Snyper's Solar Farm

W@P said:
Congrats!!!

I also got all my stuff from him. Twice.
How much did he charge you for the panels?
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Initially, he had charged me R2 357,35 ex VAT for the panels, but when I showed him that Esquire was selling them at R2 260 ex VAT he then offered them to me for R2 240 which I greatly appreciated and accepted.
 
Deluxxe Legend said:
Initially, he had charged me R2 357,35 ex VAT for the panels, but when I showed him that Esquire was selling them at R2 260 ex VAT he then offered them to me for R2 240 which I greatly appreciated and accepted.
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Wow, good on Steve.
 
W@P said:
Wow, good on Steve.
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There's a lot of competition at the moment with suppliers sitting with panels they ordered in the beginning of the year when prices were crazy. That's pushed prices down a lot. Now's definitely a good time to buy panels, especially if you want a large array or can share a pallet with someone. I've seen ads for pallet deals at R 3.70/ R 3.80 per Watt Ex Vat on JA Solar's for instance.
 
wingnut771 said:
Cant wait for the day when people are selling their old panels when they upgrade.
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Certain things a person doesn't buy second hand

Unless really cheap

there is very little reason to sell panels 2nd hand, bar funny selection limiting future expansion or aesthetics when expanding with mismatched size panels

One thing i see on many forums is talk about shade limiting output, and very little about the fact that shade can actually damage panels

So yea if i can buy them of the roof to see no shading history

No idea if a person gets a rule of thumb to identify shade damaged panels (assume discoloration maybe)



Have seen videos that state shading between 10am-2pm kills panels , makes sense that is peak production times
Big shading kicking bypass effect into action probably not to bad partial shading ie less than 20% per section diode covers bad news

But yea haven't seen much talk on this just trying to logic it but yea assumptions without data can make you believe things so far from the truth

Edit i suppose the short circuit amps will be affected and the output but yea like batteries you would have to do capacity test to see where it is in it's deterioration/abuse cycle
 
So guess what, the delivery of my solar equipment finally arrived from Powerforum this morning.
Now just waiting for the delivery of the mounting rails tomorrow, then installation commences on Saturday.

Solar1.jpgInverter1.jpgBattery1.jpg

Decided to give the roof a new lick of paint in the process.

Roof.jpg
 
Day one installation completed.

The main surprise was the cost of the 4 core 90m cable which the installer neglected to inform me about once we moved from an 8 to a 12 kW 3 phase inverter system.

Solar Roof.jpg Solar Equipment.jpg

There is still the cabling to the main DB board as well as the solar panels to be done tomorrow, but please feel free to scrutinise any glaringly obvious mistakes or omissions.

This is what I am getting from the Sunsynk app with just the batteries connected to the inverter:

Power Flow.jpg
 
Deluxxe Legend said:
Day one installation completed.

The main surprise was the cost of the 4 core 90m cable which the installer neglected to inform me about once we moved from an 8 to a 12 kW 3 phase inverter system.

View attachment 1581296 View attachment 1581314

There is still the cabling to the main DB board as well as the solar panels to be done tomorrow, but please feel free to scrutinise any glaringly obvious mistakes or omissions.

This is what I am getting from the Sunsynk app with just the batteries connected to the inverter:

View attachment 1581324
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Man, those panels look awesome, as does the rest of the install.
proud-ron-swanson.gif


Spring equinox is on 23 September 08H49, so you have exactly 3 weeks to familiarise yourself with the system, fine-tune and basically warm them up. I'll bet you can't wait to see how they will perform tomorrow.

Congrats boet!
 
Deluxxe Legend said:
Day one installation completed.

The main surprise was the cost of the 4 core 90m cable which the installer neglected to inform me about once we moved from an 8 to a 12 kW 3 phase inverter system.

View attachment 1581296 View attachment 1581314

There is still the cabling to the main DB board as well as the solar panels to be done tomorrow, but please feel free to scrutinise any glaringly obvious mistakes or omissions.

This is what I am getting from the Sunsynk app with just the batteries connected to the inverter:

View attachment 1581324
Click to expand...

That looks stunning, congrats and welcome to self independence from Eskom and freedom from load shedding
 
Thanks guys. Final installation done and here are the complete pictures.

I will monitor usage and optimise the system as much as I can over the next few weeks/months and no doubt will have heaps more to learn.

Thanks again for all the advise and support, it is greatly appreciated and would not have made this journey without it!

IMG_9281.jpegIMG_9282.jpeg e8f0f4d7-84e9-49d6-a78a-cb5d1ef5b57e.jpegec139564-bb7c-474e-98dd-a4a51b8e63de.jpeg
 
Deluxxe Legend said:
Thanks guys. Final installation done and here are the complete pictures.

I will monitor usage and optimise the system as much as I can over the next few weeks/months and no doubt will have heaps more to learn.

Thanks again for all the advise and support, it is greatly appreciated and would not have made this journey without it!

View attachment 1581570View attachment 1581572 View attachment 1581574View attachment 1581576
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Very, very cool. Probably a good idea to start your own thread too.

Also, are all those panels on one MPPT?
 
Speedster said:
Very, very cool. Probably a good idea to start your own thread too.

Also, are all those panels on one MPPT?
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Thank @Speedster, I have certainly thought about it but wondering if I will be able to add anything new that none of the guys have contributed already.

No, we actually split them into 2 MPPTs and I have an extra one opened that can add 14 more panels. But I will certainly need to add a new battery before I can even think about that.

I am glad I picked up a thread about catering for a prepaid meter as I was able to highlight that to my installer at the last minute, otherwise that would have been something I completely missed.

Mom-in-law switched on the oven whilst we were testing and you should have seen the shock on my face when I saw how much power the house was drawing from the grid all of a sudden! :) I guess that's my life from here on.

Load shedding is about to start, so this will be the first test of my new solar system/
 
Deluxxe Legend said:
Thank @Speedster, I have certainly thought about it but wondering if I will be able to add anything new that none of the guys have contributed already.

No, we actually split them into 2 MPPTs and I have an extra one opened that can add 14 more panels. But I will certainly need to add a new battery before I can even think about that.

I am glad I picked up a thread about catering for a prepaid meter as I was able to highlight that to my installer at the last minute, otherwise that would have been something I completely missed.

Mom-in-law switched on the oven whilst we were testing and you should have seen the shock on my face when I saw how much power the house was drawing from the grid all of a sudden! :) I guess that's my life from here on.

Load shedding is about to start, so this will be the first test of my new solar system/
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Curious why there's no power coming from MPPT 2 then. You might want to have that checked out.
 
Speedster said:
Curious why there's no power coming from MPPT 2 then. You might want to have that checked out.
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Sorry, I needed to explain that better.

Since I have a 3 phase inverter, PV1 and PV2 both go into one MPPT and the 3rd PV will go into the second MPPT.

Not sure if that makes sense. But I have attached the pictures below to provide more clarity.

IMG_9298.jpegIMG_9301.jpeg
 
Deluxxe Legend said:
Sorry, I needed to explain that better.

Since I have a 3 phase inverter, PV1 and PV2 both go into one MPPT and the 3rd PV will go into the second MPPT.

Not sure if that makes sense. But I have attached the pictures below to provide more clarity.

View attachment 1581616View attachment 1581618
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Are those 40amp breakers? Very neat.

And Am I perhaps misunderstanding? Does the 3 phase inverter not have 3 x MPPT? So you could have 3 individual strings?
 
F1 Fan said:
Are those 40amp breakers? Very neat.

And Am I perhaps misunderstanding? Does the 3 phase inverter not have 3 x MPPT? So you could have 3 individual strings?
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Yes, those are indeed 40amp breakers, although I am not sure exactly what that means :-)

I think someone more technical will need to explain this for us, but like you, I think the 12kW 3-phase inverter does indeed have 3 MPPTs but for some reason, MPPT1 and MPPT2 display as PV1 and MPPT3 as PV2, and I'm not sure why that is the case and what that means.
 
Deluxxe Legend said:
Yes, those are indeed 40amp breakers, although I am not sure exactly what that means :-)

I think someone more technical will need to explain this for us, but like you, I think the 12kW 3-phase inverter does indeed have 3 MPPTs but for some reason, MPPT1 and MPPT2 display as PV1 and MPPT3 as PV2, and I'm not sure why that is the case and what that means.
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It has two MPPTs. One 34A (with two string inputs) and the other one 17A (with a single string input)
 
Some insane builds here.
I have a humble 4 panel system (canadian solar 550w) fitted last week. Pleased to see it hitting 2kw on not even a super bright day. no doubt most of summer this sucker will max out easily. I might add 4 but roof space/direction/trees are an issue.

got a 5kwh battery and 6KVA inverter. using solarman. still deciding how to time things to use battery at night to a min discharge allowed and charge using solar etc... interesting stuff.

our household idles at 250-350w (fridge kicking in hovers it there) and when im working 600-700w. quite light on fuel here, 4 panels already making a massive difference.

1693825599512.png
 
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