Were getting closer to the battery solution (Now completed)

[Tay]

Tay, do you have the power for each Pylontech battery wired into some sort of central busbar ?

yup, the batteries excluding the comms obvs goes through the Victron Lynx distributor which is a modular busbar (The last photo is of the cables and Lynx). I'm not sure how much you can keep adding to it but I think its quite a bit.

Link to Lynx distributor

Quality !, you will be able to push the amps.

The standard pylontech cable gets very warm at 100A and hot at 120A.

If I cba I'll go out 30 mins into the battery charging and see how it fares, The inverter is capable of 110A, I''ve seen it as high as that 109A ish for a few hours when I original got it, it'll be interesting to see if these are the same, I can limit it if needs be.

[MrPablo]

If I were to go back in time (or more realistically have the quantity of PV and batteries to make it truly worthwhile), I would definitely look at a Victron setup. Very nice setup Tay!

[Tay]

If I were to go back in time (or more realistically have the quantity of PV and batteries to make it truly worthwhile), I would definitely look at a Victron setup. Very nice setup Tay!

Tks, it took a while, lots of gaps in my knowledge were filled and promptly emptied again..

A friend gave me access to view his system, its a bit of a beast with a Victron 10k Quattro and dual Primo Fronius inverters and a lot of panels. So that was a starting point after I knew I wanted to go down the Victron route.

Although once the ground mounted panels are up I might go back to the Hoymiles Micro inverter and plug in the RS485 stuff if I can. Then I'd only need to buy another Single Charge controller but we'll see how we get on.

[Tay]

Just upgraded to Canadian Solar 575T's as the Chinese LONGi panels were rubbish in shade...

Woke up today to see the panels generating 400w+ at 8am, just had another look and have my first 1kWh....very exciting..

[MrPablo]

Interesting to see that the panel choice makes such a difference in shade, what's the difference (apart from size and power output)?

[Tay]

Interesting to see that the panel choice makes such a difference in shade, what's the difference (apart from size and power output)?

I would guess the overall design, whether its perc with better efficiency and performance, the cell placement, I guess they are all factors, I'm sure somebody will come along and enlighten us.

It may well be a case of you get what you pay for, there is no doubt the LONGi panels were cheap, I think I saw them as low as £65, annoying as I had just paid £90-95 I think inc delivery in a sale,.

Several weeks ago I had the LONGi's hooked up to a Hoymiles microinverter and I was looking at the amount of shade on one of the panels, approx 1-2 cells in a corner, a tiny bit was in shade and the difference in output was staggering:
1. full sun - one panel was pushing out 200+w's
2. The other with a tiny bit of shading was down to the 40-50w or so.

This is one such example, I did have a photo to go with this but cant find it, it was a tiny corner of the panel that was in shade and this was the result.




The Canadian solar panel still had some reduction but nowhere near the amount, I also noticed that today there was more ambient light rather than direct sunlight and they were pretty good.

[sharpener]

I would guess the overall design, whether its perc with better efficiency and performance, the cell placement, I guess they are all factors, I'm sure somebody will come along and enlighten us.

It may well be a case of you get what you pay for, there is no doubt the LONGi panels were cheap, I think I saw them as low as £65, annoying as I had just paid £90-95 I think inc delivery in a sale,.

Several weeks ago I had the LONGi's hooked up to a Hoymiles microinverter and I was looking at the amount of shade on one of the panels, approx 1-2 cells in a corner, a tiny bit was in shade and the difference in output was staggering:
1. full sun - one panel was pushing out 200+w's
2. The other with a tiny bit of shading was down to the 40-50w or so.

This is one such example, I did have a photo to go with this but cant find it, it was a tiny corner of the panel that was in shade and this was the result.

The Canadian solar panel still had some reduction but nowhere near the amount, I also noticed that today there was more ambient light rather than direct sunlight and they were pretty good.

I didn't have a lot of choice about Longi panels, in fact in 2022 I had great difficulty in finding an installer at all. Unfortunately in late afternoon one end of the array is shaded to a small extent over its full height and as mine are mounted in landscape this disables two entire panels.

AFAIR they claim to have the standard arrangement of 3 bypass diodes i.e. 1 for every two rows of cells, perhaps the Canadian panels have more or are connected differently?

[Tay]

I would guess the overall design, whether its perc with better efficiency and performance, the cell placement, I guess they are all factors, I'm sure somebody will come along and enlighten us.

It may well be a case of you get what you pay for, there is no doubt the LONGi panels were cheap, I think I saw them as low as £65, annoying as I had just paid £90-95 I think inc delivery in a sale,.

Several weeks ago I had the LONGi's hooked up to a Hoymiles microinverter and I was looking at the amount of shade on one of the panels, approx 1-2 cells in a corner, a tiny bit was in shade and the difference in output was staggering:
1. full sun - one panel was pushing out 200+w's
2. The other with a tiny bit of shading was down to the 40-50w or so.

This is one such example, I did have a photo to go with this but cant find it, it was a tiny corner of the panel that was in shade and this was the result.

The Canadian solar panel still had some reduction but nowhere near the amount, I also noticed that today there was more ambient light rather than direct sunlight and they were pretty good.

I didn't have a lot of choice about Longi panels, in fact in 2022 I had great difficulty in finding an installer at all. Unfortunately in late afternoon one end of the array is shaded to a small extent over its full height and as mine are mounted in landscape this disables two entire panels.

AFAIR they claim to have the standard arrangement of 3 bypass diodes i.e. 1 for every two rows of cells, perhaps the Canadian panels have more or are connected differently?

Same 3 diodes according to the blurb, without exhaustive testing I doubt we'll ever know, both sets of panels were in the same orientation, it was a rough guess that the shading was the same or similar, shame I cant find the photos as it was really clear what was shaded. I probably saw the photos a few days later and thought wtf is this crap and blatted them.

Another day, another part cloudy day and the CA's are doing great again.

I just know Im going to be regretting not getting 4 more CA's but thats a lot more cost in panels and charge controller.

Roughly £1200 versus £400ish - Thats £800 to put into the ground mount build. I might oversize the shed roof to cater for CA's or larger panels in future (hedge my bets). Thing is the LONGi's will work just fine there as there is no shade.

[Joeboy]

I was quite surprised to recently see small form factor panels with 10 busbar. The tech is being steadily tweaked! I remember clearly when 6 busbar was cutting edge.

There is also panel operating voltage aligning with balcony inverter operating capacity. I'm sure there is a co relation tween the two.

Great to read of your progress Tay. I liked it when you said first kWh through the door, an epic moment indeed.

[Tay]

I was quite surprised to recently see small form factor panels with 10 busbar. The tech is being steadily tweaked! I remember clearly when 6 busbar was cutting edge.

Great to read of your progress Tay. I liked it when you said first kWh through the door, an epic moment indeed.

heh I was a little giddy ..

I'm just amazed at the stuff thats available on the victron gear, I keep finding new things..

My latest has been the advanced charts where you can zoom in, show a month or a year or total if you like.

Their UI/UX for their VRM design is well impressive.

A small sampling