BoonHauler Solar Project

[BoonHauler]

I told a few of you that I would post my Solar build here as well so here we go.

I had originally planed for an 800 watt array but since then I decided to double the size and I'm now at 1650 watts.

As some of you are aware I purchased six (6) SolarWorld ‘Sunmodule Protect’ series 275 Watt panels for my project. After much research I personally believe the SolarWorld ‘Protect’ panels are the most rugged and robust solar panels on the market today.

Here’s a pic of them coming in off the truck.



The panels are a 24 volt 60 cell configuration that’s roughly 66” x 38” in size, here’s a look at the panel.



The panels come pre-drilled for a two rail mounting system but being this was not going to be a standard static mount I decided to set them up as a three rail mount system. Here I’m drilling the panel side rails third (center) mounting hole.




I wanted the panel mount system to be fully tiltable in one axis. Here in this pic you can see the mounting system on one panel completed and ready for roof top installation.

[pianotuna]

I would have chosen 48 volts input to the controllers, as they are going to need to be MPPT. Nice work with great attention to detail.

[BoonHauler]

2oldman wrote:
What controller? That's a lot of amps to be pumping to the (presumably) 12v batteries.

2 Old:

Once I complete the thread all the info will be within.

As for the the system voltage, it's 12VDC. If I had it to do over again, I'd go up to 24 VDC but that ship sailed a LONG time ago..... =(

[BoonHauler]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Nice work!
Is the project chronologically current?

Mex:

The project is complete. I installed the panels last summer and just got around to completing the load center wiring in the garage so it was time to post here.

[BoonHauler]

It was now onto all the work that needed to be done in the load center below. Being that I had doubled the size of the system I needed a second Solar Charge Controller (SCC). Additionally, I also had to remove the existing #4 GA wire run from the SCC location down to the main battery bank buss bar location and replace it with 2 GA wire that would handle the now 100 amp plus load.

Additional work needed to be done at the main buss bar and power distribution locations so for the most part the whole load center had to come apart again for all the rewiring and then final wiring that had yet to be completed in this area to be done.

I started with the solar panel wiring coming from the roof. I wanted to have complete load control of the solar power. This started with the installation of 15 amp breakers for each panel and then ganging three panels (breakers) together on the output side with a common buss bar and from there to their respective SCC.

Here’s a look at the breakers and buss bars installed and ready for the wiring installation



Here’s a look at the panel wiring installed



And here’s a pic of the, for the most part, disassembled load center.



And here’s a pic with the now two SCC’s installed and the final wiring of the beavertail relay and other wiring completed.

[BoonHauler]

The wiring was routed under the panels and secured in place with wire ties and wire tie adhesive mounts.

Here’s a look at some of the roof top wiring







Here’s a look at the roof penetration



Here’s a look at the underside in the garage.

[BoonHauler]

The panels are factory wired with MC4 (H4 connectors to be exact) so I bought six #10 5 foot extension cables off EBay and hacked them in half to be used as ends to mate up with the panel wiring. I wanted a robust spice so I used the heat shrink solder butt connectors I have for the connection.



Then I covered the splice with silicone



Covered that with heat shrink tubing



Until the silicone spooged out the end of the shrink tubing. You can kind of see a completed connection in the background of this picture.

[2oldman]

What controller? That's a lot of amps to be pumping to the (presumably) 12v batteries.

[BoonHauler]

Here’s a look with four of the six panels installed.



And here’s a close up of the mount. I used a ¼” clevis pin as the hinge pin. The hairpins were installed once the wiring was completed.



Once the panel installation was completed I began the installation of the roof top wiring.

Being that the panels were 275 watts at basically 24 volts I decided to use #10 wire from the panels down to the circuit breakers. Being that most of this wire was going be exposed I chose to use two conductor SOOW cord.

The panels were going to be wired in parallel so this meant six wire home runs coming through the roof in the garage. In order to facilitate the roof penetration I decided to use a standard 7 hole NEMA 3 junction box and ½” weather tight cord connectors (all from Home Depot) to accomplish this task. The junction box needed to be modified with a much larger seventh hole, a 2 ½” hole to be exact.

Here’s a few pics

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Nice work!
Is the project chronologically current?

[BoonHauler]

Once the bench top assembly was complete it was time to install the panels on the roof top. In order to facilitate the roof top assembly I built a transportation pallet that I could have my friend next door lift for me.

Here’s that look ……

[BoonHauler]

Being that all the mounting points needed to align properly I built jigs that I could use during the fabrication of the shoes and mounting rails, here’s a few pics of them.







And here you can see the tilt range

[BoonHauler]

Here you can see the feet or shoes (whatever you want to call the) that I fabricated to accept the mounting rails. These would be caulked and screwed down to the roof deck of the trailer.





And here is a close up of the mounting rail connection

[2oldman]

That's going to be some serious power. Excellent.