Post Pic's of R.E. projects in solar

[hayfarmer]

I think sharing our Renewable energy experiences may save a lot of head aches and (Magic smoke) here is  a 48 volt  solar system I use for my home,and will be adding wind to it shortly.

[TomW]

We started with 300 watts of solar:



I stripped the rack of panels and added some iron:



Then reassembled it with 4 fresh Kyocera 130 watt panels:



Added back the original 4 Siemens 75 watt panels:



That brings us up to 820 watts of solar.

It all feeds into this battery bank (450 AH@24 volts) that powers that Outback FX2524 Sine Wave inverter. It was obviously not completely hooked up in the photo.


Because you asked for photos.

Tom

[DamonHD]

Some of the new on-grid panels (though still waiting for the new grid-tie inverter, grrrr) with a couple of extra rails at the front so that I can add some extra off-grid panels well away from any ground-level shading (though this is west-facing so not great for winter when I need it most)...

(Image is an attachment because I'm too stupid to make it appear in the body of the message for now...)

Rgds

Damon

[Sr WiNdTeCh]

I have a link to my setup in my signature.

[hayfarmer]

That,s slicker than cow spit,using a large cooler for a vented battery box and very mobile system you made.good luck on hunting down a deal on solar panels.have not found a  good deal yet.I just bit the bullet and bought for the long haul.
need more solar panels (heard that before)

[Sr WiNdTeCh]

hahaha slicker than cow spit!  It still hasn't been tested..... 

I will keep everyone updated!

[ghurd]

Is there a minimum size limit?  

How about a portable solar powered dremmel tool?
(Cheap HF rotary tool, 7AH SLA battery, VW PV. The tool runs from a 12VDC wallwart, or directly from 12VDC. Possibly HF #97626, often on sale or coupon for $8 to $10 with 80 accessories. This particular VW panel has an internal factory regulator.)

Yes, I do use it like that.
It is not something staged.
It keeps the dust outside so I don't breath it in a dusty cloud (or have to clean it up).
Can set it up and put it away faster than an extension cord.
G-

[DamonHD]

Size isn't everything, G, or so I'm reassured...

Rgds

Damon

[carlb23]

Here is a picture of my 11.2kw array adjustable for seasonable tilt installed this past December. If you look closely you can see the Skysterem 3.7 wind turbine behind the array in the first picture.  And one of my 7kw on the main roof of the house  I have an additional 3kw on the garage just no pictures.

[DamonHD]

Woooooo!  Size envy!

Do you conserve too?  B^>

I think if I had that lot here I'd have plenty even mid-winter to cover heating too with a heat-pump.

Could you send it over surface mail?  And the land to stand it on?

Rgds

Damon

[carlb23]

Woooooo!  Size envy!

Do you conserve too?  B^>

I think if I had that lot here I'd have plenty even mid-winter to cover heating too with a heat-pump.

Could you send it over surface mail?  And the land to stand it on?

Rgds

Damon

We do use a heat pump in the winter as well as two solar air heaters with a total surface area of abut 160sq/ft.  While we do have natural gas and a 96% gas furnace but  we never use the gas furnace.  The heat pump is backed up with electric resistance strips and we also heat our water with electric.  When we true up with the utility at the end of a year we will have about a 5 to 7Mwh surplus.   We generate 25 to 27 energy credits a year here and we can sell them to the utilities for between 650 and 665 each.


Carl

[hayfarmer]

Carl, real nice.no holding back there.most professional. the season adjustable racks are for vertical adjustments? would love to see a pic of that set up.like to change mine from stationary.thanks. hay

[carlb23]

The racking is made by TTI solar and it works great.  It is a vertical adjustable system and i can adjust the entire 56 panel array by myself in about 10 minutes.  It can be adjusted from 0 degrees to 40 degrees.  Here is a link to a PDF file with all the info.

http://www.thompsontec.com/assets/adjustable_tilt_ground_mount.pdf

[DamonHD]

Only my off-grid stuff is adjustable, about 100W of it, by choosing how I tie it to our garden wall or kiddies' swing!  B^>

Mainly I leave it about 70deg to maximise winter performance (when I need it most) and minimise ground space taken...

Rgds

Damon

[mettleramiel]

I have about 200watts of solar mounted on a shed with unfortunately, no angle adjustments


The inverter goes in through the window. On top is a plate I made that would be mounted on a wall if I wasn't in a basement suite. There's 2 12v car outlets and 2 USB ports on it.


A little different, I made this outlet box that connects to the inverter and to the mains wall outlet. The switch on the bottom allows me to chose how I want anything plugged into it to be powered. So right now, I have my TV and a game console plugged in, if the switch is turned to the left, they run on solar, to the right, mains.


These are 60watts of solar mounted on my van. They're connected to 70amps of batteries. Inside, I have a whole bunch of 12v stuff including a tv, vcr, fan, lights, kettle and an inverter for anything else.

[DamonHD]

I like it!  Thanks for the pics.

Rgds

Damon

[RandomJoe]

My system seems to be a never-ending work in progress...    At the moment, I have three separate solar systems in operation!  The biggie is a 48V Outback system with 1080W of solar panels.  Pics below of that, you can also see more on my website - including a live display of the main system!  (Won't see much today, it's looking to be heavily overcast...)

http://n5usr.net

Here are the panels on the roof:
http://n5usr.net/Joes_Time-Waster/Outback_System_files/shapeimage_2.png

------Converted your illegal photo to a link. Please observe the photo posting rules! TW

And the (rather messy, it is incomplete!) inverter / battery bank / charge controller area:


Joe

[zap]

Nice system and very nice web site Joe.

I love the weather page (I've lusted after the Vantage Pro for a while) and the solar page.  The HVAC is pretty neat too.

Maybe you can train the cats to pan the cameras or build a harness for them so they can be roving camera cats.

Nice stuff!

[RandomJoe]

Well, phooey...  Can we not edit posts?  Or is it because TomW edited mine?

I didn't realize / remember that iWeb creates PNGs (quite a bit larger than the original JPGs) for the embedded photos on my webpage and just linked to those.  Been a long time since any other forum I use limited pics to 640x480 so didn't think of that either.

So I made some images just for this site, but can't change them above...  Oh well... 


And thanks, Zap.  I have really enjoyed the Vantage Pro, well worth the money in my opinion.  I just wish I had gotten the solar insolation sensor, may have to add that one sometime.  I'd like to use it to improve the decision-making for when I can load more on the inverter or when I need to back off.  It's a bit "sloppy" trying to rely solely on panel voltage / current...

I have lots more I'd like to add to the live system, just a matter of time and motivation showing up at the same time!   I think I'll be able to get my second smaller solar system online in a week or so - need to get an adapter, but it now has a Morningstar Suresine inverter which will talk Modbus RTU to the automation system so I can at least monitor battery voltage remotely.  Don't use the inverter very much, but might wire the enable switch to a relay - then I could load it up during the day on sunny days too.  Running out of loads for that sort of thing, though!

[XeonPony]

well took pics of mine finally got the solar mount made. It took a week of planning then a month to scavenge all the parts and about 2 days to make & assemble.

It is made with an old satellite base, a small satellite tilt mount, some shelf braces, and some iron flat stock, all the fasteners are 316SS

each panel is 15w, added up in series parallel for 120w @ 50V voc, 32V Vmp going through a SunSaver 15 Mppt. The power goes through 40' of 10awg cable to the controller where it does it thing and brings it to 12V where it goes to the batteries via 4awg cable @ 10.5' where it then goes to 3 sets of equally sized 8awg cable to each of the USRM-8D batteries (Pics pending of that).  The controller has a Serial interface for monitoring and logging of data as well as custom programming, I run it through a USB-Seriar RS232 adapter.

Please note the last pic of the fuse panel, the wires in the upper left corner are dead and not attached to any thing!

The load side of the controller feeds a fuse panel via 10awg wire (soon to be upgraded to 8awg) that runs about 5' with a large capacitor to serve as a surge filter for when the water pump kicks in

More pics of the over all electrical system to follow eventualy and a schematic as time allows.

[mtbandy]

well, laugh if you like but being on grid I don't rely on alternative power, however I like to mess about!


Stepper motor turbine, lights a bright white power LED when the wind blows


I built this one to look a bit like larger homebrew turbines, even 'carved' my own blades. They are only about 10" long each


My other project is a 50w solar panel, welded the frame up myself a couple of years ago


and 'designed' and built (actually just designed as built) my own diversion controller, based on an Atmel microcontroller and buck converter. Never fully finished it, I remember I was going to post schematics but never did!


It has been happily running for 2 years I think, and the overvoltage has never tripped. As it is a diversion controller, if the dump load failed for whatever reason, the overvoltage stops the battery from being destroyed.

That's about all!

[Sr WiNdTeCh]

GHURD EAT YOUR HEART OUT!!

Can you please put some schematics up on that baby! and maybe some more info.

[mettleramiel]

This was my set-up recently until I bought 4 more 40w panels and that was just too many to fit on the roof, so I had to make something new to mount them all on. I also wanted to be able to adjust the angle of the panels each season



This is what I rigged up. The landlord was kind enough to let me put this monster on his lawn. On the rack there are 5 40w panels, one 48w, 30w, 53w and 75w for a total of 406w. I pre-drilled holes in it so I can easily adjust the panels in 10° increments from 80° to 20°. It was fun to change the angle after everything was put together.




I couldn't believe how much of a difference it makes! Starting at 80°, as I moved down to 20° the current almost doubled! I'll definatly be investing in a tracker in the future. Looking forward to moving them again next month!