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I have achieved solar power (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

praise the sun \o/

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

If you’ve got multiple panels and are looking to squeeze more out of the panels (maybe +30%?) in the future, it might be worth switching to an MPPT solar charge controller (your current one seems to be PWM). Congrats on getting it running.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

and it would have been only $8 more to buy the mppt version of the same controller I got... oh well, lessons for next time.

[+] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Panels $116 for two, I bought four

For the wiring you need to connect the panels together $36 for three pairs (if you're doing them in parallel like I am, you can skip this step if you design your setup in series and just connect the panels to each other directly)

You'll need an inverter to plug stuff into $41

A battery if you want to save and use electricity at night $190

A controller $12 I bought the cheapest one I could find

The rack $120 I could have made this out of wood for cheaper

Battery to Controller cable $10

Battery to Inverter cable $12

Panels to Controller cable $17

so $640 plus shipping if you buy from Amazon, but a lot of these things can be found in home improvement stores too so maybe shopping around can save you some cash.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You may also want a fuse (in a fuse holder) between the inverter and your battery for added protection against a short circuit (some batteries don’t protect themselves against this). The fuse holder I have is “Blue Sea Systems 5005 ANL Fuse Block“ but there’s a bunch of cheaper ones that look similar.

It’s also a good idea to get a DC circuit breaker between the panels and the charge controller to easily be able to disconnect the solar panels to work on the rest of the system (or if there’s a problem). I got one of these: “DC Miniature Circuit Breaker, 2 Pole 1000V 25 Amp Isolator for Solar PV System” and it has the brand “Chtaxi” on it

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

you might be able to get most of that stuff off aliexpress for cheaper, I've been looking into trying this, but the high cost of the battery puts me off (too expensive to ship from aliexpress/China, so you have to buy local or off amazon for more $$).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Yeah that battery hurt, and it's not even particularly large! It's also heavy as hell to lug around.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

but does it connect to your house or.. you just have to plug things into this?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Would have to plug things into the inverter. There are microinverters that basically allow you to plug panels into your house though (by syncing with the frequency of the power you’re getting from the grid). They’re much more expensive than this, and I think you’re not supposed to use those in the US unless you go through some sort of approval process. It’s becoming more popular in Germany for people to use microinverters for solar panels on stuff like apartment balconies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I see.. well its nice to have free power anyway

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How many watts do you get from that?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It’s 400w worth of panels for ~$200. These are newer bifacial panels, so in theory you can get even more than that with the light that hits the back of the panel. Getting around 400w is still like best case scenario on the brighter summer day though. Shade and time of year matter a lot. If you’ve got just one panel covered with just a single leaf - it’ll probably take that panel’s output down to <%20. You won’t see much output during winter or cloudy/rainy days either.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

You may wanna check the power output of the charger in full sunlight conditions, those chargers are usually far from optimal and their specs are many times overstated in the manuals.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Uh the sun is woke DEI.