diy solar

diy solar

Very new to solar but started purchasing items, not sure of the final specs of the whole system.

Strange. Our drivers always place items in plastic when it rains.
They do the same thing at my place. Dump it beside garage when covered porch is 20 ft away.

Just did it again today and the box was ruined to the point I had to empty it and drag stuff inside.
The worst is DHL, were 300+ yards from the road/mailbox and they put very expensive packages in the grass under mailbox instead of bringing to the house.
 
Used over 51% of bank one last night, power for our neighborhood was restored at 6:00am.
I'm really going to look into some form of additional heating.
 

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3 ton finally got up to 79f, charging is going well, we did not run the mini split last night.
Got down to 60f downstairs but not to bad, been running all 3 units.
 

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Was curious to see what the difference would be, I started up my 3500w generator. Connected it to two 5000 btu floor units and had one in between the clients room and one in the hallway. Same temps as yesterday but only used 16 percent vs 51 percent for heating.
 

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Yesterday temps really pushed the system: one day usage was 128.1kwh, not including running the generator at 3000w for 7 hours.
I have found some good deals on bifacial working on getting shipping information. If it works out I will update on the two sellers. I would like to add another 32 panels and split those among the 4 eg4s.
 

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Yesterday temps really pushed the system: one day usage was 128.1kwh, not including running the generator at 3000w for 7 hours.
I have found some good deals on bifacial working on getting shipping information. If it works out I will update on the two sellers. I would like to add another 32 panels and split those among the 4 eg4s.

I’m using more this week obviously but normally it’s 120-150 Kw per day in winter.

It takes quiet a bit to keep shop warm when working out there plus the tools themselves.
 
I’m using more this week obviously but normally it’s 120-150 Kw per day in winter.

It takes quiet a bit to keep shop warm when working out there plus the tools themselves.
That is a lot of power usage the past few days for us are all records as on average we are 1/2 or less compared to the same time last year. The town near us is still without power and the eta is next Tuesday due to missing parts. I pipe froze and burst on the other side of our street, we still have water though. The neighbors drive way is cover over by about 4 inches of ice from the pipe.
 
Got the replacement installed and the booted together with no issues. Still reading over the manual as parrallel is very simple setup. But do not want to do to much with current weather conditions. Zero load just idle those are the clamp readings.
 

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Tested the next two and it came up with a slight difference in the led light bar and will need to check everything.
Higher idle usage on the next two eg4's, still have questions on setup. Page 16 warns about the current sharing but
it appears to not share the cables over to another inverter that is another set of primary/secondary. Also on page
18 is shows using the current sharing cables between the pairs. I have not found much on option 28 how it's set up when 4 units operate together. It appears that the two pairs are set the same but will see if someone else has setup these up on
the forums.
 

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Thought maybe from testing where I had made it a secondary to test the failed eg4 that it might have been set as secondary.
I put it back to the defaults but the light bar stays the purple like color even in single mode. Not sure what to make of this,
if functions fine in parallel and coummications are working. Not found anything in the manual and it has the same settings as the other 3,
output is fine single or parallel.
 

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Tested the next two and it came up with a slight difference in the led light bar and will need to check everything.
Higher idle usage on the next two eg4's, still have questions on setup. Page 16 warns about the current sharing but
it appears to not share the cables over to another inverter that is another set of primary/secondary. Also on page
18 is shows using the current sharing cables between the pairs. I have not found much on option 28 how it's set up when 4 units operate together. It appears that the two pairs are set the same but will see if someone else has setup these up on
the forums.
So you have 4 x 6kw inverters?

I haven’t the faintest Idea how your particular brand works in parallel.

I hope you got enough batteries to keep up with that.
I know you have a huge array.

Sol-ark pretty easy. Just daisy chain them and select next number in series up to 6 I think.

I was watching a video of Buffalo and they got like 77 inches of snow in 2 or 3 days.
Holy crap!!!

Man I hope you didn’t have to put up with any of that!!!
 
All rgb settings are identical, but when I change to C02 it does change to the correct color, I'm guessing a bad led light bar.
 

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So you have 4 x 6kw inverters?

I haven’t the faintest Idea how your particular brand works in parallel.

I hope you got enough batteries to keep up with that.
I know you have a huge array.

Sol-ark pretty easy. Just daisy chain them and select next number in series up to 6 I think.

I was watching a video of Buffalo and they got like 77 inches of snow in 2 or 3 days.
Holy crap!!!

Man I hope you didn’t have to put up with any of that!!!
We missed the bulk of it thankfully, just sub zero temps and high winds. I built 4 - 4p16s banks, and will be running those 4 eg4's plus another 12kw. From testing I think it has a bad rgb light bar, it shows the correct color when changed but under the default settings the display does not match the other 3.
 

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We missed the bulk of it thankfully, just sub zero temps and high winds. I built 4 - 4p16s banks, and will be running those 4 eg4's plus another 12kw. From testing I think it has a bad rgb light bar, it shows the correct color when changed but under the default settings the display does not match the other 3.
Ok so you have like 240Kwh of batteries and 36kw of inverters plus a 57kw array ?

That is a big system.

Massive busbars..

What are those little 5 Growatt things under your panels? Inverters or Charge controllers??


Glad you missed the snow. I have no idea where you are but I know a large portion of the country got snow.
 
Ok so you have like 240Kwh of batteries and 36kw of inverters plus a 57kw array ?

That is a big system.

Massive busbars..

What are those little 5 Growatt things under your panels? Inverters or Charge controllers??


Glad you missed the snow. I have no idea where you are but I know a large portion of the country got snow.
Those are charge controllers under the inverters, it is a large system but we still have trouble during sept-feb. I had never built
battery banks before so I went overboard on the busbars. Did you get a bunch of snow? I may add some sort of force air wood stove,
I believe that would fix the heating issue and allow us to be grid free through out the winter.
 
Those are charge controllers under the inverters, it is a large system but we still have trouble during sept-feb. I had never built
battery banks before so I went overboard on the busbars. Did you get a bunch of snow? I may add some sort of force air wood stove,
I believe that would fix the heating issue and allow us to be grid free through out the winter.
Nah no snow here in NC just brass ball cold and wind.
It actually got down to 6 degrees here. That doesn’t include wind chill.
Pipes have been busting everywhere!!

Luckily I have a conditioned crawlspace so no worries there.

Just put an infrared heater under my fake rock for my well and all was good.

I did learn my insulation is far from 100% though.

Will need to revisit that this spring.

You definitely use a lot of power. I thought I did but you take the cake..
I would have hated to have your power bill before you went Solar..

I really should add some kind of wood heat. At least an fireplace insert or something..

I have plenty of deadfall here in the property.
 
Nah no snow here in NC just brass ball cold and wind.
It actually got down to 6 degrees here. That doesn’t include wind chill.
Pipes have been busting everywhere!!

Luckily I have a conditioned crawlspace so no worries there.

Just put an infrared heater under my fake rock for my well and all was good.

I did learn my insulation is far from 100% though.

Will need to revisit that this spring.

You definitely use a lot of power. I thought I did but you take the cake..
I would have hated to have your power bill before you went Solar..

I really should add some kind of wood heat. At least an fireplace insert or something..

I have plenty of deadfall here in the property.
I live all throughout NC, Roxboro was the last place I really miss it lots of wood and trails. Our well in Roxboro froze several times and I found just a 100w bulb would keep it going after adding extra installation.
 
I live all throughout NC, Roxboro was the last place I really miss it lots of wood and trails. Our well in Roxboro froze several times and I found just a 100w bulb would keep it going after adding extra installation.
Roxboro is about 3 hours north east of me.
Up near the VA border. Haven’t been up that way in a while.

It normally doesn’t get cold enough here to warrant any heat at the well.
At least not until this week anyway.

I bought this place about 2 years ago and I’ll be here until they put me in the ground.

I’m done moving.

Good people out here in the country where we are.
 
Here's something interesting, I have been charging the ev at 6 amps each day due to the heat loads.
Phone beeped and a message from the ford pass said charging had stopped. After about 30 min of trouble shooting
I attempted another restart from the charger app. It popped up stating due to power concerns in my area that it had stopped the
charging. I disabled wifi connection and unplugged the charger and was able to restart. I received this email yesterday from the power company.
 

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will be running those 4 eg4's plus another 12kw.

Separate circuit, or paralleled output?
My Sunny Island it says different model (wattage) can be used on separate 120V phases, but any paralleled on a single phase must be same model.

Due to issues with PV production or loads possibly exceeding pass-through limit of a single inverter, I'm thinking about splitting outputs onto separate circuits, each with some loads and some AC coupled PV. At times this might share power through battery when off-grid. I could throw a breaker (or close relay) to parallel AC outputs when not on-grid, for better sharing.
 
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