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1
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by MaryB -
should be fine, most breakers are rated for surge currents that are quite a bit higher.

I would run it and feel the breaker body, see if it is getting hot. If an older breaker replacing it wouldn't be a bad idea, they do wear out over time.
2
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by SparWeb -
At first glance it would seem like the string voltage would run up to about 350V if I put 10 panels in series.  Here's the label to see where that comes from.
20260215_213507_Label - Copy.jpg

Based on that, I might think that with higher voltage, there's less current, allowing for a cheaper wire run.  But that's the STC rating, and it doesn't seem to happen in real life.  The panels already on my garage roof have about the same specs, though different construction.  They usually don't go past 300V and in fact spend a lot of time between 240VDC and 290 VDC. Lower in the summer.

The upshot is that the current will be almost the same in AC or DC.  I won't save much money on wire, but to run DC I must dig up the old trench, probably damaging the existing wire, and lay down two new conduits of wire.  To run a separate trench causes me to circumnavigate a number of trees, making the dig much longer.  I'm not seeing the advantage.

The feed from the house to the barn is already 240VAC, 30A.  It's enough that these panels won't overload anything.  I'm not sure about back-feeding the 30A breaker with (up to) 25A, though.
4
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by bigrockcandymountain -
Would it make sense to run new lines and run high voltage DC to the house and put the inverter there?  Then you get to watch it.  A bit of digging, but cheap wire at least.  Then you could charge an EV right at the house with a string inverter / EV charger.  I know of at least one of those, and they look pretty slick. 
5
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by SparWeb -
Quote from: bigrockcandymountain – on
Well that's a huge win.  Will you do a ground mount?  That should cover the Ev charging and then some.

After the time it took to load up the truck, I'd recovered from the surprise a little, and I told Pierre that "when I get an EV, you've just fueled it up for ever."

I'm having so much fun figuring out how I want to set them up.  Right now I'm concentrating on the barn roof.

That would put these panels 200 feet away from the house, and over 400 feet from the utility pole.  That could cause a voltage RISE which is the opposite of voltage drop which we're more used to hearing about.  The panels will raise the voltage on the circuits in the barn, possibly too high and trigger the high voltage threshold shut-down.
7
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by SparWeb -
I first met Pierre almost 10 years ago when I started going to meetings of a group of RE enthusiasts, and started shooting my mouth off like I was doing on Fieldlines at the time.  Then this charismatic fellow got up and told me about HIS impressive system, and I sat down humbled but impressed. 
He's been a cheerleader for my projects for a long time, too.  Whereas I had several ideas who would be a good local installer for my solar panels, he knew the best, and he was right.  When I was switching to a new retailer for my electricity contract, he already knew the right ones.
8
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by MaryB -
WOW! I need friends like that LOL

3600 watts of panels is huge!
9
Solar / Free Panels !
Last post by SparWeb -
A good friend of mine has just gifted me something amazing.

20 Longi LR4 360W panels.

Wow.  I'm lucky to have the friends I do.

10
Wind Power Machines / Cumulative Wind Energy
Last post by SparWeb -
Last December, I put in an energy meter to keep track of production from the wind turbine.
It's installed just below the battery charge controller, on a custom bracket I made, to give it a fairly nice look. 
The meter isn't measuring 2-way traffic on the battery, as it's designed to.  It's just measuring inputs from wind that charge the battery, only.  There's a a little "0%" digit in the upper corner that you just have to ignore because it's meaningless.

The meter looks like what it is: a little energy meter I bought off of Amazon.  It's from one of the very few sellers that doesn't seem fly-by-night, because they haven't changed their name 6 times in the past year.  The name DROK doesn't inspire much, but it's been selling on Amazon for a long time and I've got several of their meters installed here and there, and happy with them all.

Anyway, it's been counting the kilowatt-hours for two months and it's been a pretty constant 4 kWhr per day for the whole time, except one week with no wind (or sun = Dunkelflaute).
The trend won't hold up through the rest of the year - I've already had an energy meter tracking my wind production years ago, and it was obvious that summer has less wind than the winter.  A safe forecast is 1000 kWhr per year. Same as what I measured several years ago, which is also showing in this trend so far.