Father in laws grid connected system done

[G00SE]

Welp, my father in law got his 32 panels on the roof (16 north and 16 south) his generac inverter and battery bank set up and should be flipping it on this week!

It’ll be great to compare his set up to my off grid set up once ours is done as well.
If anyone has any generac pic requests I’ll see what I can do to get some!

Using the tractor is always the best part of any project, hence the thread hah. He was trying to devise a pulley system and I said hold the phone, I’ll just fire up the ol branson and lift em!

 

[dmkjr]

Work smarter, not harder. I did not have fancy tractors to help with mine. Had to manually lift each one. I'm a systems engineer, not necessarily cut out for some of the hard labor roof work at 100F.

 

[Madcodger]

He put up north-facing panels? I agree that getting out the tractor is (almost) always fun, but I'm not sure why anyone in the northern hemisphere would do north-facing panels. How much are they producing, compared to those facing south?

 

[Solar Guppy]

Yeah, North facing panels will just be expensive roof decoration

 

[JoeHam]

Yes, he should have rotated the house 90 degrees so he could have East West ?.

 

[G00SE]

They are producing reasonably for now. The panels were free so he just maximized the roof space. I found it odd as well be he’s the retired electrician I’m just the help ?

 

[SparkyJJO]

There's a house not too far from here that has panels only on the north side, not the south. Makes no sense to me. Sure, they aren't visible from the front of the house that way, but what's the point?

In this case it sounds more like just covering every last inch of roof space with panels. And if the panels were free, then why not.

 

[G00SE]

Alright, so the system is up and running (well, the Battery is yet to go live but the inverter is fully operational and load testing was done today)

More details on the system.
He is at roughly 34 degrees latitude
First picture are the southern facing panels. Second picture are the panels on the north side, these however are not on the roof pitch, but the less angled patio/carport.
32-305w panels. 4 strings (9760w spec’d)
Today the high was 95 degrees Fahrenheit
At around 2pm the array was putting out roughly 8000w.
These pictures are from 530pm local time. On it’s first full day he has so far generated 44kwh and in current conditions each string is still providing about 700w each (2800w total)
I’m not too surprised at how similar each string produced today, winter time will be when the angles will really stand out.

 

[G00SE]

When testing the critical loads panel today the mini split, upstairs window AC, both TVS, and all lights were on in the house and it pulled a whopping 12amps ?. Going to be moving many more items over to the critical load panel

 

[HarryN]

Looks good. In AZ you can put solar panels on about any surface and they will make power.

As a practical matter, the typical peak demand for power is later in the day - roughly 4 - 8 pm vs facing in the traditional direction.

See if you can convince him to face some panels toward the late afternoon sun - as many as possible. That is when power is becoming the most expensive. Locally the price difference of 10 am vs 5 pm is getting silly.