Why is solar so damn difficult?

[cs1234]

It's because the sun hates us

What have we done for it lately? Nothing, a big fat nothing.

 

[Johneb]

Yeah, I'm also increasing the efficiency.
But, I'm not going to be limiting my usage. Like only cooking during the day. Or washing clothes on sunny days. I won't be watching my solar production or battery capacity. To see if I can use a particular appliance.

That is my ultimate destination. Were totally on grid tight now. I am hoping to have solar in and operstionsl by end of year.

 

[JJJJ]

Having adequate energy is a worthy goal. Adding capacity certainly helps. I am currently planning on adding another battery to my power system. Having panels helps to provide a buffer from those overcast days when sunshine is hard to find.

Having said that, there are those who have benefited from energy efficiency updates to their home.

 

[Nobodybusiness]

For those of us who played with TTL and Boolean logic, works like an XOR gate.

3rd class In Military electronics school.

AC,DC,RLC
Tube Theory and applications.
Boolean algebra and Truth tables.
Then digital. Early early digital for me anyway.

 

[Hedges]

I encountered "Ladder Logic" decades later.

I had a couple high school and junior college classes that went into vacuum tubes.
Now I work with vacuum tubes. But driven by solid state electronics.

 

[OffGridForGood]

I want to do whatever I want, whenever I want. And not be concerned about it, at all.

Sound like the "kids" (back when they were kids) and my wife following them around the house switching everything back off behind them all.
If teenagers had to pay the electric bills they wouldn't leave every single thing on in a long trail behind them.
- Funny part, each of them one by one, now with their OWN electric bills and youngings to follow around and turn off lights, TV's Ipads' Tablets...yeah each of them now complain about 'all the stuff left on in empty rooms' !! LOL

 

[Hedges]

When I worked at one place, they did an ergonomics review, and installed nagware in my laptop that told me to get up and stretch.

Latest employer, they have motion sensor lights. Keep turning off, and I have to lean back and wave my arms to turn them on.

At home, when my wife turns off the lights, I say, "Leave the lights on! We have too much electricity."

 

[1201]

There's also the excellent guide to wiring, from victron, which is worth a read...

https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/The_Wiring_Unlimited_book/43562-Wiring_Unlimited-pdf-en.pdf

has nice pictures and diagrams in it too

Wow. This is very informative. Thanks!

But, why am I just now finding this, after 10 months? ???

By the way this forum has been a wealth of knowledge

 

[1201]

The irony of YOUR post, is I could write almost the exact same thing...down to being the CONTRACTOR on my own house build...with my hands on nearly every trade...etc.

And your comment about it being the hardest thing I have ever learned...is spot on also...and my sentiment exactly.

But strangely, the intense satisfaction of nearly 100% of expected Solar Output last Monday, culminating 4+ months (and a 10+ year goal/dream) is somehow more satisfying than anything else.

I will say though, I had to back off my original goal, broke up the project in to phases. Instead of solarizing the WHOLE house, I started with the small project of solarizing the barn and work areas. The entire project became a lot easier for me to manage and accomplish.

Keep the dream alive!!

I'm ready to cut my bill by 90% too. Itching.

I planned to start small, just one 6kw inverter to power my mini splits , and 3kw of panels. Then I realized 3kw wouldn't be enough so ok 6kw. Then I thought, all that power will go to waste in the winter when Im not using so much HVAC, so maybe power a couple more items, like my well pump and fridge. So I bought another inverter, since the the single unit would have been maxed out by the mini splits.

Now I'm up to like 9kw of pv needed. Per pallet pricing is better then individual so heck let's just buy a full pallet of 30 and now I'm up to 12kw pv.

Guideline is 3kwh of battery per kw of pv so when David poz did good cheap battery video I decided to order 43kwh worth.

So here we are. I upsold myself !?.

 

[Nobodybusiness]

i agree with this. But I dont think extra insulation is the key(that's what everyone defaults to)

Not if you already have enough.
I guess you can load it up with insulation but there comes a point of diminishing returns.

The biggest load we have is definitely environmental.

The house is about as tight as we can make it.

I guess it’s the way we do it. Central heat and AC are just not as efficient.

If your not in a part of the house it is still getting conditioned whether you are using it or not.

Zoning is much more efficient but not as convenient or comfortable.

You could cut down usage by only conditioning the space your in.

My grandparents used to do that more out of necessity than energy savings.

I remember staying with them when I was younger in the 60s.

They had little gas stoves in living room, dining room and bedroom. Big bedroom almost like a bunkhouse we’re everyone slept.

If they were watching TV then the bedrooms or anything else wasn’t getting heated.
They would close the doors to the rest of the house.
The kitchen took care of itself with the oven.
The dinning room was seldom used or heated unless we had the entire family over for meals.
We would go to bed at night the bedrooms would be frigid.
We had huge and multiple blankets we slept under.
Many times waking up with ice on the inside of the single pane glass windows. I think they might have turned the heat on low in the bedroom in the dead of winter but it was never more than about 50 in there.

For years they had an outhouse. For us kids they gave us a Folgers coffee can to go in during the night. If you had to # 2 you had to slug it out to the outhouse.

They had a tub but no running water.
Had to get buckets from the well and heat it up on the stove to take a bath. Usually more than 1 person used the same bath water. The dirtiest person went last.

In 1970 my uncles built them a bathroom inside. They had to put in a septic tank. I remember helping Dig that hole by hand.

They use an old cistern and collected rain water.
Put in a small Gas hot water heater.
The electric pump was in the bathroom. They ran that water to the kitchen and Grandma washed dishes with it instead of going to the well.

No AC in that house ever. No window units or anything. We had fans.
It was an old house built in the earlier 1900s. Probably 1910-20. Insulation was nonexistent.

I’m not saying we all should live like that but you can acclimate to quite a bit.

 

[SeaGal]

Wow. This is very informative. Thanks!

YW

But, why am I just now finding this, after 10 months? ???

LOL - you're obviously not spending enough time on the forum!! @Dzl posted that guide in the resources section back last century (well, 2020 at least) - it was the very first posting to the "How-to PDF's or Ebook's" section... but I think it's been updated since then, hence why I linked to the latest one. Need a good to read it all in one go, though!

By the way this forum has been a wealth of knowledge

Yep - learn something new every day

 

[1201]

@Nobodybusiness

I had to do that last year. Winter storm, 11 degrees f. Resistance heat and a high bill. I turned it off, got evening in the same bedroom and used a space heater. After the storm we used space heaters in every bedroom and only turned on when someone was there. Itt turned a $600 bill into only $300

 

[1201]

LOL - you're obviously not spending enough time on the forum!!

Obviously ??

@Dzl posted that guide in the resources section back last century (well, 2020 at least) - it was the very first posting to the "How-to PDF's or Ebook's" section... but I think it's been updated since then, hence why I linked to the latest one. Need a good to read it all in one go, though!

that's a very useful section. I need to go through again and read more articles. So far I've read and understood the neutral ground bonding for my inverter and ocp for panels.

 

[CJM]

I'm no stranger to learning and diy. I built the house I'm living in with my two hands and it took a lot of planning and research - framing, electrical, HVAC , drywall, septic etc.

That was childs play compared to solar. No wonder the unsuspecting public easily falls prey to solar salespeople who are ,truly, the scum of the earth. they stand no chance. But I digress.


I've been researching solar day and night for close to a year and only just found out by accident that the victron rs450/100 which I was about to buy, is actually two 450/50 inputs and would not have worked for my needs, for example.

Solar has been the hardest thing I've ever had to learn about - ground neutral bonding, auto transformers, surge capacity, system sizing with voc and isc and parallel or series strings, over current protection electrical code , nec rules, temperature factors, mppt, ac coupling, DC coupling , zero export, inadvertent export,panel main bus rating, main breaker derating, line side taps.

Battery sizing, precharge resistors,closed loop communication, lifepo4 voltage and charging, cable protection, wire sizing, shunts, low temperature cutoff, charging rate.

Mounting rails, wire management, grounding, rapid shutdown requirements

And as if thats not bad enough- one mistake and you're blowing up expensive parts, or worse burning down your house. And even if you do everything right, the inverter might still fail and Good luck getting signature solar to actually replace anything under warranty.

Why am I even doing solar again? ??

Will Prowse?

 

[DrewLoker]

So here we are. I upsold myself !?.

The parallels again...of another person, doing the exact same thing as me. Remarkable how many other people do exactly the same thing.

timselectric said:
I have always made sure to turn off things that weren't being used...
I want to do whatever I want, whenever I want. And not be concerned about it, at all.

I know EXACTLY how you feel!!

I have always left the house hot during the day. When programmable thermostats came along, I immediately bought those...specifically the ones with 7 day programming, and then upgraded to WIFI controlled as soon as they rolled out...way before Alexa...to control remotely.

My wife of 30+ years has always been grumpy about how warm we keep the house. So, I have had to make sure that the AC comes on before she gets home to start cooling the house.

So here I am, for the first time in our life together, running the AC during the day time...thanks to excess day time production...batteries are charged by 11:00am...running the AC during the day to keep the house cooler. And I still have excess power being generated.

I gotta say, it's pretty "cool"...pun intended.

I do realize the rain and winter reality will set in. But for now, pretty "cool" to run the AC with out having to worry about the utility bill going up (just got to ignore the credit card bill for the cost of the system, etc.). But on another positive note...when production is down, the AC is not as in demand, and consumption is down as well.

 

[LeeOliver]

I have also been researching solar for our property for some months. I still haven't concluded a suitable design.

As I see it, the problems are:

- the inexplicable lack of technical documentation from manufacturers, making it impossible to know what the capabilities of the components are and how to configure them;

- assumptions from manufacturers of the client's intents/wises, such as assuming the client wants a simple, grid tied, AC coupled system, or the client wants a completely off-grid system, etc.;

- what technical documentation there is seems to couple different concepts together, making it very difficult to separate concerns;

- and lastly, the solar installation industry being full of con artists and crooks, whose intent is to confuse you into giving them a maximum amount of money for a minimum amount of service.

Victron are one of the worst for documentation. Their documentation is so random and missing large amounts of information on features/capabilities/configurations. What documentation there is seems very convoluted and confusing.

I would like to purchase Victron kit, but so far (after 4 months of research), I am still not sure what this kit can actually do. Their documentation is all over the place. And then there are inexplicable tip-bits, such as the Multiplus II parallel operation "not for 8k, 10k and 15k models", buried in the Multiplus II datasheet. Why the hell not? How about you design your next generation, Quattro replacement to perform to the same level of functionality as its predecessor? How could that be too much to ask?

Each concept could easily be treated separately, but manufacturers have mixed concepts together, making it very difficult to design anything.

For example, I wish to do the following:

1. produce DC electrical energy from MPPT coupled PV, let's call this the 'generated DC energy' [no AC coupled PV please];

2. consume as much of the generated DC energy as required to provide AC power via one or more inverters;

3. source any additional AC power from the grid (PowerAssist?) if the AC power requirement exceeds the inverter power rating;

4. charge the battery storage with any excess generated DC energy;

5. feed in to the grid (if attached) any excess generated DC energy if the batteries are fully charged;

6. feed in to the grid a maximum (generated and battery) DC energy at a specified time (peak time feed-in), discharging the batteries to a specified lower limit;

7. charge the batteries from the grid at a specified time (cheap rate top-up), charging to a specified upper limit;

8. be able to configure concepts 6 and 7 for different times of the year (in winter top-up only, in summer feed-in only);

9. be able to manually override the configuration set in 8, in exceptional cases where solar output is unusually low (summer months) or unusually high (winter months);

10. not have any interruptions if the grid connection goes down, and if it does go down, auto-island.

These concepts are reasonably separated. But trying to work out how to do any of this from the terrible Victron documentation seems to be pretty much impossible. The conclusion I have reached is that I will most probably need to create my own custom Victron scripts to orchestrate everything, and not rely on the built in functionality.

As far as I am concerned, all grid connected solar installations should work as above. And in the future, concepts 6 and 7 could be orchestrated from the grid supplier, with automated real-time high/low demand notifications, whereupon residential solar systems could configure their systems to engage maximum feed-in or top-up, depending on their systems' energy levels.

If anyone knows how to implement a Victron system that does the above, I would love to you to post an explanation. Otherwise, I guess I will keep researching.

 

[1201]

@LeeOliver
Why victron? Looks like solark can do all this.

 

[SeaGal]

@LeeOliver - why are you fixated on Victron? Whilst it may be able to do what you want with Victron (I am not so familiary with their kit) you can achieve all that using a regular grid-tied inverter like a Solis or Sunsynk - many of us in UK and Europe on here have already done?

 

[SeaGal]

@LeeOliver
Why victron? Looks like solark can do all this.

you beat me to it by a few mins!

@LeeOliver the SolArk that @1201 refers to are available in UK with Sunsynk or Deye (the OEM) brands on them.

 

[LeeOliver]

Thank you for your replies. I propose to research these products and I will open a new thread to discuss in due course!