Ground mounted solar PV installation project

[anto44]

[35,24€ 10% OFF]Smart Solar Tracking Equipment Maker Project DIY Kit Technology for Arduino Module Board from Electronic Components & Supplies on banggood

Smart Solar Tracking Equipment Maker Project DIY Kit Technology for Arduino

Only US$35.99, buy best Smart Solar Tracking Equipment Maker Project DIY Kit Technology for Arduino sale online store at wholesale price.

banggood.onelink.me

I saw this on banggood the other day, the sun tracking function is really simple, it's 4 light sensing diodes separated by a cross shaped piece. I'd never really thought about how sun tracking would be done but I was surprised how simple this set up was

 

[julianthegypsy]

they might be ok but you still need auto track points when theres no sun around so the unit auto tracks to those points at specific times

As far as I remember, when it's cloudy, pointing the panels straight up was recommended as they'll pick up the maximum amount of light from the sky that way. I agree though, it makes sense to just get the panels in and worry about tracking later when you're already generating some power.

 

[gaz1]

a simple scissor jack lift can be used for the height adjustment

one used on the side the other used on slide uprights

both left and right and up and down can be controlled by 2 simple motors

 

[gaz1]

instead of unistrut you can use z perlins instead

center swivel

top swivel

 

[DAPPH]

You can dial the EV charging down to 2.3kW easily enough if that helps by using a granny charger or your existing EVSE/car may be also be able to adjust the charging rate.



Hoof trimming will be the least of your issues with Soays, I reckon they'd be running up the panels and launching themselves out of there in search of the ever greener grass in the neighbours garden.

Apparently Clicker high voltage electric fencing stops that .

 

[knighty]

for a later date.... you can get car chargers whick monitor your solar production/power use/export and charge the car appropriatly... so no power is inported or exported

saw them a few years back when they were just being made... will be pretty refined now

 

[dyno-tron]

We have recently had solar PV installed, battery should be coming very soon :-)
Spent a lot of time working out capacity required vs cost vs payback.

Create a free account on SolarEdge.com, they have a great system designer tool which gives all sorts of options for panels, inverters (their own but that doesn’t matter) usage profile, input real leccy cost & export rates. The financials it calculates are quite impressive. Full break down for import/export/self consumption etc.

Also, a great place to buy the stuff from - solarsparky.com (no affiliation), they even have phones that people answer!!

Good luck with the project.

 

[brewdexta]

After a few days of looking through loads of inverter and charger manuals, I've decided not to use Victron or Renology. Victron seemed better suited to boats or RVs than domestic premises. They used 4 different communication protocols between components, some necessary, some not. Hybrid converters cut down on component count and communication cables but their PV side was very week for the money and only supported one MPPT string in their hybrid inverter with a low input voltage so didn't support the number of panels I wanted and that was almost £2k. Also only splash proof. There was two manufacturers that I settled on that had comparable products, Solis and Sofar, I ended up with the Sofar HYD3600-ES

This is a 3.6kW hybrid inverter that supports two PV strings and is IP65 for half the Victron money, but has around a 10 weeks lead time. Which, with holidays and work, give me enough time to complete the ground work. It's also got G98 certification and a few other nice features.

Renology lithium batteries are in a sale at the moment and are great value capacity wise, but they are only 12v and can't be wired in series. This limits your inverter choice as most inverters are now 48v.

You also need to look at support and battery management systems. I asked Renology a question about their inverters and got no reply so support seems sporadic as others have had replies. Their BMS seems better supported by inverter manufacturers than Victron but the 12v issue killed it.

So looking at a few others including Pylontech that the inverter manufacturer warrants but I'll be doing some more reading first. Lead time on batteries seems to be slightly less than inverters, so will order them next. Solar panels are currently plentiful but I'll order them soon before they are not.

 

[knighty]

I'd seriously think about setting up the solar first and adding batteries later if you need them

not realy woth the extra thousands you'll spend if you're exporting very little

get used to putting the washer on while it's sunny outside etc.

 

[brewdexta]

I'd seriously think about setting up the solar first and adding batteries later if you need them

not realy woth the extra thousands you'll spend if you're exporting very little

get used to putting the washer on while it's sunny outside etc.

The Landis & Gyr SMETS2 smart meter we have is pretty useless in terms of giving you usage stats as the LCD panel just says "commissioning" and has said that since installation. Besides, even if it worked, there's no easy way of getting the data out to use it sensibly. However, the light on the front of the meter flashes once for every Wh consumed. So Using one of these on the front, wired to a raspberry pi you can put the data into a time series database like Influxdb then feed it to Grafana for graphing.

Here's a week, the peaks are when we are charging the EV

Here's yesterday, the peaks are washing machine etc.

I'm still playing with this and I'm adding some current sensors so I can get plain wattage and also break it down into various ring mains but that will have to wait until the winter, During the summer I do outside projects, during the winter I do techie stuff

Here's a month, I've compared the graphed cumulative figures to a months meter reading and they concur.

I need a decent UPS for my techie stuff and so that I have time to start up the genny when we have power cuts, so I will be getting some battery storage anyway, my current APC UPS is expensive and lasts only a few minutes. But I will start low, probably 2.4kWh to begin with. I'll try a week without battery and compare it to the meter usage with it on and compare the difference.

 

[Gareth J]

The Landis & Gyr SMETS2 smart meter we have is pretty useless in terms of giving you usage stats as the LCD panel just says "commissioning" and has said that since installation. Besides, even if it worked, there's no easy way of getting the data out to use it sensibly. However, the light on the front of the meter flashes once for every Wh consumed. So Using one of these on the front, wired to a raspberry pi you can put the data into a time series database like Influxdb then feed it to Grafana for graphing.

View attachment 359318

Here's a week, the peaks are when we are charging the EV

View attachment 359310

Here's yesterday, the peaks are washing machine etc.

I'm still playing with this and I'm adding some current sensors so I can get plain wattage and also break it down into various ring mains but that will have to wait until the winter, During the summer I do outside projects, during the winter I do techie stuff

View attachment 359311

Here's a month, I've compared the graphed cumulative figures to a months meter reading and they concur.

View attachment 359319

I need a decent UPS for my techie stuff and so that I have time to start up the genny when we have power cuts, so I will be getting some battery storage anyway, my current APC UPS is expensive and lasts only a few minutes. But I will start low, probably 2.4kWh to begin with. I'll try a week without batter and compare it to the meter usage with it on and compare the difference.

Fantastic data collection. Love the flashing red light spy.

I'm a bit stuck in the mud with it all, struggle to get my head around anything less a analogue and more digital.

Came across a useful series of tools the other day http://shellystore.co.uk/ for monitoring/maximising home consumption.

In your instance, the first thing I'd check is whether you EV can allow V-H charge/discharge. Unlikely, as, from recollection, it's very rare, if not impossible in UK. But if you can, you've a huge battery there to play with.

 

[knighty]

I need a decent UPS for my techie stuff and so that I have time to start up the genny when we have power cuts, so I will be getting some battery storage anyway, my current APC UPS is expensive and lasts only a few minutes. But I will start low, probably 2.4kWh to begin with. I'll try a week without battery and compare it to the meter usage with it on and compare the difference.

I have a UPS for my server/cctv/that stuff at work

was worried it's littke 6ah batteires wouldn't last long... bought 4x 12v 90ah UPS batteires on ebay (about the size of car batteries) and wired them up instead

I havn't run it till the battery dies... but it'll last a good hour now


EDIT: 48v 90ah is 4.3kwh so it should last a good few hours... not quite sure how much power the rack pulls or how lot the UPS will drain the batteires till it shuts off - I guess as low as it'll go before the voltage drops off too low? thats the whole point of a ups right?


I'd love big batteries... hope that eventually used car batteires will come down in price enough.... power costs going up mean the return on batteries is getting better and better


will your inverter+battery combo run your power in an powercut? guess it'll need a relay/contctor to disconect you from the mains? I think the tesla powerwall has that as an option, no idea about other systems

guess you could just wire another inverter up to the same batteries?

 

[sako243]

Might I suggest rather than worrying about optimal angle etc., why not get stuff just installed and fine tune later?

 

[brewdexta]

Might I suggest rather than worrying about optimal angle etc., why not get stuff just installed and fine tune later?

I'm not worried about it, but I do have a lot of time on my hands while commuting so tend to look at the details.

I am going to get the unistrut in and mount some panels soonest. As I'm mounting it on unistrut I can move the panels around later.

At first I just thought install more panels and forget optimal angles, but then when you look at the inverters you find that have a maximum number of panels in a MTTP string. hence why I dumped Victron as theirs sas too few panels for the dosh.

So mine will be a combination of the max number of panels I can squeeze into the area, within the inverter parameters and mounted as optimally as I can without sodding around with tracking other than maybe three times a year adjustment with a spanner

 

[dyno-tron]

We did the same, eg cramming as many as we can on the garage roof and just accepting that we can’t get optimum angle (roof is about 20deg slope), 21 x 330w panels.

Peak output on very sunny day late June was 7kw - 32Kwh total production for the day (patchy cloud), but peak power is already dropping off now we are in August, max was 5.3kw yesterday - 41Kwh total production.

On a sunny day it produces more than we use but it was sized for giving a decent output for most of the year, not just summer.

 

[Kayos]

For sub optimal positions look at panel level optimisation rather than string level, it's under £10 extra per panel but combined with a smart inverter (Solaredge) it can make a big difference to efficiency

I know you said not to discuss planning so take this as a statement. As you are under 9m in length you may be surprised with PD. But happy to leave at that

 

[gaz1]

So mine will be a combination of the max number of panels I can squeeze into the area, within the inverter parameters and mounted as optimally as I can without sodding around with tracking other than maybe three times a year adjustment with a spanner

whilst i agree with you i wouldnt want to adjust loads with an adjustable spanner either

and its the same with screw jacks, windows, trailer jacks or even car window winder

option ive come up with is telescopic triangle tower to keep the build cheap and easy to make yet strong

a 500mm length should extend out to 1.3m and also it would need less turns to get to desired degree

 

[brewdexta]

I found some second hand unistrut, its 6m long, which I wanted, but double the width at 41 x 82 but it will do. It was cheap and delivered. 7 x 6m lengths in total, so good enough to cover most of the install.

I got chatting to a mate who installed my biomass boiler. He's MCS registered on the heating side and confirmed what I had discovered from chatting to others as follows.

You don't need the installation to be MCS registered to connect to the grid. Just by a competent person, i.e. a spark.

But the installation will need to comply with the relevant grid connection standards. In my case this is G98, so 16A max or 3.68kW, but there are others.

For G98 you can connect and notify the DNO, but for others like G99 you have to notify first.

If you want to get SEG, today's equivalent of the old FIT, i.e paying to export for the measly 5 to 7.5p per unit, then you need the install to be completed by MCS registered installers.

Same goes if you want the Tesla deal where you can get symmetric tariffs i.e. same price for import or export. The Tesla battery deal is something like 25p per unit in or out, there are deals if you have Tesla car too, I think you have to via Octopus, I'm still looking into this.

If you want to get 0% on the installation , then if has to be via an MCS registered company. The Sunak budget basically extended the existing 5% on renewables to 0% for a couple of years.

The 8 to 10 week lead time on the hybrid inverter I ordered turned out to be 2 weeks so should be arriving this week.

This accelerates things as I was betting on being able to cancel the order if I decided to go via the MCS route as I have a few enquiries in process.

Basically, unless the Tesla route proves compelling, the MCS path doesn't offer me much. As one of my major costs is heating hot water in summer via biomass then using solar to do this would compete with charging the 12.5kWh Tesla battery. Plus my intended 4 to 4.5kWp solar install is a bit small.

So, for me, a smaller battery plus a diverter to power the immersion heater would probably be the sweet spot, avoiding export to the grid, other than a last resort.

But I'll keep my mind open until the last decision point.

 

[addjunkie]

On our house we have the hot water tank economizer thing that put spare into the immersion heater, once thats hot it switches any spare into the heat stored tank. So export nothing. Being retired and at home, during daylight ours all our consumption washer etc tends to be-during the day too.
Looking back over oil usage for the heating/ hotwater were using far less in summer since the solar install.

Been trying to get an inbuilt roof system for one of our holiday cottages to match the existing install on the barn roof but no one seems to want the job as it requires a roofer and planning etc to fit into a specific calendar window.

 

[Justme]

Forget manual angle adjustments.

Think about you needs & usage.

If you were of fits then you want the angle for max production over a year.

However away from that its all about reduction on usage.

So set the angle not for the best months as you will be making more than you can use & not for the worst months as you will never produce enough but for the months when its starting to not quite produce enough to cover your needs.

Even with a battery system there is a limit on how much you can store for over night.

Try tracking your hourly usage for a few weeks / months to see just when you use the most power & energy.