Why I chose to do it
I have for as long as I can remember had a fascination with solar panels and I guess it has always been the ability of them to produce electricity from sun light which had done this. My earliest memories of solar energy came from a trip to the Flinders ranges when I was young with my family. I often saw phone boxes powered by solar as well as railway crossing signals or ding ding's as my brother and I referred to them due to the sound they made when a train was crossing the road.
Now days it's more of a practical interest as I am on a journey (those close to me would refer to it as a crusade) to reduce my energy consumption. I have a Hydroponics garden which has a control system and a submersible pump. The control system is always running and that turns the pump on every hour to fill the header tank. I also have a fish pond with a small pump in it this is also always running. The installation was all about taking that load off the mains and therefore saving money and of course the reducing greenhouse gasses.
Below are the details and pictures of the system as it has been evolving over time.
Picture 1 - 80W solar panel mounted to the roof pointing North.
Picture 2 - Control panel.
The first system I had running was based of a 80W solar panel with a regulator that charged a single 20Ahr battery. A 380W pure sine wave inverter was also installed to power the mains device connected to the system. The inverter was protected by a Circuit breaker. The regulator was responsible for charging the battery and giving me numbers like current array voltage, array current, battery voltage and the running total of amp hours. The regulator also gave a history of a two previous days.
The system operated well running the pond pump and the hydroponic garden controller during the daylight hours. The load was switched back to mains at night due to the fact I did not have enough battery capacity.
04/09/2011
The system has now been upgraded and the Powertech regulator has been removed and replaced with a Morningstar Tristar TS-45 controller. This controller has a current rating of 45 Amps so will allow for panel expansion further down the line. It also has the ability to allow for a RS232 connection for data display and logging.
Picture 3 - New Tristar regulator installed.
11/09/2011
When the weather finally allowed for it, I further upgraded my system with a second battery of 20Ah capacity. I also took down the 80W 12V panel and replaced it with a 180W 24V panel. The plan was that if I upgraded the battery capacity I should also upgrade the solar collection capacity as well. Unfortunately there was no longer space for the 380W inverter, however provisions will be made so it can still be used. See below for pictures of the new solar panel and main control panel set up.
Picture 4 - Dual batteries installed.
Picture 5 - New 180W panel installed on roof.
12/09/2011
Today the system got a few tweaks. Since I had to take the sine wave inverter out to make space for the second battery I had been thinking about ways to get it back in. Firstly I was not happy about how I was terminating everything to the batteries so to solve this I added active and neutral blocks. All system components after the regulator are now connected to these two blocks. See picture below. The inverter is now connected back into the system via a 32A circuit breaker and a Anderson plug allowing for quick connection and disconnection as required.
Picture 6 - Addition of active and neutral blocks as well as Circuit breakers and Anderson plug for inverter.
Picture 7 - Close up of active and neutral blocks as well as circuit breakers.
01/10/2011
Time for another panel to boost the total power generated by the array, and also a upgrade of the panel mounting rail to support the second panel.
Picture 8 - New 180W panel and old mounting rail removed.
Picture 9 - New mounting rails installed on roof ready for panels.
02/10/2011
Today I was assisted by a good friend Joel with putting the
panels back on the roof. Definitely a two person job for bigger heavier panels.
This just about wraps up the modifications to the panel part of the system,
there are still a few little things that need doing.
Picture 10. Final installation 360W capacity.
08/10/2011
With the two panels connected in series I was not getting the values I was expecting. No load volts for the two panels in series was around 70 Volts, however when a load was added this voltage quickly dived down to just above the battery bank voltage and even in full sunlight only yielded around 3.5 amps. It dawned on me later (and feel free to correct me) that solar panels can be considered a high impedance voltage generator so putting loads on them will cause the voltage to come down. So I scrambled back up onto the roof with some "Y cables" and connected the two panels in parallel and my suspicion was confirmed with under load the panels started to generate high currents when under load. Below are some links to data that was taken today while testing.
Load test with laptop charger and pond pump.
Load test with pond pump, Hydroponics garden controller and submersible pump.
14/10/2011
I have managed with a larger inverter to run a couple of loads
of washing purely from the battery storage I have. The data I have collected is
all from the TS-45 regulator via the RS232 data port so it is all purely
from the perspective of the generation side of the solar setup.
Some things I think you can get from the two tests is first washing machine
load was done latter in the afternoon and you can see the
gradual dropping off of the Charge Current. This is probably due to the
sun heading further towards the western horizon and therefore further off the
perpendicular axis of the panels. The second test was done earlier in the
afternoon so therefore the Charge Current was higher due to the sun being higher
in the sky and closer to the perpendicular axis of the panels.
15/10/2011
As you can no doubt see this whole set up is always changing to suite the larger and larger demands I place upon it. The other day while working on the system I realised it was not a very good idea to do it while it was live (during the day). So I have added a panel isolator box on the outside so I can of course isolate the panels while changing the wiring.
Picture 11 - Water proof box containing panel isolator breakers
Following a failed test to complete a load of washing the other day when the power demand got to great for the 32A breaker (Trip was anticipated) I decided to install a larger avenue for the inverter to get power through. This came in the way of a 250A fuse in its own housing. I realise this is two large for the cabling however the current will never get that high and the fuse is there for catastrophic failure - protect your wiring. The cabling will of course be upgraded as time goes on and at the moment I am limiting my power use of the inverter to 800W.
Picture 12 - New fuse for 2.5kW inverter.
16/10/2011
If you are curious about what the set up looks like while I am testing and taking data the picture below should shed some light on the subject.
Picture 13 - Testing and data logging setup.
The laptop is connected to the Morningstar corp. regulator via a RS232 cable and RS232 to USB converter. The laptop runs the Morningstar Corp. data taking software called MSview and the data is recorded to a CSV file which I later convert to a excell file so I can chart the data. Pencil and paper (usually recycled) is used to record points in the recording session for later combination into the excell file.
16/10/2011
Well what can I say the lawn was in need of a mow so I decided to do it with solar power. What's interesting about this test is that you can tell when I had to empty the catcher on the mower as the graph shows dips and peaks in array current and array voltage respectively, as the batteries caught up. See below for the test data.
Aztronics Pty Ltd - This is where I got the batteries and 180W solar panels.
Morningstar Corporation - Maker of the TS-45 regulator.
Soanarplus - This is the place I got the first solar panel.
Jaycar Electronics - Supplier of all other little bits and pieces I needed.
Apollo Energy - Supplier of the mounting rail system.
Energy Matters - Alternative energy information and products.
Last updated 14/10/2011
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