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