Barezzi:
Very lovely setup, but your cables are flying all over the place...
Do you have plans to make them neat?

Barezzi:
ilenaira
I'm sure your generator will be redundant.
Once your production exceeds demand, and with ur enviable battery bank, I doubt you'll start that ur gen in a very long time.
By the way, what fire protection/suppression systems have u put in place, in the unlikely event that ur gen ignites the foam

ilenaira:


As for fire protection, the cooling fan is to ensure things don't get too hot to reach that level. So, apart from an extinguisher (which is useless if no-one witnesses the fire), there's nada.

ilenaira:


I sincerely hope so o. I'm just glad the panels are on the flat roof as opposed to the main house roof. When I cleaned them recently, the CCs recorded a big spike in PV input immediately.

As for fire protection, the cooling fan is to ensure things don't get too hot to reach that level. So, apart from an extinguisher (which is useless if no-one witnesses the fire), there's nada.

JUO:
I think you need to reposition your panel because 30a on that huge installation is so little

JUO:
@ ilenaira do you really need generator? with my 390w I get close to 3kwh on a good day. why don't you add more batteries. the fuel I bought N65 in 2011 is still in my generator. I hate generator

salam12:


My set up of 3.6KW panel and 520AH batteries (2 string of 260AH in parallel) have been delivering above 30A charging current. This depend on draw down overnight on batteries and sun intensity.

Barezzi:

I'm interested in ur battery spec.
How much are they??

ilenaira:
Brackets for tilt, cooling and securing

tundebabzy:
@ilenaira
Any chance you will open source the design of your generator silencer box? Please?

Barezzi:

My thoughts exactly...
I have never seen up to 32A from my 2.1kw array. Max has been 31A+ going to my 200Ah battery bank.
Thanks to Bodejohn, I had to do a reassessment of my energy needs/production.
My daily energy use is in the 15kwh region.
With everyone home this festive season, my consumption will be maxed for the next one month!

For 50% DOD, ignoring system losses, my battery bank capacity should be 30kwh. For a 48v system, this translates
to 625Ah!

My observations:
From my 200Ah, 48V bank @ 50% DOD, I can only access ~5kwh.
Yesterday, I had a record production of 6.5kwh by 4pm! but by 7pm, my inverter tripped!!
If not for good ol PHCN, I would've slept in darkness...

So, if my daytime production of 6.5kwh was exhausted by 7pm, this would imply my night time demand is ~8.5kwh.
Instead of designing my system for 15kwh daily consumption, why not for night time demand of say 9kwh?

9kwh*2/48v = 375Ah!

Doubling my bank to 400Ah instead of 625Ah will solve my current wahala...
Barezzi & Sons Nig Ltd will save over N200k by this intervention!

What are your thoughts??

durodee:




On a different issue entirely, when looking at the 2nd picture attached to the quoted post above, it seems the panels were all not all installed with the same elevation. Wouldn't that affect output or it was just looking like that in the picture?

RipVanWink:


sorry lemme understand u well........with 390w panel u get a daily harvest of 3kwh?!, i find this hard to believe, the max i hv ever got from my 1kw panel is isbout 4600wh

ilenaira:
My brothers, I've been missing in action as this thread rumbles on. I actually carried out my installation in June and had all the intentions of dazzling you all with my handiwork. It was all going well until I plugged my new phone with the pictures into a socket while running a generator before completing the work. As it turned out, the gen was putting out fluctuating voltage and it promptly wrecked my new phone. That was the end of my bright idea of a photo-diary of the installation .

Undeterred, I soldiered on and managed to complete the installation to just over 50% of the design capacity, before I had to get back to work. I'm hoping to add the additional panels soon.

Briefly, the system design is 2 x 3kW arrays for a total of 6kW. To date I've installed 12 panels at 300W (6 per array) for a total of 3.6kW.
Each array has its own charge controller serving a dedicated 48V battery bank. The two banks are then combined in parallel prior the inverter/charger.

A switch-over on the main board allows me to charge the batteries through the inverter/charger from either N.E.P.A (wishful thinking) or generator on consecutive cloudy days. The inverter I'm using can automatically switch between utility (NEPA / GEN) or DC Mode (Batteries) if it detects AC power (or lack of) in about 8 milliseconds. I've sought to protect it from N.E.P.A and crazy generators with a Prag 10kVA servo stabilizer as suggested on this thread. What I could not protect it from was the custodian that was to look after it in my absence, but that is another story for later.

At the same time, I replaced almost all the bulbs in the household with low power led equivalents and used time-limit switches on water heaters and pumps. It was hard work but worth it as there we were, in early June, enjoying steady, unblinking, 'clean' electricity. It was wonderful.

I'll post the pictures that the phone warranty people were able to save later.

Barezzi:

... Tunde, you still don't get it...
Cell efficiency and the power rating of a solar panel are two different parameters.
A solar cell at 50% efficiency simply means it can convert 50% of sunlight to electricity
& heat at STC.(In very simplistic terms). The higher the cell efficiency, the more
kwh(energy) of electricity it can produce. In practical terms, its akin to comparing the
screen resolution of a Tecno phone and an iphone 6 of same dimensions . Imagine both
phones are solar panels, and the pixels - solar cells. The Tecno phone with low efficiency
cells, will produce low kwh(energy), whereas the iphone 6 with high efficiency cells will produce high kwh(energy).
The practical implication of this is that for your limited roof space, u want solar panels with high efficiency cells.

Whereas power rating is the amount of dc power the panel can produce at STC.
That the cell efficiency is 50% does not mean that the solar panel performs at 50% of its nameplate power.

The koko of the matter is if its possible for a 250w solarworld panel to deliver 260w, hence producing more than its nameplate rating.

A solar panel technical datasheet contains all the info you need concerning any panel.
There's a parameter called Power Tolerance, see attached datasheets...
Power tolerance is a measure of how much higher or lower the POWER OUTPUT of a
solar panel might deviate from its NAMEPLATE rating.

Power tolerance for a 250w panel from the datasheets attached:
Solarworld panels: +5%/-0%
Sharp Panels: +5%/-0%
Suntech Panels: +5%/0%

The 250-watt Solarworld panel with a +5%/0% power tolerance can actually produce anywhere from 250 watts to 262.5 watts under ideal conditions.

richmon74:


Hi Sir

i'm sorry for the delayed response.
The two sets of panels are not on the same elevation and they don't affect the output because they are both on the sale SS direction without any hindrance to sunlight.