Shed solar on a budget

[drjim]

Some progress.

Shed relocated from my late Dads house to my garden, built, viewed by SWMBO in location specified by SWMBO. Next day dismantled and rebuilt in my original planned location

I obtained a very cheap "garage" consumer unit from ebay, a 3 wide DIN rail enclosure from screwfix, a BG 16A breaker as I didn't fancy the chinese one, and a 25M yellow 2.5mm arctic flex coil to hook the inverter up to the mains. I'm going to use the immersion connection point on the basis that we currently don't actually use said immersion.

I've got said flex in situ, wired my breakers/RCD and the meter into the boxes on a board ready to fix to wall, and am electrically ready to go.

I need some suitable sized timber to span a 4.5 M gap from shed to house wall, which I will sort out in the next few days. I can then configure my panels in a SE orientation and see what they provide.

While doing all this I connected a couple of the new panels to the enecsys smi-200-72 inverters I picked up last year, didn't think they worked but plugged in via the ketotek monitor it showed 80ish watts from the pair with an overcast sky. Might be fun to use them with some of these cheap panels in a tactical solar fashion as time goes by. 250w of panel each should drive them nicely!

[Joeboy]

Some progress.

Shed relocated from my late Dads house to my garden, built, viewed by SWMBO in location specified by SWMBO. Next day dismantled and rebuilt in my original planned location

I obtained a very cheap "garage" consumer unit from ebay, a 3 wide DIN rail enclosure from screwfix, a BG 16A breaker as I didn't fancy the chinese one, and a 25M yellow 2.5mm arctic flex coil to hook the inverter up to the mains. I'm going to use the immersion connection point on the basis that we currently don't actually use said immersion.

I've got said flex in situ, wired my breakers/RCD and the meter into the boxes on a board ready to fix to wall, and am electrically ready to go.

I need some suitable sized timber to span a 4.5 M gap from shed to house wall, which I will sort out in the next few days. I can then configure my panels in a SE orientation and see what they provide.

While doing all this I connected a couple of the new panels to the enecsys smi-200-72 inverters I picked up last year, didn't think they worked but plugged in via the ketotek monitor it showed 80ish watts from the pair with an overcast sky. Might be fun to use them with some of these cheap panels in a tactical solar fashion as time goes by. 250w of panel each should drive them nicely!

Sounds great. 4.5mtrs is a fair span. Worth bearing in.mind gluelam, scarfing etc to achieve that span via lesser timbers. Any photos,we like those.

[drjim]

Still working on the array configuration, considering some on shed roof, some more to the house end pointed due south. Anyway a picture you say, well here's googles satellite view...




Obviously North is up, the stuff in the front garden was firewood waiting to be chopped up. The shed is in the corner of the garden behind where the pool is in this picture. In the shade at the side of the house is more sheds, the rectangle at the back is a lean to shedstension which now has two panels on top pointing south east. Inbetween that and where the new shed is I have my two panels on the microinverters just sat on ground/my IBC hot tub.

Like this...





And with that setup, my emonPi says this...





The blue line is input from grid, the orangey one is the CT on the two original panels, the enecsys inverters are just plugged in to the mains no metering. However I can see my grid baseload is lower than overnight and my mouse highlight shows that I have gone negative, which to me implies an export! I've not even taken the 2kw inverter out of its box yet!

So project hot water is going to be needed sooner rather than later I think!

[drjim]

And all the stuff in the lean to under the panels is my wood fired brewery!

[Moxi]

Post removed

[AGT]

Put a cantenary wire to shed and building and tyrap cable to wire?

Would that work?

[drjim]

I'm planning to put an outdoor sink up there as part of brewing plan so I'll dig a little trench and put a duct out to that shed I think. Still debating the whole layout!

[drjim]

Well I did some electrics yesterday...





Then I spent a bit of time building a westerly oriented 3 panel array down the side of the house.

I woke up very early today and set about fitting the panels, gorgeous sunshine all day but all solar turned off while I did this.




I then excitedly wired everything up and found zero volts.

Much testing ensued and I realised that some numpty on the install team had failed to notice the MC4 terminals come in two different varieties, and had used the wrong one in all of the positive terminal plugs he wired. The muppet even did it again after realising what was wrong!

By the time I had power, it was going dark, but I switched everything on and it showed 60 watts on the inverter. Ketotek meter said 30ish and my nodeMCU wifi monitor said about 30. Will see what they all say when it's got light on it!

So I have 6 panels pointing South East, then the three pointing west. Could switch two of the SE ones to be more S I suppose. I'm hoping that the sun will average out throughout the day and give me usable energy rather than chasing peaks that I will end up exporting.

My Wife didn't like the shedtop W array, I have a few ideas about how it could be changed if she insists!

[drjim]

Been at work last couple of days. Got growatt monitoring configured and saw a peak of 700ish watts yesterday. This AM woke to clear skies and not at work till later. It was only showing 100w even though the shed is in full sunlight.

Popped out in my PJ's and knocked up a MC4 patch cable to adjust the config. Just the shed panels, inverter back on - 5-600w. As the sun came round the house I repatched the two other SE facing panels and I saw it hit 1100w before the clouds appeared.

So having the panels pointing all over the place and shaded doesn't make any sense. SWMBO will hopefully come round to my original plan of one array pointing SE - another 4 added to the shedtop array - which creates me a great big gazebo area for the brewing.

I was also exporting over 400w according to my emonpi, so I promptly ordered a factory second solic 200 from earthwise on ebay.

So project baseload is already there and project hot water will be done next week!

[Joeboy]

Been at work last couple of days. Got growatt monitoring configured and saw a peak of 700ish watts yesterday. This AM woke to clear skies and not at work till later. It was only showing 100w even though the shed is in full sunlight.

Popped out in my PJ's and knocked up a MC4 patch cable to adjust the config. Just the shed panels, inverter back on - 5-600w. As the sun came round the house I repatched the two other SE facing panels and I saw it hit 1100w before the clouds appeared.

So having the panels pointing all over the place and shaded doesn't make any sense. SWMBO will hopefully come round to my original plan of one array pointing SE - another 4 added to the shedtop array - which creates me a great big gazebo area for the brewing.

I was also exporting over 400w according to my emonpi, so I promptly ordered a factory second solic 200 from earthwise on ebay.

So project baseload is already there and project hot water will be done next week!

Worth explaining to SWMBO about strings and the lowest generating panel being the ceiling for the whole string of panels. Sounds like you are well on your way, congrats!