Hi from Worthing

[Tay]

So, a quick update.

I've changed the orientation and made some changes to the cabling.

Also, during my suck it and see testing I was horrified to see how badly shade affected panels (I saw little more than 18w with a panel south facing, inclined to around 60 degs ish) whilst my other matched panel similarly facing South but horizontal (still not optimal etc) was chucking out 170ish watts.
Aside from choosing the hottest day this year to get on the roof and assemble the tray for the panel up on the flat roof everything went well, the plan was executed perfectly and despite the fact I just dont seem to be getting the power I did last week with them in series - they are now running independently.

I have learnt that the next step forward is to get 'something' on the south roof space I do have asap. All things being well I should have some spare cash next month and might well get some professionally fitted panels (As powerful as I can get them) fitted and something half resembling a static inverter/battery solution, I'm not going to be able to generate enough power to warrant feeding into the grid as I'll probably use everything I generate.

Now to put the ladder away and tidy up the cables and sit under a fan for a few hours and hydrate..!

[nowty]

Good job,

I said you'd find somewhere.

Homemade brackets ?

[Joeboy]

On a complicated roof it makes good sense to have a suck it and see plan. Also do a dive into best panels with most busbars for your varied aspects, string size & dare I say it microinverters.

Work done now on the planning to minimise a poor panel due to location or shading will pay dividends for a long time.

Going on the feedback seen a few months back on here regarding older systems and their owners reported lack of degradation you could be looking at 35 years system life.

Good to see the results there in photo.

Higher and South facing has to be seen to believed. I went at it backwards with my best roof space being last to be filled. That particular string of three does some heavy lifting especially early in the morning due to tree shading on the lower mounted strings.

[Tay]

Good job,

I said you'd find somewhere.

Homemade brackets ?

I cheated with the brackets, I wanted something consistent but flexible enough to suit my ever changing moods. Each set was £25 or so if I recall, Amazon specials.

I have been floating the idea of South facing panels along the right side of the garden, significantly more traction than putting panels on the front of the house with the other half. I could probably ban the grandkids from the garden for a few years until they grow out of ball games...maybe.

Alas there is some teenagers a couple of gardens over that dont appear to have any ball control at all, alas, after a weekend my dog have a small collection of footballs to play with. he doesnt like them much and tends to destroy them if I cant get there fast enough. This shoddy football stuff could be a problem too.

[Tay]

On a complicated roof it makes good sense to have a suck it and see plan. Also do a dive into best panels with most busbars for your varied aspects, string size & dare I say it microinverters.

Work done now on the planning to minimise a poor panel due to location or shading will pay dividends for a long time.

Going on the feedback seen a few months back on here regarding older systems and their owners reported lack of degradation you could be looking at 35 years system life.

Good to see the results there in photo.

Higher and South facing has to be seen to believed. I went at it backwards with my best roof space being last to be filled. That particular string of three does some heavy lifting especially early in the morning due to tree shading on the lower mounted strings.

I've got the inverter from Amazon now too, I'll grab some spare cables from Amazon later as the ones I had for the !20w portable Renogy are some daft hybrid thingies with MC4 on one side then a plethora XT60 + other wierd connector, perhaps idea for Renogy kit but not great for anything else.

Quite looking forward to the testing of the grid tie stuff, but not getting my hopes up just in case.

Since i'm not going to get many panels on my roof I thought I might as well look into the microinverters for each panel type architecture but not quite sure how that would tie into the rest of the dedicated kit (grown up inverter(s)/batteries etc), I presume they output AC that would need to be converted in to DC again to charge the batteries.

[Tay]

By the time I got to ordering the discounted setup had been pulled, apparently bluetti uk object to suppliers discounting and it looks like they then market in competition to their stockists, undercutting them. So the cheapest deals currently are from the official site.

That's not the way to keep your resellers engaged!

I had a look at the bluetti gear. Seems like a lot of money for gear that is limited in modular expansion capacity and discharge rate. It looks decent enough gear but I'm not sure it's best for static homes and scale though?

Although I did like the idea for small scale complimentary to balcony solar when I read about the two combined.

Opps missed this post.

Yup its not cheap, the LiFePo battery packs are stupidly expensive, The inverter not too bad, but I doubt I would have gone for these if I hadnt got the refurbished price. But, I had a use case for this, with a 65% discounted rate for electricity whilst the battery has grunt in it its saving me money, the cap ex costs will be forgotten about in time

By changing the tariff, using the battery I'm already seeing a 30-40% reduction in monthly electricity costs, given the solar top up during the day I can just about eeekkkk the battery to midnight and then its rinse and repeat.

1. My IT gear has UPS protection
2. I'm seeing a reduction in Electricity costs
3. I'm getting to play with Solar
4. Keeping my aging mind active

For my use case its works well, also you can expand this to 12kWh and could, if you choose to run your house on it via some sort a transfer switch (or at least some of it, I dont think it would handle a dual cooker taking 5kw on start up or something of that ilk).

If or rather when I go down the road of static solar then I'll probably end up selling this gear as it simply wouldnt have a requirement anymore.

If I lived in the sticks or where the power was flakey then I think there is a reasonable use case for it.

[openspaceman]

Hi Tay

Miy AC500 and battery arrived on Tuesday and I am now trying things out. First thing I note is that even when used as a UPS, with the battery charging and plugged in to the mains the outlets are not neutral to earth bonded, have you got round this? I cannot see if the outlets are RCD protected from a look at the supplied manual.

[Tay]

Hi Tay

Miy AC500 and battery arrived on Tuesday and I am now trying things out. First thing I note is that even when used as a UPS, with the battery charging and plugged in to the mains the outlets are not neutral to earth bonded, have you got round this? I cannot see if the outlets are RCD protected from a look at the supplied manual.

I cant say I've noticed it, my load is pretty small and most of the office gear is through 2 power strips and 90% of the gear is 'soap on a rope' type transformers. Ive not had anything trip thus far, I kinda skipped the test and deploy stages and went right to production as it just did what I wanted it to do.

They could have done so much more with it, and maybe thats coming I don't know, I've not seen any updated firmware recently either, Will Prowse said he saw quite a few that addressed some issues he saw but I suspect he kinda uses and forgets about it once reviewed/working.

The lack of seeing both PV inputs on the AC300 within the APP is annoying, yet you should have it on your app for the AC500, the touch screen displays it though, there is so much more that the app could do but isn't enabled for one reason or another. Also the timers to charge from mains during peak and off peak are clumsy at best, I presume the AC500 is the same?. And exporting of reporting is bugging me now.

[openspaceman]

I haven't really done anything with it yet other than absorb a couple of kWh of excess solar energy AC coupled (still exported 9kWh today) and charge the wife's iphone on the top deck inductive pad.

I need to make a 30A connector and see if it enables my two inverters to work when I switch the house to off grid. The earthing will be little issue then as the transfer switch has its own earth rod when the TNS earth is cut. If that works I will transfer my 1800W panels to charge it. The voltage is right but in direct sun it could exceed the rated 1500W input although it only went over 1500W three times this summer and actually reached 1485W today.