solar instulation

[tommu56]

Here are some picture of my solar panel insulation after we had almost 3 inches of snow the day before.

A mini of Robs insulation. only 250 watts so far.

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battery box

Tom

 

[texasjohn]

Great photos..... congrats on getting it up and running!

 

[mahlers]

Very cool - which inverters are you using? I see you're using a 48v battery bank so that pretty much limits it to Outback, Xantrex or Beacon. My personal favorite is Outback - but I hear the Beacon M5 is pretty nice, too. Make sure you have a good GFI installed since you have the panels installed on a metal roof.

 

[Tig]

Very neat Tom. I would like to do a small solar installation. Just enough to keep the water pump, furnace blower and computer/network running. Keep us up to date as you use the system.

 

[mahlers]

If you have grid power available, you can easily put together a very small solar system that will also act as a whole-house backup. Basically, the grid and the solar combined will keep your batteries charged up, and when power goes out, your system switches over to nice silent battery power without you even knowing it. I don't know what the incentives/rebates are like in your area, but here in Cali you can pay for about a third of a small system from utility rebates, and then another third from Federal rebates. If you have frequent power outages, it is a much better investment than a gas generator. We lose power all the time here, and over the summer we had some really big fires around us and we lost all connection to the outside world for several weeks. My place stayed lit up and functioning normally the whole time. Pretty much made the whole system worthwhile just from that experience.

 

[stumpfield]

Nice pictures. That's a lot of battery for only 250w of solar panel. How many amp hour is your battery bank? Are you going to add more panels soon?

 

[3RRL]

Hey Tom,
Great pictures man, who took them? Is that you up on that slippery roof? Be careful.
Your system looks pretty good from what I can see. Lots of battery storage. I see you got the spill proof tubs to put them in too. Did you go with the hydrogen caps?
Wish you had a webcam for us to see the whole thing.

 

[tommu56]

Rob
I was waiting for you to ship me your old battey but couldent wait!
Yea the roof was slipery we had almost 2" of snow the day before I had to sweep off roof to get the Chicken ladders on the roof safely

Tom (stumpfield)
Trojan Battery Company - ProductSpecification

There are 8 in total 4 groups of 2 for a 12v system for 1680 ah at 20 hr rate.

i was going to get 4 2x2 but woried about being under batteried and adding new to old ones isnt good so i sprung for the 8.

I laied out mount to be able to add more panels together with outback mx60 i cna keep seriesing them and not add any wiring.

mahlers
Every thing is outback except for trimetric meter and suquare d ac panel panel I'll get pictuers when I go up again in 2 weeks of charge controller and invertor ect.

tom

 

[ctpres]

New co. here in TX may hit it big in solar. They will install enough solar on you roof to generate excess during the day which they sell to grid. At nite you run on grid. No batteries. $500 deposit refunded with interest at end of term (1 to 20 yrs). NO INSTALLATION charge and they gurantee you current electric rate for the term of agreement. They expect to make enough money on excess generated during day to cover your use at nite and show a profit. They could end up with a massive solar field and no land cost. Plant yet to be built so it is to early to know if this is ever even going get off ground

 

[RonMar]

Looks like a nice installation, but I didn't see any fuseable links associated with the battery interconnections in your system. Did I read correctly that you have 6V pairs in series, making Four 12V sets wired in parallel for a 12V system? At the very least, I think there should be a fuesable link where each pair meets the main 12V buss. As I am sure you are aware, one of the biggest hazards of battery banks is the tremendous stored energy potential. When wired in parallel, a battery fault/short on a single battery can be backfed with all the energy of the rest of the batteries and cause a serious meltdown/fire... A fuseable link on each leg that is just slightly larger than the normal use current draw of that leg(and well below the max current capacity of the conductors) will pass enough current for normal ops, but will open and isolate the problem child if a battery fails or a connection inadvertently gets shorted.