Recent content by Rusty959

Full day: Sure wish communication didn't cut out in the middle.

Indiana, mostly clear day, almost perfectly centered in the path of totality.

Great. Sounds like a solid plan. I wish you the best and will aim to keep an eye on your progress. Amazing find on the insulation it seems. May or may not be helpful, but the idea I've been tossing around in my head is an insulated 2 chambered cistern effectively. Using water reduce excavated...

What is the free insulation you have access to? One of the annoying things I found in my planning is a lot of the material I'd traditionally want to insulate with under ground starts to break down around these temperature over the years. And to be clear what I mean with direct, I get you are...

@skyking1 are you planning on heating the house directly from your thermal energy storage or running a heat pump between? I have put a massive amount of thought into such a system over the last year. My current observation is: 1: If you don't heat your home directly from the thermal energy...

Also noteworthy, I used to run the same SMA inverter, same TIGO parts, literally purchased together so as close of lots as possible, and I never had the same issue. The difference of my setup to his was only 1 of my 3 strings ran optimizers where all 3 of his did. I now run the EG4 18kpv and...

I have a buddy with a SMA SB 7.7 with a TIGO optimizer on every panel who also get arc faults on the inverter. So it's not an exclusively sol-ark thing for sure. He spent lots of time discussing with TIGO, who seemed to mildly accept it was a re-occurring issue with the optimizers but the only...

If your only goal is to audit the PoCo, just put a secondary cheap meter on the garage and occasionally subtract that number from what the inverter thinks it's exporting. You can get a cheap one for $20 on amazon, or get something fancier and wifi like the emporia vue. Unless you use the garage...

You may have already seen this but you should be able to set this very easily I'd highly recommend just reading the manuals for the sol ark and 18kpv top to bottom. It's a lot of information but will do a good job of keying you in on the unique differences and capabilities of each.

Both the sol ark 15k and eg4 18kpv have the ability to hook multiple strings in parallel to one MPPT. There are limitations of course but since you're already using a DC combiner you probably are already meeting these limitations. Check out the MPPTs on the 18kpv - of the 3 one has 10A extra...

I've got the 18kpv and LL batteries. I don't know of any issues with the 18kpv that would cause me to not recommend it for your purposes. There is potential to maximize your MPPTs in different combinations depending on exactly what your max voltage and current of your panels are, but otherwise...

Sure, good ideas depending on the end use. Just need to make sure there's adequate lock outs if you're doing maintenance on a partially energized system. For me I'm grid tied with a bypass so I can bypass my 18kpv for maintenance and would rather have a completely de-energized system while...

I did something like this with a rack I got for free. Put some thick boi bus bars along the sides, drilled and tapped, put on isolated standoffs, and covered for protection. I had to fabricate some mounts out of angle steel to hold the weight of the battery.

Maybe try it regardless, it shouldn't hurt. I'm on LLs but changed all mine.

I get the point of wanting a direct before and after, but how do you compare a system when no two days are the same? In the 3 years I've had my system up I've varied by several percent per year with nothing changing. I have the Tigo Optimizers on my string that's on the roof, and I've got a...