Making Progress

Over the past couple of days I was able to make some great progress. As I mentioned previously I am using canopy carport thing but without legs. That puts the A-frame at ground level. The section I had available fit next to the 4 propped up panels, which meant if I could salvage enough parts, I could attach all the panels to one long array. I was 3 parts short but found 2 in a junk piule of old canopy parts. I put a post on Nextdoor (a forum which has a local area near me) and sure enough, a neighbot up the road had the part I needed.

I set half the canopy up beside the A-frame and slid 4 panels against it, doing 2 a day. I have to do it near night or early morning for two reasons. There is dangerous power flowing through the panels when exposed t othe sun. Granted the 4 then 6 then 8 panels will produce hundreds of volts at 10’s of amps. There is a circuit breaker in line with them and I turn that off, but it only stops current flowing in the connected panels to the solar equipment at the house. It is still possible (though not easy) to kill yourself with just one panel. Then say that 50 volts DC flowing from one hand t o ther is enough to kill you even at low current.s Just one panel can produce 45 volts DC up to 10 amps. Even early in the morning or late in the afternoon with no direct sun on a panel, it still prodices power. I see many watts of power even before sunrise just based upon a sky with any brightness to it. The other problem requiring early morning or late afternoor  is one that is more easily explained. These panels and frames get HOT! So hot you must wear gloves to touch them, let alone carry them any distance. They also weigh just under 50 pound apiece and I find it very difficult to cary and position them by myself. Think of them as a giant piece of hot glass with a hot metal frame around them and knowing if you bump them too hard or poke them, the glass will break.

So I had all 8 panels hooked up in series and waited. The first day was pretty cloudy, but then yeaterday, full sun. I generated lots of power, in fact more power than I needed to run the house for 24 hours and charge the batteries. Remember I am only using 2 of the 3 batteries, needing to put the new battery rack in place, mount all 3 batteries in it and bring them online together.

When I get to point of moving the batteries and soon, I will have to shut down the solar converter. I can still run the hous directly off sol, but if it gets cloudy, the system, not having batteries would draw power from the utility. I might as well just throw the switches and use the utility for those few hours than to mess around. The last thing I want is to accidently get power on those battery wires before the batteries are on it and ready.

I also have watched many Youtube videos comparing wire nuts (which I have always used over the almost 60 years) to the new Wego connectors. I ordered and received a box of those and they do save space and are very easy to use compared to wire nuts.

With the Wegos you just strip the wire to size, shove it in the connector and press the clip closed.

I have a freezer downstairs near the controller and it is on an extension cord at the moment. I bought a box to mount to the wall, an outlet and cover for it. The circuit it will connect to is an existing one I ran to the kitchen on the opposite side of the wall. It connects to a meta long outlet strip which allowed multiple electric items on the counter to be separated in space from each other. Ours is not this model. I think we have 6 outlets and no on/off switch. The wire enters from behind and that is where I’ll tap in the extra outlet for the freezer which is just behind the wall from the kitchen.

All the panels will have a permanent mounting at some point but will serve me well in the meantime.

I am still making some conenctions in the main service panel/breaker box and have ordered permanent labels for the wires. I am also updating my documentation of which circuits supply what and how much curren they are drawing. I am also doing the same for the transfer switch which sits between some of those circuits and the service panel.

Right this minute I am generating 1865 watts from the solar panels, 1442 of them are charging the 2 batteries and 292 watts are powering the house. As you can see, I am running a very low house power having changed out the elctric water heater for propane and converted almost all lights to LED. At the moment, the fridge and freezer and in an low use cycle. At the moment the referator and freezer are in a low power usage but could add 200 watts to the system.  Many years ago 292 watts would have been used powering 3 bright table lamps! That is why LED bulbs are great. There are still some reasons an incandescent light bulb might have been useful. In a 100 watt incandescent bulb, only about 10% of the power is used to produce light, while the remaining 90% is dissipated as heat; meaning that the vast majority of energy used by an incandescent bulb is converted to heat, not light.

SO although it sounds as though there is a lot of work left to do, many of the items are fairly simple and at the moment I can just sit back and do each change as I have time or inclination. The freezer outlet will be fairly simple as it can remain plugged into the extension cord and the kitchen circuit that I need to cut to add the outlet can be done anytime because there is no electric usage on that circuit at this time.