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It is interesting that your peak is like 3 hrs before mine (2pm vs 5pm). You can adjust things. If you want later peak, you go more vertical. If you want earlier peak you can angle the panels more. Me, I wanted more power later in the afternoon. As late as possible and practical.

Yes, that is a good idea. It does not have to be continuous. That would bring the costs down dramatically. Cut to about 3" long so that 1 "clamp" holds each panels at the corners. Or in the middle, no big difference, but way cheaper. By the way, the way they are set up is that each panel is...

Pretty much. South panels are 20 pc 310 watts so 6100w, West panels are 325 x 19 panels so 6175w . West panels peak 4.4 kw at 5:15pm South pole tops peak 12:00pm 4,900W

Yes, I looked at those. Trying to keep a small gap between the panels for air flow, but not so big so as to let mice build nests behind the panels. The ideal material would be 3" black anodized flat aluminum bar. But it is way too expensive. Need 80' of it.

Any ideas for thin bar stock that would work? Need something 3" wide ideally. 3" steel 40' + 40' (top and bottom) costs $1,000 at Home depot. Metal supply should be cheaper, but that is still a lot. Metal roofing edging is less, but also a lot thinner. If I used 2" x 2" x 10' edging, it would...

Very observant! Yes, the boards could be thinner or beveled a bit. Thin metal strip could solve that. Pipe will be shortened. Yes, all things to consider. Will see how I can improve it. Work in progress...

Post some pictures. Always looking for new ideas.

Great! Right. In Winter this is not go great, but I am trying to get some of the "higher hanging fruit" so to speak. When panels cost $4.50/watt this was too expensive to do. So people did a lot of pole top mounts that could be seasonally adjusted. With panels costing $0.10 to $0.20/watt it is...

Quick Update: The peak production of West facing panels is about 5:30pm. For comparison, top-of-pole South facing panels peak at about 12:00pm and they pretty much end production at 6:30pm (500 W). At 6:30 pm the West panels are approaching their peak power output. So as one set of panels is...

So, if you you got one of the newer (discontinued now) Sunny Boy inverters (3.8, 5.0, 6.0, 7.7, etc.) and there is a password already set and you don't know it, you need to get a PUK (Personal Unlocking Key) for the inverter. To get the key you need to give SMA the serial number of the...

I think that is for the newer inverters. For the old 5000, 6000, etc. the password is the checksum of the date as I remember. 4/26/2024 is 4+26+24 =54, so password is ID0054.

I know this is old, but I got a Vac bfr message once. It happens when the voltage goes over the max set point. For me it was Vac>264v. = 240V +10% max. = 264. So it was hitting the +10% max limit and turning off. During the day, Vac gets pretty high here. You can use the Sunny Data control to...

Well, it’s mostly done. Interesting experiment. West facing wall at this time of year in April puts out about 50% of the power of south facing polemount panels. It does seem to give me at least one extra hour of full solar power in the evening, and of course it evens out the duck curve. Most of...

Short version - use the Sylvania headlight restoration kit to get rid of yellowed sun damaged screen. Long Version - The headlights on my truck were really badly UV damaged. Got the Sylvania headlight restoration kit based on a good test by Project Farm on You Tube...

I might do that. Now I'm thinking of making a frame out of 10' or 12' 2x4's and attaching to the top and other side. Container is 9 /12' tall. No holes required that way. Can be 90 deg vertical and will allow for some air behind the panels. Have plenty of power at noon. If it does not work, can...

It is. 50% less production. I checked. But with new panels under $0.30/watt, you can't really go wrong. The roof is already covered with panels. Just want to get more power during the 4-9pm peak rate time and see how it works. A vertical N-S wall of vertical bifacial panels is also interesting...

The container wall is facing west, and I want to take advantage of the afternoon/evening sun.

Looking at filling a vertical wall on a 40 foot high cube container with solar panels. Has anyone done anything like that? How did they mount them? Attaching two by fours to the container and then attaching the panels to that is the cheapest, but not sure how strong it would be. Unistrut would...

Hope this helps somebody in the future. This has got to be the most difficult troubleshooting I’ve ever had to do with this inverter. Now, having solved it, the solution seems so simple. Short version If you found and fixed all the faults and the inverter still shows the 3701 or 3501 error...

Thanks. Ordered a few at LIION website. Price is reasonable and shipping not too bad. Too much of a wild west on Amazon for batteries. Not anything I wanna deal with.

Thanks. I saw a bunch of videos about that anode thing. Is it really that bad? Or is it the people had really bad water.? By religiously you mean what every year, every six months?

We just got the 4 gallon Bosch Model. Ours has used about .73 kWh per day so far in the winter. Just occasional dish and handwashing use and dishwasher every other day. Real numbers: 11.55 kWh used in 379 hours.= 0.73 kWh per day on average so far. Sure beats waiting for hot water to get to the...

Looks very interesting. You need to do careful planning. I like the look of the "total power curve," but if you inverter is already maxed out, you might be better off with another inverter that can take the am and pm sun, othwise it might do a lot of "clipping."

Are there any good 18650 batteries on Amazon? I see too many with bad reviews and massively overstated capacity. I see that the 18650 battery store has a bunch, but trying to avoid shipping fees. Has anyone gotten any that are good and stated capacity is correct? Seems like there are a lot of...

This was the reason for the question to begin with. A 5kw inverter for example only puts out 5kw (max power) if overpaneled some but for only maybe for an hour or 2. Before and after that it is always less and adding panels at different orientations could max the output from sunrise to sun set...

Thanks. Looks like Isc (max short circuit current) is 18A for these Sunny Boys. Ioc (max operating current) is 10A, so it sounds like you can use the newer panels that put out more than 10A. Sounds like anything over 10A is just "clipped" (i.e. not used). For the Sunny Boy 5.0-US is data sheet...

Thanks! 5kw-US-41 is same as "5.0-US" or "SB5.0-1TP-US-40"? What is the max operating input current per MPPT? On these it is 10A, but some of the newer panels put out more than 10A. You can go over the max? by how much? Have to see what Sunny Design says. Just trying to see how to capture more...

Thanks. If the strings all have to be similar or same voltage, that kind of answers most all of it. I can find places to add 3,4,5, or so panels, but if I have to find places for 10 to fit, that would be a challenge. Not sure if mircoinverters would be a solution. Enphase seems to need special...

Meaning, for example, 50% can be sent to the grid and 50% (more or less) can be used to charge the battery? I think the SBSE uses a high voltage battery so it can send the high voltage DC directly to the battery while at the same time inverting the rest to send to the grid? That adds another...

SCC - ok, that is also built into the inverter already. The Sunny Boys have 2-3 MPPT controllers built in already. Trying to maximize use of those.

Right. What is SCC? I've always connected 10 panels in series to the Sunny Boy as that is in the mid range of DC volts - around 300V +/- Another way to put it all is that the 6,200 watt South facing array (2x 10 panels x 310w) is only producing 5,000 watts between 11am and 2pm. Before and after...

Parallel strings and overpaneling or how to maximize PV production on a single inverter. In the past I was told that you could safely add 20% more panels to an inverter than the name plate rating, i.e. on a 5kw inverter, you could put 6,000 watts of PV panels. New SMA docs say you can overpanel...

Printer - yes, if I had one and knew how to use it. Good points. I guess 18yrs for forklift battery is not bad. Still working now, but reaching the end.

Yes, I looked into those one time. They did not fit my cells. Were somewhat costly also as I remember. Good option if they fit. My new battery has an automatic watering system. Also not cheap, but makes watering so super easy and quick. You can't over fill the batteries. It can be as easy as...

Says 42 Ohms...:)