Ultimate Solar Thread

100acrehuphalump said:
How well do the Renogy flex panels hold up against hail?
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100...

Here's my worthless 2 cents regarding soft panels.

Search a manufacturer's web site. If they are not a vendor to DoD, I would be inclined to look elsewhere. DARPA is by far the biggest behind the scenes facilitator and funding agent for cutting edge solar technologies developed by private enterprises and educational institutions.

Having said that, I suggest taking a look at PowerFilm. I had a very interesting conversation with their VP of Sales in their very small booth (you'd miss it if you blinked whle walking by) at OX-West.

I'm certainly not implying a solar company isn't cutting edge without direct or indirect government funding and involvement.
 
There's a lot of interest here about monitoring solar panel and battery performance and the Trimetic is a favorite. However, it and other options can be pretty pricey.

When I swapped out my rigid panel for two flexible panels I purchased a ViewStar 30A PWM controller with a digital readout. It has built in monitoring, maybe not as sophisticated at the Trimetic, but completely sufficient for most of us: solar panel voltage & amperage, batterey voltage & amperage being delivered to it, load voltage & amperage, state of charge, day, month, & total cumulative charge, etc. The cost of the controller was about $130.

If you've been thinking about adding monitoring and/or increasing your solar capacity, it's a good option performance and cost wise.

This is what I installed: ViewStar 30 amp, VS3024BN
 
If your curious what type of power a panel would produce in a given region you can fool with this free GOV website. Www.nrel.gov/solar

Its the site installers use to predict solar gen capability on commercial instalations. But it can easily help you eye ball power gen capability in various regions you might be visiting.

By the way I have 29 285watt LG pannels going up today. Enphase micro inverters on the house. I worked with Renvu.com to design the system, handled the county permit process and hired a Electrician for the install. I've been on the roof working also I have about 36hrs up there my self working on the install. Spanish Tile roofing adds lots of labor to the process.
 
Is it like the carport systems? If so who did you use?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Wander The West mobile app
 
Glad to hear someone is doing well on solar at home these days. With federal, state and power company encouragement, I installed a complete system a couple years ago and was fairly bill-free for two years. Now the local power company in Nevada has convinced our PUC that its more expensive for them to deal with "little" guys, so our connection fee is going through the roof and the electricity we produce will be bought at about 2-3c/kWh and sold back to us at 11c! It will eventually be MORE expensive overall for someone with a solar system than someone without one! This has caused the two largest solar installers to cease operations in the state - ~1200 jobs lost. So those of you in other states, beware, the investor-owned utilities are working pretty hard to keep their profits and screw those of us who are doing the right thing....
 
10kwh Tesla Wall is $3700. You only need enough to get through the night ;-)
Neighbor is consulting with Power Companies to develop new business models and grids to handle power flowing in vs out. He said currently there are two types of Utilities. Those in denial and those playing catch up to create new policy and systems.
 
This may be a little off topic, but I figured I could add some info on house type solar. Utilities have a big issue with Solar, not from the mindset of not liking it, but more from the mindset that it doesn't always play well with substations. First off, small solar inverters are sometimes not putting clean power on the grid. This can cause power issues for neighbors, and harmonics in expensive substation transformers. This is, and will continue to get better with technology, but it's something they need to look at. Secondly, the power grid is designed to run in one direction, towards the load. There are ways to make them work with power flow both ways, but they are MUCH more expensive than standard substation equipment. More on that next. This ultimately means that a minimum load must be maintained on a electrical distribution circuit from a substation in order to maintain the quality of the power to everyone on that circuit. Third, is cost. For most Utilities, the cost of the distribution system (wood poles along the road), transmission system (bigger steel poles), and substations (link between the distribution and transmission systems) is passed along evenly to everyone who is connected based on how much power they use, and is all included in the per KWh costs. This makes a lot of sense in places where everyone is on the same playing field. The problem is that people who use solar upset the idea of spreading those back-bone costs among all customers. Those costs don't decrease if a person uses solar to lower their usage from the grid, only if they disconnect from the grid. Utilities are trying to find ways to "decouple" the costs of their assets (distribution, transmission, substations) from the cost of power. New electrical meters that are installed on houses have the ability to measure how much power is sent out and how much is pulled in. This will show how much power uses the distribution backbone and the hope is that you can then tell the difference between net power usage and backbone usage and the costs be appropriately charged for. This is, by most accounts, and in my opinion, the only way to fairly share the costs of the infrastructure to everyone. The downside of course is that it certainly changes the ROI on a solar installation.

Don

Full disclosure, I work for a utility, so my views may be biased. Hopefully they're not though, and I love talking about all things solar/electrical. I don't have solar on my home, but will on my FWC. :D

-
 
Elmo my neighbor is a grid engineer. Hes the one I met with to discuss solar ideas given hes on yr 4 with his ;-). He said all the same stuff grids are currently designed as one way flow. He said from an engineering stand point its not a big deal to change especially given grid upgrade is behind the demand in the west. He said the larger issue today is the business model and Utilities being way way too slow to realize the business has already changed and 99.99% of his work today has been top level Business Model change discussions with many Utilities in the west. He said the ground level basics is that the Monopoly game is over and Utilities need to addopt a business model like any competitive company today watching costs and smarter planning of projects etc. VS as he put it just cutting checks when stuff goes into melt down mode. He was the lead engineer on smart grid upgrades in the western region a few yrs ago. Today hes flying solo as a consultant and cant keep up with demand.
 
Turned our house system on Wednesday evening last week. 29 panels. 285 watt LG panels. Enphase microinverters. Thursday we generated 23.5kwh. Our winter month use average is around 25kwh a day. Summer with the pool running during peak solar heat hours will be around 35kwh daily. Our solar generation during peak season will probably be around 32-38kwh a day.

The microinverter system is pretty slick. I can see each individual panel output.
 
Turned our house system on Wednesday evening last week. 29 panels. 285 watt LG panels. Enphase microinverters. Thursday we generated 23.5kwh. Our winter month use average is around 25kwh a day. Summer with the pool running during peak solar heat hours will be around 35kwh daily. Our solar generation during peak season will probably be around 32-38kwh a day.

The microinverter system is pretty slick. I can see each individual panel output.
 
CALIcamperdad said:
Turned our house system on Wednesday evening last week. 29 panels. 285 watt LG panels. Enphase microinverters. Thursday we generated 23.5kwh. Our winter month use average is around 25kwh a day. Summer with the pool running during peak solar heat hours will be around 35kwh daily. Our solar generation during peak season will probably be around 32-38kwh a day.
The microinverter system is pretty slick. I can see each individual panel output.
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Sounds interesting! If you don't mind sharing, what was your total system cost? Have you calculated the break even point?
 
Ideally you only want to produce what you use. Over producing simply costs you more in gear and equipment. The only time it makes sense to over produce is if your storing on site like charging a Tesla wall.

So 1 full week on my 8.2kwh system. We generate between 19 and 25kwhrs per day. Our burn rate is about 26kwhs perday. In July we should see about 40% more generation and dur to our summer pool filtering again be around 95% of our usage on solar. Purfect workd your at zero at sunrise and run the meter backwards during the day, forwards at night
 
One of the displayed values on the Zamp is the amp-hrs that the solar panels have put into the batteries since the reading was reset. Be sure that you don't have Ah displayed instead of amps. I have made that mistake and thought I had really super solar panels. Your 100 watt panel should put out a max of about 6 amps and the 80 watt should put out a max of about 4.8 amps for a total in full sun at noon in summer of less than 11 amps.

Since you are reading 13 plus amps, I suspect it is showing the accumulated amp-hrs instead of the amps. While both are in sun try unplugging the portable panel. you should see an immediate drop in amps. Push the Volts/Amps button (upper right on mine) to cycle through the readings. The display should show A rather than Ah to the right of the number.

Paul

ps. I could have sworn there was some numbers there when I started to post. :unsure:
 
Bill,
Thanks for the heads up. Am thinking of getting a few of these to augment the 150 watt panel on the new ATC(installing 2/28)
any thoughts on using a portable system (with controller) along with the one on the camper. Or would the controller on the portable system cause problems with the in-house controller.
thanks.
w
 
Wango said:
Bill,
Thanks for the heads up. Am thinking of getting a few of these to augment the 150 watt panel on the new ATC(installing 2/28)
any thoughts on using a portable system (with controller) along with the one on the camper. Or would the controller on the portable system cause problems with the in-house controller.
thanks.
w
Click to expand...
I took the controller on my portable panel out of the loop. Wire from panel to the controller in the camper.
 
billharr said:
SolarBlvd 120 Watt 12 Volt Flexible Sale!


Solar Cynergy Flexible Bendable 120 Watt 12 Volt Solar Panel $276.00
only $119.00


If I was starting fresh I would try 3 of these.. on the roof. Great price.
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Had ordered two from Amazon and just ordered a 3rd from SolarBlvd for $20 cheaper than I paid earlier. Was going to use a 30A MPPT Controller - now I need to see if I need to upgrade to a 40A instead.
 
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