earthrealm:
I GUESS COST is part of the problem, and low wind speed in most parts of southern nigeria..save for victoria island axis. TAKE THE 600W HORIZONTAL BLADE WINDTURBINE, IT PRODUCES ITS MAX POWER AT 34mph windspeed, and 150w at 20mph wind speed. the avg wind speed in southern nigeria is btw 6 to 12mph, so imagine installing that unit, you wud be getting about 60 to 100w harvest from it, wch considering the cost is a massive waste of funds.

hardywaltz:
Good day house
Has any one had experience with Wind Turbines, I noticed no one has ventured into it on the thread.

The reason I'm asking is coz in PH now that it's raining season getting Sunshine is a major challenge.

Last week it rained for 3 straight days with little or no sunshine.

So I have been thinking if it would be best to augment the solar panels with wind turbines so when there's no so the wind turbines can charge the battery or at least reduce the discharge rate till sun kicks in.

makavele:
I have a Microtek 2KVA; I will give an in-depth review by morning.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
My Oga. Many thanks.

The attachment you made clarifies in fairly simple language if and how to perform the Neutral to Earth/Ground bond correctly.

For the overzealous, this N-E bond if implemented must be done at only one single point in an electrical system - if you have more than one point of N-E bond, I would say one has basically created a parallel neutral circuit and made it virtually impossible for over-current devices to work correctly as well as difficult to predict which wires will remain energised in the system in the event of a fault and safety disconnect.

I am still undecided if one should bond the N-E at distribution panel - I would say if unsure leave Earth and Neutral alone and isolated on their separate buses.

Like Oga Barezzi pointed out this would make the entire ground at that installation a massive sink for fault currents but since the utility service is already bonded at mains transformer, I would say the only faults are likely to be generated locally within the electrical installation and I wager such fault currents will be relatively small and should safely sink to ground at the local Earth point.

zellfoxx:


Seems what I originally thought was a flaw is actually meant to prevent this unsafe loop on Neutral busbar.

...

mcTrinity:
IS "ROY SOLAR" THAT BAD

For some weeks now, there's been some bad reviews on Roy Solar charge controller....


well, I won't outrightly say it is good or bad. Nevertheless, I have 2 Roy solar I've been using going to 3 years now and no issues whatsoever.
....

kiekie1:
Seconded

zellfoxx:


MOLOCRYSTALLINE

sharks776:


The flames panel was the one with the bunt wire that I fixed, while the other is the one with low reading on 16.5v

OnePunchMan:
we Place your orders for your solar devices and all other gadgets at very wonderful and affordable rate of 310 naira per US dollar...

My contact is in my profile.

Link to my main thread is in my signature..

NiyiOmoIyunade:
None is right or wrong.

My hard experience tells me that most C10 batteries (e.g. Genus sealed, Luminous sealed/Gel) do not live up to that rating when (ab)used in production.

I would rather go with a C20 rating for any Lead Acid battery which in my view gives the best tradeoff between longevity and performance and value. C100 is nice but impractical/unaffordable for most normal folks
.....
On a lighter note 2Kw is a massive iron size for a residential application but I would say just keep your average loads + inverter self consumption under the 600watts mark on the average and you should be good.

Reprobate:
can someone educate me on the max instantenous current draw from a batt bank, without damaging the batt.
eg my 48v 200ah bank, going by 10hr discharge rate, can I assume 20amps is the max draw, thus max allowable instantenous load is 20a x 48v = 1kw load?

sinistrian:

Compare the two graphs below. The frequency of the troughs show how often the sweep is done, while the the depth/width of the troughs in the graph indicate how far it fell and how long it took to get back to Vmp.

The first one is the fangpusun with intermittent clouds passing over. Whenever it's overcast, the controller drops output and then starts hunting for the max power point. There is an annoying one around 2pm where it took a long time to get its wits together.

The second graph is for the tristar (low power output in the morning cos we were not home and all appliances were off). The troughs are not as deep/wide and yet they are more frequent, indicating that it detects the Vmp quickly after the clouds pass. This graph is not a great comparison as it wasn't too sunny today. But this result looks promising.

bigrovar:


Energy storage is at the mid way point of its transition from Lead Acid due to pressure to find a more sustainable means of generating energy. I honestly see lithium to be a stop gap technology that might soon be superseded as more research money is thrown at solving the energy storage problem. Lithium is still a rare earth material available in very few places on earth. Even if the technology stabilises I expect price would go down up to a point thanks to technology and then shoot up as the low price drive demand .. and that demand would eventually outstrip the supply of lithium. I strategy is to sit and wait and see how it all pans out. The high cost of Lithium now is what is funding many of the research into making it a stable commodity and the raise of electric cars will put more pressure into pushing down price of energy storage and lead to the creation of turnkey all in one solution. My next major upgrade will still be lead acid based probably see what the next 5 years will hold.

S007:
I think if used within their boundaries, the premium brand PWM CC will do a good job.
Comparing xantrex, midnite with roy may be like comparing a Mercedes-Benz with keke.

I am considering adding one more rule to my solar rule book. Thou shall not touch anything called 'roy'.

nonoski:
Good day house,
Please I have a lot of questions which I will appreciate the gurus to help me solve them.

I currently have 15 panels 3.75kw in 3S5P connection.
My Charge Controller is an Outback Flexmax 80A
My Inverter is a MustPower 5kva (48v)
My battery bank is 400a x 48v

For flexmax 80 the maximum wattage for a 48 setup is 4000 watts

(All connections were done by my humble self)

From my calculation (using the Isc) the 5strings in parallel connection should have around 10.21A x 5 x 1.25= 63.8amps. However the best I have seen from my Log on my Charge Controller is 3.443KWp and 64.1Ap. (See attached Pic)

Would it be wise for me to increase my panels from 15 (3.75kw) to 18 (4.5kw) since it will most time put out about 85% max of its rated power which is about 3900watts and about 76Amps?

The main reason for this is that in Port Harcourt Sun is a luxury. Most part of the day is cloudy and from July to Sept when it will rain for 7 straight days I don wan to depend on phed

2. Another major concern which I’m currently having is that the battery voltage on the Inverter is different from the Battery voltage on the charge controller. Initially they were the same but over time there have been a variance of about 2volts. Should I be worried? I have tried using the Vbatt Calibration setting on my Outback but can only reduce it to about -0.5v which is the maximum I can reduce it to. Picture 2 & 3 were taken at same time

3. My Inverter (Mustpower) shows 100% at when the battery gets to 52volts when I’m using solar to charge, duh its voltage keeps climbing till it gets to about 56.8v (58.8v on the Charge Controller) and drops to 53.6v when the CC gets into float mode. Please is this normal?

Thanks guys for all your help

bigrovar:


for simple setup like security lights, PWM is no doubt more than capable. however for any thing above 600w you should start considering mppt especially for a 24v system, PWM might still serve for 12v setups when used with a 24v panel.. but it is a no no for a 24v system considering most PV modules in these parts are actually designed for grid-tied systems hence the relatively low vmp/voc most 24v offgrid solar panels comes with voc as high as 37 allowing for enough headroom for you to charge a 24v battery even if using pwm. The catch is that truely offgrid panels are expensive so its either you get cheap panels / expensive controller, or expensive panel or cheaper controller... bad things happens when you go cheap both ways.

bigrovar:


There in lies the culprits. Roy solar.. Its you again ... Bro your inverter and solar charge controller have conspired to murder your battery. Even if you don't use those batteries they would still die. The inverter will never be able to charge those batteries properly. They won't be able to give it proper absorption charge (14.4v at the very least) and 15.3v for 2 hours of equalisation at least once a month. You won't get that from your inverter. The charge controller is even worse. Fortunately you have a tubular battery so the situation can still be saveged. Get a different inverter one of the powerstar series from Must or felicity if possible, get a tracer series charge controller and connect your panels in series. All this would set u back over a 100k. It is the price for bad installation. Solar is not cheap. You can't afford to make a mistake because it gets even more expensive.

Ativ:
Please, I need recommendations for a UPS to protect sensitive medical equipment of about 200W. I am on my 3rd APC UPS within about 15 months, including the Smart APC series.
Does anyone have experience with the Gennex UPS series? I read that it isolates the AC output from the input.

bigrovar:
.....
Tbh I personally don't use or believe in Dod systems like low voltage disconnect.. Rather I prefer to deign my system load and generation around a cycle use that leave my battery at 35-40% depth of discharge. That is what work for me. Although I can understand why some need it especially where you have a large house hold such a feature might come handy when u are not around. For this I would recommend a system that works in sync with the Victron battery monitor. Using the state of charge and relay function.

bigrovar:

Egbon you are playing with FIRE. You do not have the battery capacity nor the pv power to be even considering running AC.. Not even for 30 minutes. Limit your battery discharge not just by the 50% did rule, but most importantly by your capacity to replace what as been discharged within the 5 hours sun window (not as easy as you think with Lead acid batteries) that's bulk, and 2 to 3 hours of current limiting absorption and get your battery to float. If you are not careful you will end up in a cycle of energy deficit which would leave your battery in prolonged under charge state (a battery should get full and proper charge on a daily) the beginning of its demise. Save yourself the hassle and get 3k fuel to power our AC for the event. If you have a 3kw solar array then you care dare to dream the AC life. Just my opinion sha.

pranil:


Dont even start - If I have to list the spare materials, PCB, cables, sleeves, screws, display meters , MCB's boxes , various tools - I will need 2 to 3 pages .

The other day I asked the security guy and gardner to help me only sort and store the extra material accumulated over the last one year and it tool good 5 to 6 hours to sort and label them

pranil:




I would say now you have reached a level where you should be seriously thinking of ESS setup. Becuase at some point, the different logics end of getting complicated and prone to failure or misbehaving unless continuously tweaked (speaking from past experience.

In ESS setup when the AC is available the AC from the grid is only used if the solar is not enough so the system uses exactly the shortfall between solar and demand to keep batteries at 100 %

That was one of the main reasons ( along with lithium compatibility) for me to switch to Victron

Have a look at this video - Quite long but explains the ESS concept very well


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbpQzEZTElI

also shown a snapshot of my system in morning note the grid setpoint at 100 watt to avoid export

makavele:


I use Ariston and if left untouched, it will retain its hotness for 3 days .. .

But when used, fresh cold water flows in to fill up slowly; then it retains the hotness for about 36 hours or so.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Lolz my Oga!

It's just natural to collect the things you fancy same way some folks collect watches or cars or jewellery e.t.c

Hobbyists, electronics enthusiasts and hard core DIYers collect various odds and ends of interest to them e.g.

.... acquiring all these stuff just comes naturally to the enthusiast...

earthrealm:


LOL, COLLECTION KE?..YOU MEAN YOU JUST BUY THEM TO KEEP THEM..AND PERHAPS ONCE OR TWICE A DAY..GO AND STARE AT THEM IN AWE. smile and go back to your business of the day?

dgr8truth:
For sale three Victron MPPT solar charge controller N120k each, was in service for just one year. interested call/WhatsApp 08060313355.

NB, one sold to Mr Saipro already.

bigrovar:

for now the system monitors only one of my PV array, I am yet to receive items I require to DIY a victron VE direct to USB cable. I need 3 I have just 1. hence the second PV array and battery monitors are not yet being monitored.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
No please! Do not drain electrolyte except you notice a catastrophic decline in performance that equalization e.t.c cannot fix.

Sediments are a natural part of battery charge and discharge as the active plate material erodes away (battery charging/discharging & discharging is actually really a corrosive/destructive electro-chemical process) and most quality batteries have a substantial sediment trap at the bottom to ensure the broken off sediments are contained and do not short out the battery.

More especially, actually replacing electrolyte (not talking about topping off with distilled water here o) is a very stressful process and certainly not for the faint of heart.