Added solar power to our tractor storage building (pic heavy!)

[nikdfish]

Looks to me like you could just put it on the roof of that pumphouse?

Actually laid it there for a bit while testing ...

Finally decided I didn't want to maybe chew up the asphalt shingles, and really needed a different orientation and angle for best results.

Nick

 

[nikdfish]

Well, for the first time since getting started with the solar panel thing, the controller is showing the slow blink on the battery status that indicates it has gone into "Float" charge status, with the battery readout sitting on 13.8v

Nick

 

[k0ua]

Well, for the first time since getting started with the solar panel thing, the controller is showing the slow blink on the battery status that indicates it has gone into "Float" charge status, with the battery readout sitting on 13.8v

Nick

Yaaay.. Now you just need another battery in parallel. Can't let free energy go to waste... store up that stuff!

 

[nikdfish]

Just for fun I ended up with 3 power meters on the wiring panel, one for panel to controller, one for controller to battery & one for battery to fuse block. This is a schematic for the layout:

Definately overkill, but I was curious how it looked at those different points.

Nick

 

[k0ua]

Just for fun I ended up with 3 power meters on the wiring panel, one for panel to controller, one for controller to battery & one for battery to fuse block. This is a schematic for the layout:

Definately overkill, but I was curious how it looked at those different points.

Nick

Pretty neat. Lets see if I can describe your schematic :

Coming from the panel, Meter 1 on its red and black leads monitors the raw voltage coming from the panel, and its blue and green leads are across the meter shunt so it monitors current flowing across the shunt by way of the voltage drop across the known resistance of the shunt. This is the raw current flowing into the Pulse Width Modulation charge controller.

Meter 2 on its red and black leads monitors the voltage coming out of the charge controller heading to the batter and again the blue and green leads are across the shunt which will monitor the charge current flowing into the battery.

Meter 3 will monitor the voltage with the battery supplying the loads and again the blue and green leads will measure the load current that the battery is supplying to the load.

Does that about cover it?

Well heck, I looked at it again, and noticed you already provided an explanation which I missed on the first look.. sorry.

 

[dragoneggs]

Pretty neat. Lets see if I can describe your schematic :

Coming from the panel, Meter 1 on its red and black leads monitors the raw voltage coming from the panel, and its blue and green leads are across the meter shunt so it monitors current flowing across the shunt by way of the voltage drop across the known resistance of the shunt. This is the raw current flowing into the Pulse Width Modulation charge controller.

Meter 2 on its red and black leads monitors the voltage coming out of the charge controller heading to the batter and again the blue and green leads are across the shunt which will monitor the charge current flowing into the battery.

Meter 3 will monitor the voltage with the battery supplying the loads and again the blue and green leads will measure the load current that the battery is supplying to the load.

Does that about cover it?

Well heck, I looked at it again, and noticed you already provided an explanation which I missed on the first look.. sorry.

this is why I changed majors in college from electrical to mechanical engineering. Actually I made it to diodes and transistors.. before I switched. :laughing:

 

[k0ua]

this is why I changed majors in college from electrical to mechanical engineering. Actually I made it to diodes and transistors.. before I switched. :laughing:

Well, in some ways meters and shunts are somewhat simpler to understand than diodes and transistors.

 

[Garandman]

this is why I changed majors in college from electrical to mechanical engineering. Actually I made it to diodes and transistors.. before I switched. :laughing:

I see what you did there....

 

[k0ua]

Now Dragon, don't try to tell us that figuring stresses on beams and that sort of thing is easier than some connections and some meters.. Differential equations make me dizzy.

 

[nikdfish]

I haven't posted a shot of the panel in it's final form yet, so here it is with the meter backlighting enabled (usually off). The three meters correspond to the drawing with #1 at the top and #3 at the bottom.

Since it looks like a decent location, I "staked" the three panel mount legs with some 3/8" rebar through holes I drilled near the bottoms.

I also set the feed line up with a counter weight (couple of bad 7ah UPS batteries) in case something (branch?) falls across the line. It should act as a shock absorber and help keep anything from getting jerked loose or broken.

Nick