How about a solar car port on a budget?

[Pink7]

1 hour ago, Crossy said:

CrossyPowerCentral has expanded somewhat with the addition of 3 more 340W panels taking us to 13.1kWp on the car-port.

 

 

Our motley collection of panels demonstrates just how widely the dimensions of panels vary. Except for the baby 100W panel on the right (which powers some of our floodlights) all those panels are 300-340W. This is one of the disadvantages of building a "bitsa" system.

 

Energy storage has also expanded, these are "Archibald" XDLP48-100 (51.2V 100Ah) LiFePO4 battery packs. Sadly, they've been in storage for at least 3 years and I'm not convinced they used new cells even then. They all measure at about 60Ah from full charge to BMS cut-off, they may improve as they balance with usage cycles.

 

 

I got these packs and a stack of other solar stuff which I'm still inventorying from the estate of a friend who sadly died last year.

 

There are inverters and a stack of panels that I'll need to clear so watch the forum for stuff becoming available.

 

Of course, with all these upgrades we are hitting the limits of our current inverters, so replacements are also on the cards.

 

EDIT Of course, life being life, this collection of stuff came up a week after I'd ordered two new 280Ah 48V packs from Shenzhen Luyuan Technology Co., Ltd.

 

All in USD3,774 for two including DDP shipping to Thailand. Saved a few hundred $$ by ordering them as kits rather than fully assembled. Amy Wan and Shenzhen Luyuan come highly recommended on other solar power forums.

 

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/14KW-48V-51-2V-280AH-Pre_1600894719244.html

 

 

 

That look to be a good deal on a good solution. Looks great!!!

 

Pink

[gamb00ler]

4 hours ago, Crossy said:

Madam has plans for enclosing (and air-conditioning) our ground level space, I'll need all the energy I can get.

I know how that feels!

 

We share our solar setup with the stepson and his wife...... they use enough A/C to operate an indoor snow ski slope.

😆😆

[Crossy]

12 minutes ago, gamb00ler said:

I know how that feels!

 

We share our solar setup with the stepson and his wife...... they use enough A/C to operate an indoor snow ski slope.

😆😆

 

We have our UK grandkids (3F, 1M all teens) here for 3 weeks (they go home on Thursday). Our normal 30kWh per day total consumption is approaching 90kWh per day!

 

We love them very much, but with their energy and food consumption we'll be on bread and water for the next couple of months.

[Pink7]

21 hours ago, Crossy said:

 

We have our UK grandkids (3F, 1M all teens) here for 3 weeks (they go home on Thursday). Our normal 30kWh per day total consumption is approaching 90kWh per day!

 

We love them very much, but with their energy and food consumption we'll be on bread and water for the next couple of months.

Until this month i been very confident on my solar power capacity, but with this heat, location of the sun (Im getting max 6000kwh now, 5-6 months ago 7000kwh was max) and school off so kids AC running in daytime also Im might a bit in the short side.

 

Pink

[Crossy]

These really need to be on the roof, but no space, yet!

 

[Pink7]

4 minutes ago, Crossy said:

These really need to be on the roof, but no space, yet!

 

Thats allot of solar capacity !!! You will built some kind of rack for it? Whats your plans for inverter for this?

 

Pink

[Muhendis]

29 minutes ago, Pink7 said:

Until this month i been very confident on my solar power capacity, but with this heat, location of the sun (Im getting max 6000kwh now, 5-6 months ago 7000kwh was max) and school off so kids AC running in daytime also Im might a bit in the short side.

 

Pink

Don't forget to factor in the temperature coefficient. It's  -3.5mV/cell/°C from 25ºC. Also note that is not an ambient temperature but rather the temperature of the cell.

Each cell produces nominally 0.58V off load at 25ºC so for example, at 35ºC the cell voltage would be 0.58V - (0.0035 x 10) = 0.545V.

The caveat is the assumption that you are using P type panels. If you were to use N type panels the losses would be -3mV/cell/ºC.

[Muhendis]

36 minutes ago, Crossy said:

These really need to be on the roof, but no space, yet!

I should think you'd need some of your neighbours roof for that lot too.

Are you thinking of selling power by any chance? 🙂

Edited April 15 by Muhendis

[Crossy]

1 hour ago, Pink7 said:

Thats allot of solar capacity !!! You will built some kind of rack for it? Whats your plans for inverter for this?

 

Not certain yet, we certainly need an inverter upgrade looking possibly at 3 x  Deye SUN-5k-SG05LP1-EU 

 

https://www.lazada.co.th//products/i4978816678-s20977309094.html

 

Plus a major upgrade of the ESS arrangements.

 

[Pink7]

5 minutes ago, Crossy said:

 

Not certain yet, we certainly need an inverter upgrade looking possibly at 3 x  Deye SUN-5k-SG05LP1-EU 

 

https://www.lazada.co.th//products/i4978816678-s20977309094.html

 

Plus a major upgrade of the ESS arrangements.

 

Great inverter.

 

When you expect to get your battery deal delivered?

 

Pink

[Crossy]

Current thought experiment.

 

 

The 6 panels at the top are installed and working.

The 6 at the bottom should be done and working this week.

 

The additional 28 need some planning (how to support where the columns won't get hit).

 

All good fun.

[Pink7]

4 minutes ago, Crossy said:

Current thought experiment.

 

 

The 6 panels at the top are installed and working.

The 6 at the bottom should be done and working this week.

 

The additional 28 need some planning (how to support where the columns won't get hit).

 

All good fun.

How many total watt solarpanel when all up?

 

 

Pink

[Crossy]

3 minutes ago, Pink7 said:

How many total watt solarpanel when all up?

 

Just under 25kWp

[Crossy]

2 hours ago, Pink7 said:

When you expect to get your battery deal delivered?

 

It's on a slow boat to from China.

[Pink7]

49 minutes ago, Crossy said:

 

It's on a slow boat to from China.

With so good deal its worth the wait!

 

Pink

[Crossy]

On 4/15/2024 at 6:49 PM, Pink7 said:

With so good deal its worth the wait!

 

Being delivered today, probably came by train rather than boat.

 

A minor bump in the road to storage delight.

 

The logistics company called last evening "do we have a forklift?". The kit is in 18 boxes, but regulations required that these be packed in a wooden crate, total weight 250kg!

 

They were less than delighted when we said "No forklift".

Their happiness factor increased significantly when we said "But we'll unpack the box on the truck".

[Muhendis]

5 hours ago, Crossy said:

 

Being delivered today, probably came by train rather than boat.

 

A minor bump in the road to storage delight.

 

The logistics company called last evening "do we have a forklift?". The kit is in 18 boxes, but regulations required that these be packed in a wooden crate, total weight 250kg!

 

They were less than delighted when we said "No forklift".

Their happiness factor increased significantly when we said "But we'll unpack the box on the truck".

Yeah.

I had some similar excitement with my battery delivery.

They were all on a single pallet and came in at a whopping 940 kg.

I used a local courier from Bangkok to Buriram where I knew they had a forkin' lift.

They fitted in the back of my Izusu 4x4 very well when I went and collected them.

Downside is It cost 1k Baht to get them to the Bangkok depot from the Bangkok port warehouse.

[Crossy]

In the end we manhandled the box from their pickup into ours so we could unpack at our leisure.

 

 

 

 

 

[Crossy]

Meanwhile we installed the last 6 panels that will fit on the car-port.

 

[Pink7]

Nice progress. Waiting to see more on your battery building.. Quite a upgrade you are on.

 

Pink

[Crossy]

29 minutes ago, Pink7 said:

Nice progress. Waiting to see more on your battery building.. Quite a upgrade you are on.

 

Luyuan have an assembly video for their kits (complete with cheesy music). 

 

 

[Crossy]

This is what 28kWh of DIY solar storage looks like.

 

That's 16 series sets of 2x280Ah cells in parallel (2P16S) for 48V x 560Ah.

 

The empty space top left with the small burn mark is where my 5A "flying-capacitor" active balancer was until it emitted the Magic-Smoke. New unit on order.

 

[Muhendis]

40 minutes ago, Crossy said:

The empty space top left with the small burn mark is where my 5A "flying-capacitor" active balancer was until it emitted the Magic-Smoke. New unit on order.

Those balancers can be a fire hazard if not fused.

Been there.

Done that.

Extinguished the fire and replaced the nearest battery.

[Crossy]

That's not a breaker.

 

THIS is a breaker!

 

The 250A DC MCCB which I intend using as an overall battery isolator sitting next to one of the more regular MCBs we find in our homes!

 

[lom]

59 minutes ago, Crossy said:

THIS is a breaker!

I tend to agree about that. 😀

[Crossy]

Here we are, May 1st. April figures.

 

Potentially confusing as we are in the throes of an upgrade expanding to 13.1kWP on 14-April then further expanding to 15.3kWP on 22-April. That's it for panel expansion for now, got to sort out storage and new inverters next. 

 

EDIT According to PEA's bill estimator the 1,392kWh our solar created out of thin air would be worth 6,962Baht.

 

 

 

[Crossy]

UK grandkids were here for 3 weeks in April which also skewed the PEA consumption by increasing our daily usage "somewhat", it's also been hot, hot, hot.

 

In a normal month we would have easily covered everything using solar.

 

[carlyai]

Bloody kids. 🙂

[Crossy]

27 minutes ago, carlyai said:

Bloody kids. 🙂

 

Love 'em to bits, but this is the single best photo I took whilst they were here.

 

 

That's the back end of the van taking them to the airport 

 

[Crossy]

Hernia anyone??

 

Those Liyuan 280Ah x 48V battery packs are about 110kg each!

 

No, I didn't lift them in!

 

We just happened to have a couple of Thai labourers re-building (actually knocking down) our damaged retaining wall. A hundred Baht each (probably about 30% of their day rate for demolishing the wall) and they were more than happy to oblige.