diy solar

diy solar

It's Working!!! Sol-Ark 15K, 33.52kW with 67 Panels AC+DC PV, 25kW SOK Batteries - Photo Diary

Shimmy said:
How does your metering work; does the utility credit your generation at wholesale and debit your total consumption at retail, or is it a net setup?
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Yes, my utility credits my generation at 5.5 cents and debits 11.627 cents for consumption. They also have a 4pm-8pm on peak demand charge of $2.00 per kWh. I run 100% off the batteries during that time and do peak shaving at 1500 watts during the rest of the night.
 
Balrog006 said:
Question, you went with Growatts for your AC conversion over what the SA could handle in DC from your array-was that option less expensive that individual micro inverters?

If you’re only seeing a max of 20kw from your array at any one time because of the different arrays on different roof sections did you consider and do the calculations for just running everything in DC to the SA?
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The Sol-Ark 15K had 16.5 kW plugged into it's DC MPPTs, that was going to be 19.8kW, but my wife vetoed the 4.5" overhang of the panels off the sides, after seeing it and I had to reconfigure the roof to remove six 550W panels.

I'm seeing a max of 20kW now, but during the summer time and with certain conditions, I think I could see more than 25kW, and the Sol-Ark will pull back the DC PV to prevent me from going over 25kW so I don't go over my Qualifying Facility agreement with my utility. Originally my system was going to be 36.82 kW until my wife saw that overhang, now it's just 33.52 kW.

I'm not a fan of micro-inverters and would rather have string inverters. This video put together my feelings I had about micro-inverters vs string inverters:
 
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OffGridForGood said:
Wondering what the cost of this system was 'all in'.
More ESS would be in the plan to make better use of all that PV, or an EV or two!
edit: I hope you have a plan for snow removal - or don't get any!
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Plan to grow the ESS to 60kWh and to add a single LFP EV in the future. Can't really get into costs. I budgeted $38K for the install, and I went way over. Wire, electrical components, and racking were a lot higher than I anticipated. Needed to buy two more SOK batteries as well as I was originally going with three. We'll see when my wife will allow us to buy more batteries.

Edit: Snow removal? The Photo Diary has a little video of 8-10" of snow sliding off the panels. Gravity seemed to take care of that. :)
 
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Well, I finished installing the five port switch and getting the Sol-Ark and the two Growatts connected to wired Ethernet. Got the PVC conduit bent and installed into the wire way. Ran a Cat5e cable through the battery conduit and installed it into the SOK RS232 port. Bought Solar Assistant and installed it on the Orange Pi and got the SOK batteries talking to it. So good progress today.

Still need to install a dedicated ground rod that the panels ground will connect to.

Did not need to install individual panel RSD according to my AHJ, this year (next year I believe that changes). So 13 strings are running directly to the three inverters. I don't want anything else on the roof. Getting to an individual panel to replace a DC optimizer would be a pain. Not to mention, probably not going to do that during winter?
 
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Does the Solar Assistant Orange Pi image install itself to the EMMC flash from the micro sd card? One of the advantages the Orange Pi 3 LTS is 8GB of EMMC flash. I've been googling and I can't find out.

It's too bad Solar Assistant doesn't allow SSH access to device. :(
 
Ryushin said:
Still need to install a dedicated ground rod that the panels ground will connect to.
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That's actually not recommended practice; the panel ground is an equipment grounding conductor not a lightning protection mechanism or grounding electrode conductor; that wire should just connect to the ground bus.

Were your drawings done by Greenlancer or someone else? It is a nice, complete package.
 
Shimmy said:
That's actually not recommended practice; the panel ground is an equipment grounding conductor not a lightning protection mechanism or grounding electrode conductor; that wire should just connect to the ground bus.

Were your drawings done by Greenlancer or someone else? It is a nice, complete package.
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Sol-Ark support went through my Line Diagram and said the panels should be connected to their own ground rod. Right now I have the panels grounding wire connected to the common ground on the system.

Greenlancer did my drawings. Amazing work. I can't recommend them enough.
 
Ryushin said:
Sol-Ark support went through my Line Diagram and said the panels should be connected to their own ground rod. Right now I have the panels grounding wire connected to the common ground on the system.

Greenlancer did my drawings. Amazing work. I can't recommend them enough.
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Make sure you have that in writing from SolArk. There are several threads on why it isn't a good idea, and I would expect if you actually get lightning your warranty could be voided.
 
Shimmy said:
Make sure you have that in writing from SolArk. There are several threads on why it isn't a good idea, and I would expect if you actually get lightning your warranty could be voided.
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I'll follow up with Sol-Ark on that then. I was going to pound in that ground rod today.
 
PhilIA said:
What did Greenlancer charge for a plan set?
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I paid $412.25 which was two items. The plans were $221 and $191.25 was for the roof architectural stamp. I had to send them pictures of my attic and they stamped that the roof could handle the extra load of the panels. I found an old 20% coupon code that still worked as well. Amazing value. Would have saved me so much time if I found out about them ahead of time. I could of saved a lot of time not doing my drawing in Visio that I provided them. With Greenlancer, all you really need to do is layout the panels on the roof, choose my equipment and location of the equipment and they will take care of everything else. Absolutely incredible value.
 
Checkthisout said:
Beautiful setup
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Thank you. My wife calls me slow because of how long things take for me to do. I'm very meticulous and want things done right. Though my wife has the patience of an explosion. I could teleport and it would still not be fast enough. :)

edit: remembered about my wife's patience.
 
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Got the cables from Solar Assistant yesterday so I hooked up the Sol-Ark 15K to Solar Assistant. So far I really like Solar Assistant, though I don't like how closed down it is.

Emailed Solar Assistant and they said that if you use your own Orange Pi it does not use the EMMC as you install it to the sdcard. I've been using Linux as my daily driver since '96 and I started with it back in '93. So it's time to unlock Solar Assistant. Enable SSH, assign it a static IP, move it's file system to the EMMC, set up my main server to use a reverse proxy so I don't have to rely Solar Assistant proxies. I'll probably see if I can install Bareos backup agent on it so my main server can back it up. I've emailed Solar Assistant to see what Linux Distro their image is based off. Time for more geek stuff. :)

This weekend I'm going to pick up more rolled insulation to finish insulating the garage. Next year I'm hoping to add a 2-ton mini-split to heat and cool the garage.

So with my normal household usage, setting the grid shaving to 1500W during the night from 8pm onward, I'm running out of battery around 4am. I'm using about 9kW of grid a day. So I need two more batteries minimum, three for sure to get through the night. My wife is like "Why are we even using the grid at all! You spent so much $$$$." All I can say is we need more batteries. I think it will take some kind of "event" for her to see the light. Once we get the 30% off our taxes, I'm hoping she will let us get a few more batteries.
 

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Ryushin said:
Got the cables from Solar Assistant yesterday so I hooked up the Sol-Ark 15K to Solar Assistant. So far I really like Solar Assistant, though I don't like how closed down it is.

Emailed Solar Assistant and they said that if you use your own Orange Pi it does not use the EMMC as you install it to the sdcard. I've been using Linux as my daily driver since '96 and I started with it back in '93. So it's time to unlock Solar Assistant. Enable SSH, assign it a static IP, move it's file system to the EMMC, set up my main server to use a reverse proxy so I don't have to rely Solar Assistant proxies. I'll probably see if I can install Bareos backup agent on it so my main server can back it up. I've emailed Solar Assistant to see what Linux Distro their image is based off. Time for more geek stuff. :)

This weekend I'm going to pick up more rolled insulation to finish insulating the garage. Next year I'm hoping to add a 2-ton mini-split to heat and cool the garage.

So with my normal household usage, setting the grid shaving to 1500W during the night from 8pm onward, I'm running out of battery around 4am. I'm using about 9kW of grid a day. So I need two more batteries minimum, three for sure to get through the night. My wife is like "Why are we even using the grid at all! You spent so much $$$$." All I can say is we need more batteries. I think it will take some kind of "event" for her to see the light. Once we get the 30% off our taxes, I'm hoping she will let us get a few more batteries.
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Great to know that this inverter works with solar assistant. The rest was Greek to me.
 
I wondering if I should change the first post and add all the parts used and sources for those parts. I know it was a pain doing all the research needed for everything and sourcing it. Would this be beneficial for others?
 
1201 said:
Do you know if solar assistant works with the growatt?
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I think the beta does now, reading the changelog it seems to support the Growatt MIN TL-XH-US:

SolarAssistant changelog

Changes introduced with each SolarAssistant release.
solar-assistant.io solar-assistant.io

I'd have to buy a second Solar Assistant to monitor those. Though Home Assistant is supposed to monitor them and I may use Home Assistant along with Solar Assistant.
 
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