3 Phase Solar Installation

[carlyai]

Anyone installed 3 phase solar?

I'm still tossing up whether to do this myself as a project or get an installer.

I would like to contact people who I could get advice off.

I know there are people on the Electrical Forum who always help, but would be good to contact others on this forum who have DIYed it. Thanks.

[KhunLA]

Had 1 phase installed, so really can't help much, but would recommend, if looking to sell back to PEA/MEA, in the future, then make sure you use one of 'their approved' inverters.   The 3 phase Deye 10 & 12kW hybrid, I think, is on their list, so maybe consider.

 

One of the updated lists of approved inverters 

 

[tuk75]

Maybe this from Deye can give some ideas

[carlyai]

If you were installing 3 phase solar, would you go for 1 x 3 phase inverter, or 3 x 1 phase inverters.

I do have 2   3 phase water heaters but I don't have any 3   phase motors, so was thinking the phase difference would not be important.

[lom]

3 hours ago, carlyai said:

If you were installing 3 phase solar, would you go for 1 x 3 phase inverter, or 3 x 1 phase inverters.

That is a tricky question. I have a single 3-phase 12KW Deye inverter and there are times I wish I had bought three 1-phase inverters instead but I don't have the space for 3.. I do sometimes have a high load on one phase causing the inverter to trip (reset , restart after 30 seconds) if I run it completely off-grid. So I have instead to run it with grid-assist. You will probably not be affected by that if your water heater is 3-phase. It is also better for redundancy to have three 1-phase inverters instead of one 3-phase inverter.

If one of three 1-hase inverters breaks down then you still have the other two phases powered by solar..

[Crossy]

14 minutes ago, lom said:

If one of three 1-hase inverters breaks down then you still have the other two phases powered by solar..

 

This would be my thinking too.

 

We are only single-phase but are running 3 x Deye 5kW hybrids. Water heaters are on the grid side of the inverters so I can run them purely on-grid or via the grid-tie (zero-export) inverter function. Just open one breaker and everything except the heaters is off-grid.