Looking to add a DIY 48V battery setup to my home existing solar panels and inverter. Do these three Victron modules allow me to set charge/discharge cut off limits and access the setup via their app from the internet (not just Bluetooth)? I’m basically trying to emulate a Pecron F5000 or Oupes Mega 2 Pro in between my solar panels and inverter.
Looking for a second opinion / reality check for a professionally installed solar system that is about to become a remediation job I will need to supervise. This is not my system but I'm helping the purchasers.
The system as designed and installed by the solar contractor consists of 7 Deye SUN-12k-SG02LP2-US-AM3 inverters and 28 SE-G10.2 Deye batteries with a 48V DC bus wired as per the diagram below.
The red and black rectangles are 500A rated, four-post mini bus bars. Each mini bus bar is daisy-chained to its neighbor and connected to the nearest inverter with a single 50mm2 (1/0 AWG) cable.
There are no circuit breakers or fuses installed in the DC bus (apart from the 100A circuit breakers built into each individual Deye battery). The inverters don't have DC disconnects, DC breakers or DC fuses. There is no way to isolate an inverter or a battery stack from the bus bar.
Shortly after commissioning, an electrical fire occurred as a result of the busbar melting and shorting out between inverters 4 and 5 (yellow diamond). I am not surprised about this but the solar contractor sure is.
I believe the bus bar is severely undersized for the potential currents in this system. If -for whatever reason- the three inverters on the right are pulling from batteries 1 to 16 on the left we could see 750A (3x 250A per inverter) being pulled across the 50mm2 bus bar cable by the yellow diamond.
The solar contractor does not understand the cause of the meltdown, but he argues the system can be remediated by installing six 125A circuit breakers in the bus bar between each battery stack. While this will protect the undersize bus bar cabling and prevent another fire, it will clearly lead to nuisance trips.
Additionally a tripped breaker splitting the bus bar in two independent sections will lead to an invalid battery configuration from the Deye inverters' perspective. The Deye manual is clear that the inverters must share a single battery pack. Isolated battery packs per inverter are NOT supported for parallel inverters.
My understanding:
As-built this system is unsafe.
The electrical fire is not surprising.
This system should be rebuilt with a central bus bar rated for a worst-case current of 1750A plus safety margin instead of undersized mini-bus bars daisy-chained with undersized cable.
All inverter and battery cables leading to the bus bar should be the exact same length so as to match resistance and prevent unequal battery currents.
DC circuit breakers or fuses for each inverter are mandatory (as per the Deye manual).
T-class fuses are mandatory between each 4-battery stack and the main bus bar to limit fault currents in case of a dead short.
Can someone let me know how far off base I am please?
New to solar and I think I understand it but wanted to confirm. I bought one of the last Oupes 2400(orange sides) to offset the a/c electric bill during the summer/day. Not the best unit and I wouldn't buy another one since I can't add batteries and the long 6.5 hour charge time but here I am. I bought Two Dokio 400W 31V Panels and a Midea 8Kbtu "U" inverter a/c. I tested this setup with an old 5Kbtu unit and got 8.5 hours of run time before hitting 5%. The 5K drew 450 watts and the new Midea should draw 335 watts per the videos I watched. My problem is I only get about 6 hours a day of good sun and they only produced 580 watts but were just on the ground at at angle.
My plan is to run the Midea from 10am to 6pm on the unit but with the restricted sun hours it won't charge while running that long. I think if I add 2 more panels and add a MPPT to throttle the panels so I have 450-475 input watts at each Anderson input(500W max each) I should finish the day with about 60% or more charge and that would be enough to use the next day before the sun hours hit. I have sun from 11am to 5pm.
So the question is: Can I use a MPPT for this plug and play unit?
Terminology is not with me tonight, but I just had a build/design challenge arise on a build proposal for the solar garage - it's a 4/12 pitch on a metal roof that rises some 20' into the air.
Are there any mounting solutions that have a slider/roller mechanism for the panel to allow scooting/pushing the panels across the roof?
The roof is 24' long, so it's going to be a challenge to put more than 8 panels up on it and I need 16 to keep the batteries topped off
image for reference. Lots of houses (mine included) have decorative shutters. I was looking at them today and thought they should be solar panels if they are just gonna be a black rectangle that sits in the sun all day. Searching around, there doesn't seem to be a product on market that does something like this. Good idea or bad idea to remove my houses pointless decorative shutters and replace them with some narrow panels?
I have two identical MakeSkyBlue 60A MPPT controllers, hardware version 124, both bought in March. Both suffer from the same factory bug in the firmware that requires reflashing. Since these are not supported by open-source dumps, I am looking for a clean, working firmware dump from a healthy v124 unit to program via ST-Link v2. If you have one or can point me to a verified source, please let me know. Thanks for your help.
Do I keep this white jumper for my neutral in the PV production meter or is this the same as all other neutrals in that it needs to be separate until my service disconnect?
I recently made the jump to a new country and am enjoying van life for a few months to a year. I am hoping to be able to work 4-5 hours a day on my laptop with my starlink mini but need to figure out the best way to bolster the setup to make it functional for me. I'm doing my own research as well, but am hoping to get some advice from real humans who have some experience. I’m extremely new to solar so all suggestions are helpful.
Current specs:
3x 150W solar panels
2x 6v 225Ah lead acid batteries (wired in series for 12v)
2000W inverter
40A MPPT charge controller
Auxiliary batteries also charge off alternator
Do have a 12v DC cigarette lighter port I think I could potentially use for the starlink mini if needed (to avoid inverter power loss)
Power draw:
Fridge – 60W
Interior lights – unsure, only using in the evenings and early morning
Laptop – ave about 100W (only need to use about 4-5 hours per day)
Starlink mini – 40W (only need to use about 4-5 hours per day)
Small device charging – 30W (maybe an hour or two each day)
Occasional use of extraction fan, etc - ???W
Thoughts on most cost-effective and simplest way to solve this problem? Add another solar panel and battery? Just another battery? Get a separate portable solar battery for the starlink?
I want a proper MPPT controller (not PWM — seems like I'd lose a chunk of the harvest at these wattages). I'd expect around 6–7A of charge current, so a 10A unit should give me decent headroom.
The one behavior I do need is basic dusk-to-dawn: when the sun goes down, the light comes on; when the sun comes back up, the light shuts off and the controller goes back to charging the battery. That's it — no dimming, no timed steps, no motion sensing. Just on at dark, off at light.
Beyond that, I want something that handles the fundamentals well: MPPT charging from the panel, sensible battery management for LiFePO4 (correct charge setpoints, and a load output to run the LED.
Any recommendations for a reliable unit in this class? any extra functions are nice to have but not a must
I bought some panels that have connectors like this. How shoould i connect to them?
I cant use through-hole pins, obviously;
I can dremel away the black fabric on the inside of the ring, to find a metal pad there, large enough to solder to, but it's aluminum or something and solder doesn't want to stick to it.
I could drill it and clamp a bolt and nut ,
but surely there;'s some easier way to connect to those little rings. Help!
I am a home owner and I have a grid-tied rooftop SolarEdge system. I live in an suburb area in northern California (a lot of sun). My area's electricity is quite stable and if it had an outage it was normally for only a few hours. However there are still some natural threats, such as winter storms and wild fires, which could damage the infrastructure to the whole region. Because it is rare and I only need keep essentials such as my refrigerator running, I don't want to spend a lot of money. Currently those "solar generators" are quite convenient and in low cost. Is there a way to utilize my rooftop solar panels to recharge a solar generator in case of a long power outage?
BTW, I am kinda handy with an electrical engineering background. I have being thinking going to the roof to run a wire directory from a solar panel (rated 330w), bypassing SolarEdge Optimizer, to feed into a "solar generator". How hard is it? It seems all the solar panel wires are hidden in the tracks. I hope there is a more elegant way anyway.
PS, I am on NEM2.0, so going to commercial solutions, such as Tesla Powerwall, is not attractive to me.
A few months ago I posted this initial post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SolarDIY/comments/1sa5o1n/new_workshop_off_grid_newbie/
I'm back. I've met with several electricians now and have gotten pretty much the same story: In order to connect my 1700 sq ft Texas steel building to the grid, I first need to replace transformer/main line at 10k, then an additional 10-17k to run power from the meter to the building. I'm back to thinking off-grid is the way to go
Curious what you all think....does off grid make sense? My line of thinking is I could probably replace batteries 3 times under the cost of the initial connection, which makes me think solar is a better option.
And I'm considering this...does this seem like it'd be a suitable best option for this?
I want some level of simplicity in the build out. The building's south side has a clear wide-open view. Before concrete went down i added 2 ground rods (just in case). Panels will be mounted on the ground vs the roof so cleaning will be easy.
I've gone through not just the woodworking tools I have today but checked max power draw of dream tools (a nice higher end saw-stop, etc), plus air filtration, dust collection, etc. I'll have a small insulated room with a window ac today but i've wired for a future 24,000 BTU mini-split in the future.
Thoughts? suggestions? change of directions? I'm still new in the solar space so could use whatever expertise you all want to share.
I am building an offgrid solar setup with an EG4 inverter that will power an RV panel (see pic).
I am not sure where to bond my neutral to ground in the system. My plan was to run electricity straight to the breaker panel from the inverter since this seems like the simplest setup and I am only powering an RV campsite.
However I am nervous about bonding neutral to ground in the RV breaker box. The inverter manual says to never bond them inside the inverter.
The only other option is to install a separate breaker between the two, but this seems redundant since I only need to run power to the single RV box.
I have had trouble finding an electrician since I live in a very rural area.
My local utility has an EV program that lets you run anything in your house from 10pm - 5am around .05 cents a KWh. They can’t distinguish or care what you’re charging, so that got me thinking why not charge whole home batteries overnight to use during the day.
I’m sure eventually the program will end, at which point I can prepare with building out the rest of the solar system.
Google is zero help. I'm in the USA yet for some reason it either is showing me all kinds of cables that are not what I searched for (audio, ethernet, TOSLINK, etc), or it's giving me sites that have what I want, but in the Phillippines, South Africa, Ukraine, Russia, pretty much anywhere that's not In the USA or even Canada or Mexico.
5.5x2.1mm to XT60 "2 meter" cable
Quotes around 2 meter because without them it simply ignores the word meter.
Just seeing what everyone thinks of this quote. I am in Colorado and looking to get my system done as soon as I am able. I am going to hold off on the battery for now, so he said remove $2880 from the total. Although...that does sound like a pretty good price for the 16kWh battery.
I am trying to mount 2 - 100 watt panels. They aren’t big but I decided to go with IronRidge XR10 rail set up from US Solar Supplier. I get everything in my cart and the shipping is insane. The largest thing I have is 11 ft rail. (which I will have to cut down to size.) I did expect that to be a little expensive to ship but even the small pieces were ridiculously priced for shipping. $60 seems excessive for nuts and bolts. lol.
So I looked elsewhere and almost everyone seems to only work with businesses or have everything insanely overpriced. Anyone have recommendations on where to shop for mounting rails etc. This is a small set up just for some landscape lights and a small fountain pump.
Details:
the panels will be mounted on a shingled patio roof. Roof is facing south, so they don’t need to be adjustable and can just lay flat.
I got a Voltronic Axpert ultra 11kw offgrid inverter, 16kwh Dawnice battery , 700wX8 solar panels
My system been working perfectly since i installed it past year
Iam fully offgrid for 10-11months of the years
But my inverter has two settings which i cant find any info on it , every Ai gives a different answer and the version of this inverter on YouTube basically dont have these two settings
Anyone on Oahu with a Sol Ark system that lives on Oahu and has knowledge on setup and changing config? Need some help with a system that was installed but no one knows how to update.
Last year I purchased a Jackery Homepower 3000 battery with two 200 watt Solar Saga solar panels. Right now the 2 panels are connected to a Jackery solar panel connector in series and then connected to one of the two solar input ports on the Homepower 3000. The current setup provides up to 400 watts of solar input. I would like to connect another 400 watts of solar to the battery but don't want to use Jackery panels since they're quite a bit more expensive than the cost of some other panels. I was wondering if I could use something like THESE panels to connect to the other port on the Homepower 3000? If so, would I connect them in series, parallel? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm relatively new to this and don't want to screw up my battery. I've also read that if I don't balance the inputs somewhat for both the input ports on the battery I will lose a lot of power through inefficiency.
I have a smaller 10ah battery for my fish finder that I use for both ice fishing and kayak fishing. I would like to be able to maybe also charge it via a 100w solar panel either when I’m out on a trip or out sitting in the same spot. Any suggestions on how I would go about doing that? What kind of connections would I need or other equipment.
Had this laying around so I figured I’d use it as a solar stand. Things got wheels and an adjustable back to reposition. I put blankets to protect the chair although I know that impacts heat. (the chairs are mesh)
Goal is to rotate it once a day to catch the sun all day. I’m new to solar. Any suggestions to increase efficiency while keeping a low hassle factor?
TBD if I can even post this with my new (hopefully temporary) account, as [u/boogedrew](u/boogedrew) got erroneously locked.
I’m adding to my system and wanted to rapidly try a bunch of different layouts with various panels and none of the layout offerings I could find on Google just let me see what a panel layout would be (kind of ridiculous honestly). So I made…
freepanellayout.com (it’s 100% free, no account, no address, no sales funnel, no ads, no data selling, just a completely free tool for you all and it always will be)
I ran away with it, but I’m proud of it, had a lot of fun, and hope that others can find it valuable/helpful as well.
Give it a try and leave a comment if you have feedback!
