How about a solar car port on a budget?

[carlyai]

1 hour ago, Crossy said:

 

That's actually for our flood-wall, hopefully to be mostly complete when the river arrives 🙂

Better hurry up if you get our run off water from the Kalasin area. Very heavy last night and took about 4" out of the pool this morning.

Not as many pool lowerings this year compared to last year me thinks.

 

[Crossy]

1 hour ago, carlyai said:

Better hurry up if you get our run off water from the Kalasin area. Very heavy last night and took about 4" out of the pool this morning.

Not as many pool lowerings this year compared to last year me thinks.

 

Yeah, we're keeping a weather eye on the river but at present it's well below "worry" level, not even near "nervous". But things can change quite quickly.

 

The building work is all part of Madam's Master-Plan to enclose (and A/C of course) our downstairs living area. I've already planned space for more panels! 

[Crossy]

Numbers for October.

 

We are actually "wasting" a lot of our potential generation because the batteries are usually full by 1pm and we don't export.

 

 

[motdaeng]

13 hours ago, Crossy said:

Numbers for October.

 

We are actually "wasting" a lot of our potential generation because the batteries are usually full by 1pm and we don't export.

 

what is the reason for stopping export to pea? did you get a digital meter?

[Crossy]

40 minutes ago, motdaeng said:

what is the reason for stopping export to pea? did you get a digital meter?

 

No new meter, yet.

 

But in preparation for getting one (OK I had some $$$) we upgraded our storage to be larger than our daily usage so we are effectively running off-grid. The meter creeps about 1kWh per day due to the "no-export" on the inverter having a small draw (adjustable) to ensure the meter never actually goes backwards.

 

[Muhendis]

2 hours ago, Crossy said:

The meter creeps about 1kWh per day due to the "no-export" on the inverter having a small draw (adjustable) to ensure the meter never actually goes backwards.

Why don't you fit an ATS?

[Crossy]

50 minutes ago, Muhendis said:

Why don't you fit an ATS?

 

We have an ATS to switch the whole system to grid in the event of inverter failure.

 

We maintain the grid to inverter connection to allow the grid to top-up should the solar/battery be insufficient (which is how the Deye hybrids work). It makes the whole system "wife-proof" (fully automagic) if I'm away and something goes pear-shaped.

 

[KhunLA]

4 hours ago, Crossy said:

 

No new meter, yet.

 

But in preparation for getting one (OK I had some $$$) we upgraded our storage to be larger than our daily usage so we are effectively running off-grid. The meter creeps about 1kWh per day due to the "no-export" on the inverter having a small draw (adjustable) to ensure the meter never actually goes backwards.

 

That explains the ~10kWh we register per month, though basically 'off grid'.  Seems the digital meter draws about 1/3 of spinners.

 

Only thing conx to grid is MG wall charging cable, since draws ~7.4kWh, so not really usable on 8kWh inverter.  For the curious, we use the granny/emergency charging cable for charging the MG ZS, @ 2.3kWh draw on solar and no problem most days, since having plenty of excess.

[lom]

On 11/2/2024 at 6:45 AM, Crossy said:

The meter creeps about 1kWh per day due to the "no-export" on the inverter having a small draw (adjustable) to ensure the meter never actually goes backwards.

I have adjusted mine and tried different values between 0 and 100 without any noticeable difference in the consumption according to the PEA digital meter.

The meter itself does draw a minimum amount from the grid but that is not metered, does not show on your bill - I was running a couple of weeks completely off-grid and the PEA meter did not show any increase at all.

We got a new tenant for one of our houses, a Thai guy who makes ice-cream using a 2Hp electric motor running a water pump for cooling the cream. His motors surge current trips my Deye inverter so I have been forced to run in grid-assist mode for the last few months but now is the season when I'd had to do that anyway because of the weather.

[Crossy]

We've had some updates since my earlier post.

So, we now have: -

• 3 x Luyuan 16s x 280Ah packs (the right-hand stack).
• 2 x Luyuan 16s boxes with "used" 280Ah cells. (left hand side, top row).
• Frankenpack-1 left side of the bottom shelf which is 3p/4p16s of assorted cells that were "in stock". I spent way too long building matched groups. He's also about 280Ah.
• Frankenpack-2 right side of the bottom shelf 6p16s of "50Ah" used cells recovered from well used packs, really about 30Ah.

All have Seplos V3 BMSs, Frankie 1 & 2 also have 5A flying-capacitor balancers.

There's a polycarbonate cover goes on the front to keep the local wildlife and the damp out.

So, we have about 1,830Ah => 95kWh of storage.
 

Up top we have 3 x Deye 5kW hybrid inverters running parallel and one Sofar 6kW on-grid feeding the Deye "Gen" input as a micro-grid.

Currently, the Deye units are using DeyeCloud. I'm awaiting delivery of an Orange-pi plus bits-n-bobs to run Solar Assistant and get off the net. I was going to do that anyway, eventually, but the latest Deye debacle has prompted me into action.
 

Feeding that lot is 22kWp split between the car-port, patio roof and tool shed roof. Planning to get another 12 x 340W panels up on an extension to the car port.

We are running off-grid although we maintain grid power as backup. The bill is usually about 100Baht.

When I get one of those Round-Tuit things I'll tidy up the spaghetti, at least until the next round of expansion.

 

[Crossy]

Numbers for November 2024.

 

We're definitely not using all our solar potential either from our panels or our storage.

 

I expect that to change when we have our UK visitors over

 

[Crossy]

Numbers for December and 2024 overall 🙂

 

Solar saving for 2024 = 73,699Baht and since we started solar in 2020 that's a total of 249,691Baht that we have not paid to PEA. 🙂 

 

 

 

 

 

[Crossy]

Here we are again 🙂

 

January numbers.

The figures come from our inverters via Solar Assistant, There's certainly something of a discrepancy between production and consumption figures. I'll have to investigate that although I'm not really worried, the important number is the PEA consumption which agrees with the PEA meter. 

 

[BritManToo]

Had some excitement with my solar power this morning.

Bit of a plastic burning smell in the kitchen, traced to the wire from my battery breaker (at the breaker) to my battery. Cable burned, plastic on breaker terminal slightly melted. Turn everything off, remove a few inches of the burned cable and remade the crimp. Not sure why this happened, cable now cool passing the mid-day 25A at 55V from the solar inverter/panels, no voltage drop from inverter to battery. .........maybe just corrosion, but all the other crimps show no damage.

[Crossy]

The steel has arrived for The Crossy Mega Power station upgrade.

 

 

The intention is to extend this edge of the carport roof by 2.5m giving additional shelter to the cars and, as a by-product, to provide space for a dozen or so panels that are currently looking forlorn stacked in the carport.

 

 

 

[Crossy]

First lot of "ribs" up (2 more to go).

 

Currently just bolted, once I'm happy it's going to be strong enough the welder will come out.

 

There will be braces back to the big girder thingy, initially on every-other rib unless it looks too wangy.

 

I will say that the extra 2.5m is a lot longer than I imagined but I'm still hoping to avoid additional verticals, particularly in the centre, someone is bound to hit it!! (most likely me)

 

More as we progress, this is a purely weekend job due to the help only being available on a Sunday at present. 

 

 

[Muhendis]

1 hour ago, Crossy said:

the welder will come out.???

I thought you did things like that yourself.......

What's the weight of the panels on this overhang?

[Crossy]

I meant the welding machine rather than the man (but the man is my step-son anyway) 🙂

 

Panels will weigh about 300kg (12 x 340W panels), but there's bracing to go under the overhang.

 

Everything else we've done will survive TEOTWAWKI 🙂

[Muhendis]

3 minutes ago, Crossy said:

TEOTWAWKI

Eh?????

Don't forget to send pictures of the car port when it tips up.

Fulcrum being the pillars level with the back of the cars.............

[gamb00ler]

24 minutes ago, Crossy said:

Everything else we've done will survive TEOTWAWKI 🙂

 

18 minutes ago, Muhendis said:

Eh?????

The End Of The World As We Know It

[BritManToo]

This'll be interesting when we get one of them gale force winds in May.

[Muhendis]

2 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

This'll be interesting when we get one of them gale force winds in May.

You got me thinking of paragliding for some reason....

Add an electric motor and it's a solar powered UFO.

[Crossy]

Moving right along.

 

I was more than mildly surprised that my Grammar School trig. actually worked to calculate the cutting angles (nothing is at 90^o, it's a scalene triangle so you can't just use Pythagoras, you need to remember the "rule of sines" etc.) resulting in minimal gaps when welding.

 

 

For those worried about it blowing away in a breeze, each of the 6 "legs" has a 50x50x50cm cube of concrete (about 300kg each) buried in the ground.

 

The area is also pretty well shaded from horizontal winds by the house and the garden wall.

 

Now, what was that about my (ok, my step-son's) welding??  **

 

** The bolts used to hold it all in alignment before welding are not being removed, I'm not that daft!

[Muhendis]

15 hours ago, Crossy said:

For those worried about it blowing away in a breeze, each of the 6 "legs" has a 50x50x50cm cube of concrete (about 300kg each) buried in the ground.

That should anchor it well enough.

Not so exciting but definitely safe.

Looking very professional.

Will you be mounting your panels directly onto the steelwork or are you going to fit roofing sheets also?

  

[Muhendis]

15 hours ago, Crossy said:

it's a scalene triangle

Aah. Yes. The memories come flooding back.....SOH - CAH - TOA and all that.

[Crossy]

4 hours ago, Muhendis said:

That should anchor it well enough.

Not so exciting but definitely safe.

Looking very professional.

Will you be mounting your panels directly onto the steelwork or are you going to fit roofing sheets also?

  

 

Madam has decreed that it will get cheap tiles to match the existing.

 

They are small money so I will not risk my life by arguing

 

They are so cheap that if a large mango falls onto the chicken house (which has the same tiles) it will sometimes punch through!!

[Muhendis]

57 minutes ago, Crossy said:

 

Madam has decreed that it will get cheap tiles to match the existing.

 

They are small money so I will not risk my life by arguing

 

They are so cheap that if a large mango falls onto the chicken house (which has the same tiles) it will sometimes punch through!!

Made in china

Mango stuffed chicken for dinner?

[Crossy]

6 hours ago, Muhendis said:

Aah. Yes. The memories come flooding back.....SOH - CAH - TOA and all that.

 

Nearly, SOHCAHTOA, which everyone remembers, is a special instance that applies when one of the angles is 90^o (right-angle triangle), the sine and cosine rules allow you to calculate missing sides and angles for any triangle.

 

Shamelessly copied from https://thirdspacelearning.com/gcse-maths/geometry-and-measure/sine-rule/

 

 

 

In this case I knew two sides (the height of the girder thingy [measured at 0.45m] and the length of the brace [chosen as 3m to be half a 6m length of steel]) I also measured the angle between the girder and the roof joist at 95^o using my trusty combination-set.

 

I needed the other two angles to cut the brace to fit, since I was on a roll I worked out the missing side too.

 

1. Law of Cosines

We can use the Law of Cosines to find the missing side (let's call it 'a'):

a² = b² + c² - 2bc * cos(A)
Where:
a = missing side
b = 3m
c = 0.45m
A = 95 degrees

Plugging in the values:

a² = 3² + 0.45² - 2 * 3 * 0.45 * cos(95°)
a ≈ 3.07 metres

2. Law of Sines

Now we can use the Law of Sines to find the missing angles:

sin(A) / a = sin(B) / b = sin(C) / c
Let's find angle B first:

sin(95°) / 3.07 = sin(B) / 3
sin(B) ≈ 0.97
B ≈ 76.6 degrees

Finally, we can find angle C since the angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees:

C = 180° - 95° - 76.6°
C ≈ 8.4 degrees
Therefore:

The missing side is approximately 3.07 metres long.
The missing angles are approximately 76.6 degrees and 8.4 degrees.

 

Of course, I didn't actually remember all this bollocks, those cogs have long since rusted up.

Mr Google provided the WD-40  

 

EDIT In a bizarre coincidence, when I phoned my parents yesterday Mum told me they had "found" my school reports and that now was the time to embarrass me by reading them. Scary!

They also had my acceptance letter to the MOD(N) Technician Apprentice Training Scheme which is what got me to turn a hobby into a profession (I actually had visions of being a vet).

 

 

[lom]

2 hours ago, Crossy said:

1. Law of Cosines

We can use the Law of Cosines to find the missing side (let's call it 'a'):

a² = b² + c² - 2bc * cos(A)
Where:
a = missing side
b = 3m
c = 0.45m
A = 95 degrees

Plugging in the values:

a² = 3² + 0.45² - 2 * 3 * 0.45 * cos(95°)
a ≈ 3.07 metres

2. Law of Sines

Now we can use the Law of Sines to find the missing angles:

sin(A) / a = sin(B) / b = sin(C) / c
Let's find angle B first:

sin(95°) / 3.07 = sin(B) / 3
sin(B) ≈ 0.97
B ≈ 76.6 degrees

 

 

Calculated using your Faber-Castell slide ruler for engineers..?  😄

[Muhendis]

2 hours ago, Crossy said:

Nearly, SOHCAHTOA, which everyone remembers, is a special instance that applies when one of the angles is 90^o (right-angle triangle), the sine and cosine rules allow you to calculate missing sides and angles for any triangle.

Another way to resolve the triangle which wasn't bourne with a right angle, is to make lots of right angles by drawing lines perpendicular to each side and bisecting the angle opposite.

The, if you want you can sort out all the other bits

 

https://uploads-cdn.omnicalculator.com/images/height-freeform.png

I also remember my old school report.

The two things which stood out most were;

• Could have done better
• A good listener

The first bullet  point was a straight forward cut'n paste at pretty well every opportunity.

The second strange remark was from the music master. He didn't like brass bands and I just happened to be principle soloist in the national and local schools and youth brass bands at the time.