery capacity.

View attachment 280431

View attachment 280432

View attachment 280445

Nice! Love the dual angle!

 

[Skythings]

My solar journey officially started one year ago with me cutting down several large cherished tree's sacrificed to accommodate the new electrical shed to house the batteries and inverter. It took a month to get the shed ready, the trenching and then the new equipment and panels arrived by truck mid June. The install started in July and on September 17th last year the first ten 540W panels brought the first solar energy into my home. In August I also started construction of a hybrid dog run fence and ground mount. Winter arrived and I discovered how ineffective flat roof solar panels are when covered in snow. These are now designated my summer panels. Gracefully it turned out to be a mild winter which allowed me to get work done on the ground mount over the Christmas period and install half of the fourteen 500W panels. This Spring the remaining 7 panels went up and construction and painting of the ground mount was completed. These panels have already demonstrated they shed snow very well and are accessible to easily clear and will be where the majority of my winter solar originates.

Yesterday these 14 panels were connected to the inverter and after one year my 12.4 kWh system is now fully operational. I am running the house on batteries overnight from 9PM to 9AM. In the morning the system is running the house loads while recharging the batteries to 100% by around 12:30 PM. After that there's enough solar to run my 4500W electric hot water heater, 2hp well pump, house furnace and mini split heater/air conditioner along with the incidental house loads with room for the odd cloud to flow over and not have to touch the grid. The best feeling is now I have a backup for when the grid goes down and I'm somewhat isolated from the political and technical issues with an unstable grid and the ever rising costs of utility supplied electricity.

So for this year my solar project is completed and I will focus now on all the other projects I ignored this past year. My future solar plans are to hook up a gas generator and then add more battery capacity, but I need to let the smoke clear with my bank accounts for that to happen any time soon.

Thank you to Will Prowse for this site and the YouTube video's that inspired my research to start the solar journey. And to all the folks on here who offered their experiences, examples and advice which helped me figure out this amazing puzzle.

 

[wpns]

Nice! That's a lot of work, glad to hear it's working well.