How about a solar car port on a budget?

[Muhendis]

5 minutes ago, carlyai said:

Revision TKR unfortunately. 

Hope they got it right this time. Seems there's a few mm difference between a good replacement and a bad replacement.

That looks extreme.

When will you be back solarising? 

and is the revision due to poor workmanship and due for a refund?

[BritManToo]

Up in sunny Chiang Mai the smog has reduced my midday solar generation from 2.4kW to 1kW. Even last week I was making 1.5kW.

 

Anyone else finding the smog reducing their solar power as much?

Edited April 7, 2023 by BritManToo

[Sophon]

My system has only been online since the 19th of last month, so don't know yet what my peak production is. But back on the 22nd of March at 11.18 (when we also had air pollution but not as bad) I got around 3.5 kW:

 

Today at noon it was hovering around 2.2 - 2.3 kW.

[BritManToo]

17 minutes ago, Sophon said:

My system has only been online since the 19th of last month, so don't know yet what my peak production is. But back on the 22nd of March at 11.18 (when we also had air pollution but not as bad) I got around 3.5 kW:

 

Today at noon it was hovering around 2.2 - 2.3 kW.

March 22 I was getting 1.6kW.

So same as you, I lost 33% between then and now. 

[Cricky]

Sad to hear.

 

You guys get the double whammy.

 

Hope the skies clear up for your better health and electricity production.

 

[Sophon]

Slightly better results today, this photo was taken at noon:

 

I had to evict a lodger today. He/she has been living in the cable trunking for the last three weeks, but today I closed up the open end allowing entry/exit so he/she had to be relocated to our pond.

 

[Muhendis]

4 hours ago, Sophon said:

he/she had to be relocated to our pond.

How unpleasant for the frog.

I think it's a tree frog.

[BritManToo]

5 hours ago, Sophon said:

Slightly better results today, this photo was taken at noon:

 

I had to evict a lodger today. He/she has been living in the cable trunking for the last three weeks, but today I closed up the open end allowing entry/exit so he/she had to be relocated to our pond.

 

Me Too!

1.3kW at noon today.

Should start raining next week as it's Songkran.

[Sophon]

3 hours ago, Muhendis said:

How unpleasant for the frog.

I think it's a tree frog.

Definitely a tree frog, but even tree frogs lay their eggs in water which I guess is why the frog was there in the first case. We had lots of tadpoles in the ditch we dug to get access to the cables running to the house, but unfortunately (for them) that have dried out over the last couple of weeks.

 

And besides, we have trees growing around the pond. 

[carlyai]

15 hours ago, Sophon said:

Slightly better results today, this photo was taken at noon:

 

I had to evict a lodger today. He/she has been living in the cable trunking for the last three weeks, but today I closed up the open end allowing entry/exit so he/she had to be relocated to our pond.

 

Tell he/she/it/trans not to make a Crrrooooaaakkk or they will be snake food. Always happens to our croakers.

[Encid]

@Crossy, how is your system performing in this heat?

 

Yours is not exactly in a temperature controlled environment is it?

 

Any problems?

 

Edited April 14, 2023 by Encid

[Crossy]

17 minutes ago, Encid said:

@Crossy, how is your system performing in this heat?

 

Yours is not exactly in a temperature controlled environment is it?

 

Any problems?

 

Certainly, a tad warm, but nothing to worry about yet.

 

I thought it might be throttling the output at about 3PM, but it's just the sun has gone AWOL.

 

[Crossy]

I know @JAS21 (same inverter) was seeing some throttling earlier in the month and was experimenting with a fan.

 

[Muhendis]

Main concern is, of course, to make enough power to keep the beer cool.  ????

[Crossy]

3 minutes ago, Muhendis said:

Main concern is, of course, to make enough power to keep the beer cool.  ????

 

Nope, I can't think of anything more important!

[Crossy]

Looks like once the pack is full the temperatures drop off.

 

[Muhendis]

We used to do burn-in testing for some products which involved cooking the products which were 19 ch. data reel to reel recorders. We cooked them in a room at 40ºC for 24 hrs then readjusted everything which had permanently drifted. 

 

Inverters and charge controllers are a different kettle of fish so they shouldn't succumb so readily to high temperatures. Solar panels however, are massive thermometers and it is therefore in their nature to "throttle back" as temperatures go north.

Likewise batteries loose due to permanent degradation when cooked. Less of a problem with LiFePO4's than with Pb but still a problem.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Muhendis

[Seeall]

21 hours ago, Encid said:

@Crossy, how is your system performing in this heat?

 

Yours is not exactly in a temperature controlled environment is it?

 

Any problems?

 

be good if we had a heat to elec converter...

[007 RED]

Well our local PEA meter reader has just called and delivered his little piece of paper into our letter box.

 

Good news.  It appears from the bill that the FT discount is still being applied.  As can be seen from the image below we got a discount of 72.71 THB.  I don't know if this is because, thanks to our small scale GTI solar system, we only needed to purchase 79 units this month and maybe this kept us in a low user category.

As several other members have commented in other posts, this has not been a particularly good month in terms of power produced v units purchased.  As can be seen from the graph below, since the 7 April we have been purchasing more units per day because we have used our air cons to help lower the extremely high humidity and filter out some of the PM2.5 pollution that has been blighting us recently.  

 

That said, our small scale system has still managed to hit my original design target of producing approximately 25% of our household needs.

 

 

FYI.... On the 4th April our system produced 7.64 Units, with fairly good sunshine and minimal clouds during the day.  Because the panels were getting quite dirty due to the dust/pollution, I cleaned the 4 panels at around 06:30am on the 5th April.  It will be noted that there was an appreciable increase in power produced that day to 8.86 units with sunshine and minimal clouds as per the previous day.  However, the next day (6th April) we were blanketed by PM2.5 pollution and the panels hardly saw the sun all day, resulting in the system only producing 3.26 units that day and us having to purchase 6 units from the PEA to compensate.

[Muhendis]

On 4/14/2023 at 5:25 PM, Crossy said:

Looks like once the pack is full the temperatures drop off.

 

There is, of course a very un-subtle reason for things getting hot at this time of the year. 

 

Inside your all singing all dancing inverter there is something called a charge controller. It spends it's entire life looking, electronically speaking, at the voltage and current coming from the solar panels and dithers around to give you the maximum power as you may require to charge batteries, run air conditioning and keep your beer cool in the fridge.

Well there's yet to be invented a charge controller that can work at 100% efficiency so they get hot especially when they are made to do a fair chunk of work.

They have to pour loads of charging amps into the batteries and also loads of amps into the inverter which is keeping your house (and your beer) cool.

[Crossy]

The April numbers are in.

 

If nothing else they demonstrate the main disadvantage of solar, variability ???? 

Overall generation wasn't bad mind ???? 

 

[Encid]

8 hours ago, Crossy said:

The April numbers are in.

 

If nothing else they demonstrate the main disadvantage of solar, variability ???? 

Overall generation wasn't bad mind ???? 

Monthly consumption of 1276 kWh... hmmm... similar to mine for April but being 100% PEA supplied my bill was 6,942.50 baht. 

What was yours? 

[Crossy]

2 minutes ago, Encid said:

Monthly consumption of 1276 kWh... hmmm... similar to mine for April but being 100% PEA supplied my bill was 6,942.50 baht. 

What was yours? 

 

If I told you, you would want to kill me!

 

 

[Muhendis]

1 hour ago, Encid said:

Monthly consumption of 1276 kWh... hmmm... similar to mine for April but being 100% PEA supplied my bill was 6,942.50 baht. 

What was yours? 

'0'      

 

Next bill will be a disaster.

 

Batteries are now only good for a few nightly hours although solar is fine during the day.

 

New batteries will be here next week somechai  sometime.

 

[007 RED]

Our meter reader has just called and delivered this months electricity bill.  What can I say?  I was expecting a fair increase in the cost with all the recent who-ha about the raising costs of electricity, but what do I get?  A nice surprise, as can be seen from the photo below.

 

I am amazed that we got an Ft discount of 292.15 THB.  So the 82 units that we purchased actually only cost us 1.85 THB/Unit.

 

This month has been up and down so far as my small scale solar system has been concerned with a real mix of good days with plenty of sunshine, coupled with fair sprinkling of very overcast days, as can be seen from the graph below.

 

The recent heat wave as well as reducing the PV's efficiency, has also resulted in us making use of the ACs to help reduce the humidity indoors.  That said, our small scale system still managed to produce 72% of our needs.

[Crossy]

12 minutes ago, 007 RED said:

I am amazed that we got an Ft discount of 292.15 THB.  So the 82 units that we purchased actually only cost us 1.85 THB/Unit.

 

Interesting, I wonder if that's catching up from previous months when they under-discounted you?

 

Our man will come on Friday we shall see what transpires.

[007 RED]

17 minutes ago, Crossy said:

 

Interesting, I wonder if that's catching up from previous months when they under-discounted you?

I think its doubtful that they've miss calculated the Ft for previous months, as can be seen from below.

 

Apr. purchased 79 units, Ft discount = 72.71 THB

Mar. purchased 42 units, Ft discount = 38.66 THB

Feb. purchased 26 units, Ft discount = 23.93 THB

Jan. purchased 47 units, Ft discount = 0 THB

Dec. purchased 95 units, FT discount = 87.44THB.

 

It will be interesting to see what you, and others get this month.

Edited May 16, 2023 by 007 RED

[Crossy]

Well, I think you should have received a discount for January, but not >200 Baht ???? 

 

I know @JAS21 got his MEA bill recently, anything interesting?

[Seeall]

On 4/8/2023 at 12:20 PM, Sophon said:

Slightly better results today, this photo was taken at noon:

 

I had to evict a lodger today. He/she has been living in the cable trunking for the last three weeks, but today I closed up the open end allowing entry/exit so he/she had to be relocated to our pond.

 

how big must it be until its in the cooking pot?

[007 RED]

11 hours ago, TimeMachine said:

I'm wondering why you need all that steel to raise the solar panels. Couldn't you have used  4 x L brackets of the appropriate dimensions for each panel?

One of the main considerations when mounting solar panels is the need to ensure that, given their size, they are securely held to whatever structure they are going to mounted to, and that they aren't going to blow away in the slightest breeze.

 

If your referring to @Crossy original post, then I suspect that he decided to use steel box section as it was both readily available and considerably cheaper than using proprietary off-the-shelf aluminium mounts/supports.

 

When I designed my small scale system (4 x 415W PVs to be located on my carport roof), I didn't have the power tools needed to cut, drill and weld the steel box sections as per @Crossy original design.  So I opted for a simple 'bridge' design to lift and hold the PVs above the corrugated roof profile thus allowing for air circulation beneath the PVs to help cool them.  The 'bridges' are securely bolted down onto the carport roof structure and they weigh considerably less than the steel design originally used by @Crossy.  The 'bridges' were produced by a local tinsmith from 2mm stainless steel at considerably less cost than purchasing standard aluminium mounting fixtures.