More Solar for "Us"

[MrWizard]

Ok, I went off.the deep end?
Bought 3 used 37watt uni-solar panels and a blue sky 2000e controller for the hefty price of $400,
They were being listed as 75w panels, they are not

The tested open circuit voltage was 21+, short circuit amps 2.9
I tested each panel multiple times tilted into the sun and laying flat on the ground , got the same readings each way, that was the deciding factor, they appear to put out full power while laying flat, I will try to mount them tomorrow before it gets hot, right now 104°F
I will use the existing wiring until I buy & install the new wire

[Ivylog]

Yes in parallel at 80V. The pre-wired solar wires are large enough to run all 10 at 80V...May try mounting the other 3 if they do not block getting around on the roof. With an even # I could go to 160V.

[MrWizard]

interesting .. 1000w of thin film for $550
80v 1.5A, did you parallel all the panels to feed the controller
7 panels
10.5A at 80v to the controller ?

[Ivylog]

700W DIY solar install: I just bought 10 102W First Solar series4 thin film panels ($550) but only have room for 7 along drivers side of my roof. They are 80V and 1.5A so I bought a Outback Power FlexMax 60A 150V MPPT controller. Going to make my own tilting mounts fastened to the top of the raised rail on my 08 Navigator. Should have less than $1000 in this installation.

I have the alum raised rails along each side making it easy to attach a pivot on the inside near the top of it...a 2” piece of 1.5” alum channel. The panels are frameless so I’ll clip each to two PT wooden battens that fit/pivot in the 1.5” alum channels. When traveling they will be angled down towards the middle of the roof...have not decided if I need to hold them down while traveling. Angled down is also the best position when we snowbird each winter.

100W frameless panels that are 2' X 4' so they will fit besides my AC units and hopefully will not be shaded by them. Going to silicone and clip the panels to the PT battens.





Getting the panels up on the roof was a challenge but fortunately I had a canvas bag with straps that they would fit in. Used a rope to pull the bag up the back of the MH.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Solar? I'm jealous...

[Itinerant1]

Read all 72 pages... great job guys. MrWizard your info certainly was informative and an interesting progress from 2010, nice job.

[pianotuna]

Hi Gale,

How many amp-hours and what voltage?

[N8GS]

Hi all
Its been a long time since I posted here.
When I do my testing I add 100 A shunts before and after the CC. This supplements the info from the battery monitor shunt.
I usually also collect air temperature data. So all told I am collecting 7 channels.
If your Raspberry Pi can do multiple channels you only need to buy a couple 100 amp shunts at about $25 each.
I use a Graphtec GL220 as my data collector, your Raspberry pi is a lot less expensive and ultimately more flexible.

I hadn't used by data collector for a few months but it is getting a workout now as I test my new LFP batteries.

Gale

[CA_Traveler]

I've used MS View to capture my MS MPPT 60 data. And that also means that I have laptop draws as part of the equation. The Rasberry Pi is interesting and offers a much lower power consumption method of data collecting.

I'm not really concerned about accuracy for 2 reasons:
1. Unless you have a remote voltage battery sense you're measuring CC output voltage, not battery voltage.
2. Unless the house loads are 0.00A you're not measuring battery amps any way but rather house loads and battery amps.

But great progress on the Rasberry!

[mike-s]

full_mosey wrote:

adc_va_f = 39.712524414062
adc_ic_f = 1.1571545410156
vb_f = 14.285278320312

Wow. All those people paying big bucks for a Keysight 3458A to get only 8.5 digits of accuracy should buy one of those so they can get 13.5. Picovolt accuracy, NIST would be proud!

Seriously, you're lucky if what the MS reports is accurate within 50 mV, and current is worse.

[MrWizard]

Nice work
Yeah array volts and matching amps..real chopped up

[full_mosey]

I finally gave up on stabbing my battery posts with the HHM and updated my tech a little. I am now tracking my solar production with a Raspberry Pi 3 B. The controller is an MS MPPT 15L, 270Ahs of teloco pull AGM and 280W solar.

I'm making good progress in capturing data from the MS MPPT 15L.

Here is a graph taken from the ramdisk. It shows data at 1 minute intervals.

Yesterday eve, I drew 1130 Wh from the 270AH bank of AGMs. I used a Kill-A-Watt to measure the 1130Wh.

I don't believe I will make float today.

Also, note that there is a weather report. Look at Array Volts where they are choppy early on. The morning started with broken clouds and has changed to mostly sunny.

There is a lot of info there.



Here is the data from the last plot point in the same order as it appears in the legend.

dt = 2017-05-25 16:37:03
ahc_daily = 96.5
t_rts = 31
charge_state = 6
adc_va_f = 39.712524414062
adc_ic_f = 1.1571545410156
vb_f = 14.285278320312

HTH;
John

[MrWizard]

Yeah
Today is cool and cloudy and I was gone for hours,
No fans , no power vents, no pc etc
And the charge level actually went up a tiny bit, despite the fridge cycling
Just shows you what kind of power hog I am

[pianotuna]

MrWizard,

I hope you realize what a service you are doing for the rest of us. Thank you so much for continuing to post and the monitoring of your systems.

It looks as if the daily consumption was about 2700 watt-hours or 2.7 kwh.

[MrWizard]

did not run the generator until 7:30 pm

Solar and battery all day

solar supplied 2106.3 Watt hrs , 153.99 amppHrs, 318.3 peak watts, 22.14 peak amps

still with all the fans, the MW for breakfast and the coffee maker, the fridge, and the PC, i used all that plus another 70 ampHrs

at 7:30PM i was down another 11% from sun rise,

IF i had decided to sit under a tree with a book all day, the results would have been different