its totally possible, just requires a bit more than the normal. eventually i want to add a small pico hydro set up as a helper on those long stretches of cloudy days, 100 or 200 watts would go a long way to stretching our battery.
I have some of my panels facing different directions.to take advantage of sunlight coming from different directions during the day. I like to get my system charged back up as fast as possible in the morning so that orientation is very important to me. As well, I like to have the late afternoon angle covered by another set of panels to top things up as long as possible before the sun sets. During the main part of the day, I find I have an excess of power coming in compared to what I use. Often, my overcast days can end up giving me more overall power due to the diffuse scattered light (due to shading and other factors). I would be inclined to modify your arrangement to take advantage of the morning and late afternoon sun you mentioned. Thanks for the video.
yes, thats exactly what i was thinking of doing, get that first light when the battery may be low and keep off the battery and on sunset as long as possible effectively making the battery last longer. thanks for the comment!
I was thinking of doing the same thing. How do you handle having multiple strings in that regard? Is there a way to use a combiner box to pull the different strings or do I need to buy another inverter to handle this?
Have you thought of putting the panel array on a strong, flat steel frame and pivoting it from the center like a see-saw? If you balance it, it would be very easy to tilt throughout the day to get an optimal angle
yes, but that becomes a significant engineering feat to carry and move that much weight, and then add in enough structure to handle the ocasional crazy wind burst. auto tracking mounts used to be more common before panel prices came down, but on a pure cost basis its cheaper to use a simple fixed mount and add more panels.
with the charger /inverter problem there is an option that allows you to accept a wider frequency so the inverter can match the wave form better coming from the generator. i think thats where you should look. if you can get a small Oscilloscope to look at the wave form that could give you an insight to what is happening paid 50USD for one and it works
what about adding a few bifacial solar panels in vertical mount? while researching for a hopeful future build it seems to pick up great in morning and evening with a wave of power thru the day.
it is possible, some say it does well. They werent available for less than 300 each 3 years ago when i had to buy them though. better build a strong mount for wind, here we get an occasional weird sudden burst from different directions (mountains) and sometimes people lose their roofs.
Two things: 1. I would bet that rewiring your panels for higher voltage and using an MPPT charge controller would work wonders for your system. The max power point voltage of a panel shifts depending on sun and temperature and even if it didn't, your batteries need the most charge when their voltage is lower, which drags down the panel voltage well below their max power point. In addition the higher panel system voltage means that in low light and each panel has lower voltage, the voltage can still be high enough to charge the batteries. I'd consider wiring for 2x or more the battery voltage, but the design depends on the actual open circuit voltage of the panels and your chosen MPPT controller. In general a higher voltage is better, unless you experience a lot of partial shading. 2. Your inverter failing to sync to the generator is likely because when it tries (relays click) connecting to the generator, the voltage and/or waveform and/or frequency supplied by the generator drops out of tolerance. If not already disabling eco mode on that honda, try that. Also look for settings in the inverter to increase its tolerance to frequency or voltage window.
For the generator, also try setting the maximum allowed amps via ACin, because if the Inverter takes too much the frequency and voltages of the Gen drop too much
if the sun is out, the system charges well and batteries are full by 11am, but we have had a crazy el nina year, and its not just us, the major fruit crops have been drastically affected and many failed. battery voltage sits between 26 and 27 mostly all the time (middle 50 percent of battery capacity) when i say clouds, i dont mean fluffly things in the sky, i mean i cant see the other side of my property. we are in the mountains, so it becomes a mix of dense fog cloud combo. i tested it with my photography light meter, theres just nothing there to pick up much of the time, so my answer is to add more panels to get a 1hr recharge time. its just the place we picked. the gen is set eco off, fulll rpm, is only switching a few hundred watts, inverter set to slowly increase load. ive checked the gen output and its dead on120v 60hz. i set the inverter settings wide to allow for down to 90-130v, and 3hz variance. its really just moody. and not repeatably so. if i do a full reset, it will pick up the gen even at high transferred loads the first try every time. so that affects it but nothing else seems to. chris
I totally agree on the MPPT. I wouldn't add any new panels to the system until you have upgraded with MPPTs. The theoretical maximum power production is fairly irrelevant when it comes to keeping your batteries charged. You should focus on getting more power at suboptimal conditions to keep your batteries charged at critical times. From what I've seen you have 18x 250 Wp panels = 4,500 Wp. With a 24 V battery that is about 188 A. Off grid you should oversize about 50% (especially when using expensive MPPTs) since the goal is to keep the batteries charged in suboptimal conditions. As an example, when looking at Victron MPPTs, I think the best option is to make 3 strings of 6 panels, connect 2 strings to a 250 V, 100 A MPPT and 1 string to a 250 V, 60 A MPPT. That reduces your maximum power output to (100+60A) x 24V= 3,840 Wp. An 85 A MPPT would be ok instead of the 100 A one, but the price difference is so small, you might as well buy the 100 A one. The voltage cut-off for the Victron MPPTs is 30 V. With six panels in series, each panel only has to produce 5 Volts for your battery to get charged, while currently the panel voltage would have to match the battery voltage (~24 V). Now that is just an example. The Victron MPPTs are so expensive that it isn't really worth it in your situation. Buy a couple of affordable MPPTs to get most of the benefit at a fraction of the cost.
Unfortunately I don't have an MPPT and am committed to the system we have. And it works well when there is any sun anywhere in the sky. There is currently only 16 panels functional and I'm going to add 3 more and bring the other two on line. So I'll go from 16 to 21. And change their angles because sometimes there is excellent sun but only for part of the day. hopefully then i can recharge our batteries in an hour and a half of decent sun per day.
Hey mate, I’m doing an off grid system in rural Western Australia. Not sure how ur panels are connected. Any shade greatly reduces voltage in a Series connection - even 1 leaf drops voltage hugely due to the “daisy chain” connection. Shade doesn’t affect parallel in the same way due to each panel operating “independently” Southern hemisphere has better irradiation in the morning, northern in the afternoon. For your Quattro to work efficiently then maybe try placing as many panels you can squeeze in an unshaded series connection to meet its upper operating voltage consistently. And then with the rest run them parallel so that it can push amps through with the unshaded panels in the series connection.
thanks! The panels are in full parallel configuration though, thats how the electrodacus system works. i do have an afternoon tree shade this time of year, i might need to remove it. i have a big update video coming soon, i have changed it quite a bit.
The reason your getting such low wattage when the sun is at a steep angle is because your panels are not setup in series to provide enough voltage to compensate. Setting up your panels to match your battery voltage is not a good idea. You really should get yourself an MPPT controller and max out the voltage with your panels in series/parallel.
Today was sunny and I got 5 hours of full output from the panels into the battery, which was drained from days of cloudiness. And that included me doing a bunch of welding. Others have done side by side comparisons and have found very similar results, so that's what we went with and that's what we have. There are multiple ways of doing things.
You know anything over 5000 watts you need a resistor to slow down the surge! I don’t know if they sent one with the inverter or not? It looks like an extrusion metal, with connectors to both positive and negative, and also a small positive wire to the inverter. This is to turn on the mini electronic board on the extrusion resistor.
Huh, nope not included nor did i see that in the instructions. i have one on my battery main switch for preloading the inverter to not spark the switch, i think i even have a spare. do you have a link to where its referenced?
@@tinyhandsbigdreams Call Battle Born Batteries, that’s where I bought mine. Just inform them that you heard that anything over 4500 W needs a surge resistor for the Victron inverter. I’m sure they’ll know what you mean.
So really quick takes on the victron equipment. 1. the relay problem with the quattro is probably that the quattro tries to take more than the generator is rated and then the voltage and frequency of the genny Drops and the victron disconnects, try set a Max Amps AC in to a lower value 2. panels: The thing with the panels, im almost certain you have so little power because your panels are always in a short circuit, the LFP batterys have so little internal resistance that you are always in a short circuit and not even closely getting the potential power from them, get a victron mppt, just a small one, it will make a huge difference. The mppt will truely keep your Pavels at max Power Point and charge your panels. But you’ll need to rewire your panels
We have one mppt in Europe so way south with around 8kwp, we generate with lots of clouds and rain around 15-25kwh per day, potentially more because the battery is full too early. Right now similar clots clouds to your weather, putting out 1,2kw, with sun doesent matter which direction the sun shines
The panels probably would pick up the sun if you would have a mppt, and I’m pretty sure you are damaging you battery with uncontrollably charging the battery like this.
i set the max load on the quattro gen input line to 5 amps less than the gen max, it is doing the weak gen soft start, and its only transferring a few hundred watts of load. the gen is also set to full rpm and has no drop when connecting, which only switches the load and then slowly loads in battery charging. i just cant figure out why it will do it 6 times in a row, or just work fine irrespective of load. but if i do a power off reset, it picks up every time regardless of load. drives me nuts. if you have any changes i could try, id be appreciative. The panels make full rated power when they get full sun, its not that the system isnt working in that regard, but its been a year of little sun. mango harvests didnt happen, watermelon crops failed, other crops matured 4 months late. the news says its a strong la nina... people have run side by side tests with the electrodacus and a MPPT, and it does well if matched up riight. i ran tests with panels and fixed resistance heater coils (load dumping hot water project) and with dead shorting the panels into the elements i was able to pull the panels rated output, as witnessed by an ammeter. Not that MPPT controllers arent great, but a well matched system can get by without them, at least with lithium batteries. chris
the entire point of the electrodacus project is to do so without a charger, and its been proven to work well. there a lot on his page and even more on the google group discussion. its a cool system, but a different take than traditional for sure. as far as damaging batteries, nope, they get charged up at the maximum available to to the limit set at .5c (which i never get close to). there s nothing uncontrolled about it. I did have some wonderful conversations with an incredibly intelligent engineer who worked with the engineers at the big chinese battery manufacturers and they said the common thing they were discovering was the LifePo4 was best charged as fast as possible and then ended rather than left to trickle or float. chris
With the low cost of electricity in Ecuador, how long do you think it will take to break even on all of that equipment compared to just buying from the grid?
Personally considering solar as back up/supplemental to grid power. Or, maybe hydro, depending on the property I get. But I'm about a decade out or so. A long time, I would think. But, they get to live off grid.
its about 7 years by my best calculations. but thats not a fair number. the real number is comparing available power sources and thier price per kwh, in our case the next available power is a generator and that gets much pricier and with pollution and noise i dont want. we are quite a ways froma power line and want to keep it that way, we enjoy having no neighbors. compared to that the break even is closer to 3 or 4 years, but as i sit here watching the sun come up over the mountain and the birds singing in the trees, i cant fathom having to have a generator running all the time.
@@tinyhandsbigdreams Yep, wasn't suggesting a generator. I was just curious if solar is economically viable in Ecuador even if you have grid power available. Did you happen to get a price for running grid power to your property?
grid power is cheap here, its true. at 8kwh per day, our equivilancy point is 20 years. Funny enough, it was offered to run the poles and wires all the way to us for free. Not sure the price, but is wildly cheaper than the US. problem was they were going to be high voltage lines which is problematic for us for 2 reasons. 1, it means neighbors would be more likely (we enjoy our own little valley), and 2 is my wife had her arm nerves badly damaged by a shit doctor in washington state, making her have a life of pain and the arm is now crazy sensitive to EMF fields. Driving under them can make her arm go rigid for a week and cause other issues. We figured out 120v was the most we could have here and the only way to guarantee that was to do it ourselves.
If you live in an area with cheap grid power, I would only recommend a backup system with inverter/charger and batteries only(no solar panels). Use the grid to charge the batteries when grid power is back.
Check the voltage on all the panels, in case its lower on one and that that is pulling the rest down. Maybe use a DC to DC converter to up the voltage on a weaker string to get more usage out of it.
interesting. the inverter is grounded to earth, and the generator being a portable non hard wired unit bonds with the extension cord. or so i thought. its also crazy intermittent and the only time it does anything predictable with charging is after i power cycle it and then it works every time. are you thinking i should disconnect the ground?
@@tinyhandsbigdreams might have to find out that the main breaker is also grounded. If so then decide which should be the ground point. In DC might not matter much but in AC it does Onr main ground point that everything is bonded to neutral and no ground bar from the neutral bar
If your generator is putting out a modified sine wave then the gen port could have issues with the generator. This is a problem on some of the best Chinese inverters. The solution is to connect your generator to the AC/shorepower port. That input is somehow more forgiving. Good luck.....
The Honda is supposed to have a true sine wave output. i could switch it to the other input and see if that helps, but lately it's been working just fine. Intermittent problems are the worst!
I’ve been running a Victron Quattro for over 15 years now and it’s been faultless. It’s a shame about the damage caused by shipping but I wonder how other LF inverters would have fared. If you’re having problems with the generator, perhaps you could try a non inverter type generator with an AVR as inverter type generators are not recommended by Victron. Also have you got “weak A/C” selected on the inverter?
yes, they have a good rep which is why i got it. Its a weird intermittent fault but if i do a reset on it then it works just fine so i dont think its the gen. i do have weak gen helper installed, and also set it to force to float as it stopped charging reliably without it. since it goes away on reset i wonder if it isnt some stray static charge building up on a circuit or chip. problem is its critical and i just cant remove it and send it away for many weeks.
@@tinyhandsbigdreams perhaps there is more damage from the rough transit. Inside, there are some Integrated Circuits mounted in sockets, perhaps one has been dislodged?
Possibly. I did a thorough inspection and found nothing seemingly damaged or loose, except for the transformers. While it is possible it is damaged, it also sometimes works totally fine for now apparent reason. Intermittent problems are the worst.
@@tinyhandsbigdreams Why did you pick a quatro? They are designed for grid installs with mains and generator backup. The multiplus would have been fine. I wonder if you have the generator connected the mains input and the relay test is failing looking for grid conditions. If you want to get another system you can and set it up as mains input in the quatro and have 2 completely different systems running with hardware you want to test.
You must get hybrid inverter- charger inverter, makes life easier. It controls solar panels, and battery. After the battery fully charged it provides power from solar straight to your house loads and connects battery back only when solar energy is not enough or it is just already dark outside
Just MPPTs for charging the battery would do way better, the LFP packs have little to no resistance which means your panels are constantly in short circuit, put in a small victron mppt and let it charge your panels, youll ranp up your production way more
@@tinyhandsbigdreams Ok I have just gone down the biggest autistic rabbit hole, I dont remember what you have your voltage at but, I would recommend a 48V, I think thats what you said but I cant remember. There are 2 major chinese designers/ makers out there in the all in one market space SRNE and Voltronic. I know they make whitelable systems that other companies slap their name on, and then there are the knock off clones that are probably made by the whitelable lines or overruns from their suppliers who supply them. Right now the eg4 are popular because its really easy to run them parallel for split phase or daisy chained for increased capacity (that one is a SRNE) and MPP has a similar voltronic based design those are the 2 good ones that are sub $1000usd. There is a serious jump in quality and cost for the next tier but at that point... sigh victron. If it was something that is the difference between life and death I would do a component system using outback, midnite solar, morning star... there are MANY good manufacturers these days. BUT I would absolutely keep an AIO as and emergency spare as you could use it to replace any single broken component in your system with it. The problem with an aio if you are relying on it for life then you need 2 AIO a main AND a back up one as well. If one part goes it can take down your entire system. I get why a lot of people go victron its like the early days of mac when steve jobs was alive , you just plugged things in and they just worked. Tiny shiny home youtube channel has a great video about protecting your system from lightning definitely worth a watch.
wow I pay 70$ for 450W Panels here in Switzerland which is almost double the power and new. 250W Panels should not be more than 25$ nowadys, especially used ones. Always overpanel to the max the mppt spec is allowing FOR FREEZING weather condition. This gives you more power on cloudy days, you will loos some on full power but you have to plan for cloudy rainy days.
I was about to say it, i bought new panels with double the power for that price. @tinyHandsbigdreams i think those new panels have also a drastically better performance in part-shade and indirect light
wow, i never saw them at that price, the lowest i have seen is bulk pricing at .25$ a watt, and they werent great panels. originally i designed our system for a place 4 hours from here with different weather, but the local microclimate here is much more clouds. i am in process of adding more.
when i bought these (3 years ago) they were the best deal i could find. i do have friends that ask for what to buy, if you have a link i could forward it to them. chris
This is very interesting. Thanks. It's good to know it's possible in those cloudier areas. It's not a topic I've ever seen anyone talk about
its totally possible, just requires a bit more than the normal. eventually i want to add a small pico hydro set up as a helper on those long stretches of cloudy days, 100 or 200 watts would go a long way to stretching our battery.
I have some of my panels facing different directions.to take advantage of sunlight coming from different directions during the day. I like to get my system charged back up as fast as possible in the morning so that orientation is very important to me. As well, I like to have the late afternoon angle covered by another set of panels to top things up as long as possible before the sun sets. During the main part of the day, I find I have an excess of power coming in compared to what I use. Often, my overcast days can end up giving me more overall power due to the diffuse scattered light (due to shading and other factors). I would be inclined to modify your arrangement to take advantage of the morning and late afternoon sun you mentioned. Thanks for the video.
yes, thats exactly what i was thinking of doing, get that first light when the battery may be low and keep off the battery and on sunset as long as possible effectively making the battery last longer. thanks for the comment!
I was thinking of doing the same thing. How do you handle having multiple strings in that regard? Is there a way to use a combiner box to pull the different strings or do I need to buy another inverter to handle this?
Good info.
Have you thought of putting the panel array on a strong, flat steel frame and pivoting it from the center like a see-saw? If you balance it, it would be very easy to tilt throughout the day to get an optimal angle
yes, but that becomes a significant engineering feat to carry and move that much weight, and then add in enough structure to handle the ocasional crazy wind burst. auto tracking mounts used to be more common before panel prices came down, but on a pure cost basis its cheaper to use a simple fixed mount and add more panels.
with the charger /inverter problem there is an option that allows you to accept a wider frequency so the inverter can match the wave form better coming from the generator. i think thats where you should look. if you can get a small Oscilloscope to look at the wave form that could give you an insight to what is happening paid 50USD for one and it works
Yes, that's enabled. Didn't help.
what about adding a few bifacial solar panels in vertical mount? while researching for a hopeful future build it seems to pick up great in morning and evening with a wave of power thru the day.
it is possible, some say it does well. They werent available for less than 300 each 3 years ago when i had to buy them though. better build a strong mount for wind, here we get an occasional weird sudden burst from different directions (mountains) and sometimes people lose their roofs.
great thanks. trying to pencil out cost?
sure, what costs were you thinking?
Two things:
1. I would bet that rewiring your panels for higher voltage and using an MPPT charge controller would work wonders for your system. The max power point voltage of a panel shifts depending on sun and temperature and even if it didn't, your batteries need the most charge when their voltage is lower, which drags down the panel voltage well below their max power point. In addition the higher panel system voltage means that in low light and each panel has lower voltage, the voltage can still be high enough to charge the batteries. I'd consider wiring for 2x or more the battery voltage, but the design depends on the actual open circuit voltage of the panels and your chosen MPPT controller. In general a higher voltage is better, unless you experience a lot of partial shading.
2. Your inverter failing to sync to the generator is likely because when it tries (relays click) connecting to the generator, the voltage and/or waveform and/or frequency supplied by the generator drops out of tolerance. If not already disabling eco mode on that honda, try that. Also look for settings in the inverter to increase its tolerance to frequency or voltage window.
For the generator, also try setting the maximum allowed amps via ACin, because if the Inverter takes too much the frequency and voltages of the Gen drop too much
if the sun is out, the system charges well and batteries are full by 11am, but we have had a crazy el nina year, and its not just us, the major fruit crops have been drastically affected and many failed. battery voltage sits between 26 and 27 mostly all the time (middle 50 percent of battery capacity)
when i say clouds, i dont mean fluffly things in the sky, i mean i cant see the other side of my property. we are in the mountains, so it becomes a mix of dense fog cloud combo. i tested it with my photography light meter, theres just nothing there to pick up much of the time, so my answer is to add more panels to get a 1hr recharge time. its just the place we picked.
the gen is set eco off, fulll rpm, is only switching a few hundred watts, inverter set to slowly increase load. ive checked the gen output and its dead on120v 60hz. i set the inverter settings wide to allow for down to 90-130v, and 3hz variance. its really just moody. and not repeatably so. if i do a full reset, it will pick up the gen even at high transferred loads the first try every time. so that affects it but nothing else seems to.
chris
its set at 1500 watts line in max, and weak gen helper is on.
I totally agree on the MPPT.
I wouldn't add any new panels to the system until you have upgraded with MPPTs. The theoretical maximum power production is fairly irrelevant when it comes to keeping your batteries charged. You should focus on getting more power at suboptimal conditions to keep your batteries charged at critical times.
From what I've seen you have 18x 250 Wp panels = 4,500 Wp. With a 24 V battery that is about 188 A. Off grid you should oversize about 50% (especially when using expensive MPPTs) since the goal is to keep the batteries charged in suboptimal conditions. As an example, when looking at Victron MPPTs, I think the best option is to make 3 strings of 6 panels, connect 2 strings to a 250 V, 100 A MPPT and 1 string to a 250 V, 60 A MPPT. That reduces your maximum power output to (100+60A) x 24V= 3,840 Wp. An 85 A MPPT would be ok instead of the 100 A one, but the price difference is so small, you might as well buy the 100 A one.
The voltage cut-off for the Victron MPPTs is 30 V. With six panels in series, each panel only has to produce 5 Volts for your battery to get charged, while currently the panel voltage would have to match the battery voltage (~24 V).
Now that is just an example. The Victron MPPTs are so expensive that it isn't really worth it in your situation. Buy a couple of affordable MPPTs to get most of the benefit at a fraction of the cost.
Unfortunately I don't have an MPPT and am committed to the system we have. And it works well when there is any sun anywhere in the sky. There is currently only 16 panels functional and I'm going to add 3 more and bring the other two on line. So I'll go from 16 to 21. And change their angles because sometimes there is excellent sun but only for part of the day. hopefully then i can recharge our batteries in an hour and a half of decent sun per day.
Hey mate, I’m doing an off grid system in rural Western Australia. Not sure how ur panels are connected.
Any shade greatly reduces voltage in a Series connection - even 1 leaf drops voltage hugely due to the “daisy chain” connection.
Shade doesn’t affect parallel in the same way due to each panel operating “independently”
Southern hemisphere has better irradiation in the morning, northern in the afternoon.
For your Quattro to work efficiently then maybe try placing as many panels you can squeeze in an unshaded series connection to meet its upper operating voltage consistently. And then with the rest run them parallel so that it can push amps through with the unshaded panels in the series connection.
thanks! The panels are in full parallel configuration though, thats how the electrodacus system works. i do have an afternoon tree shade this time of year, i might need to remove it. i have a big update video coming soon, i have changed it quite a bit.
The reason your getting such low wattage when the sun is at a steep angle is because your panels are not setup in series to provide enough voltage to compensate. Setting up your panels to match your battery voltage is not a good idea. You really should get yourself an MPPT controller and max out the voltage with your panels in series/parallel.
Today was sunny and I got 5 hours of full output from the panels into the battery, which was drained from days of cloudiness. And that included me doing a bunch of welding. Others have done side by side comparisons and have found very similar results, so that's what we went with and that's what we have. There are multiple ways of doing things.
You know anything over 5000 watts you need a resistor to slow down the surge! I don’t know if they sent one with the inverter or not?
It looks like an extrusion metal, with connectors to both positive and negative, and also a small positive wire to the inverter. This is to turn on the mini electronic board on the extrusion resistor.
Huh, nope not included nor did i see that in the instructions. i have one on my battery main switch for preloading the inverter to not spark the switch, i think i even have a spare. do you have a link to where its referenced?
@@tinyhandsbigdreams
Call Battle Born Batteries, that’s where I bought mine. Just inform them that you heard that anything over 4500 W needs a surge resistor for the Victron inverter. I’m sure they’ll know what you mean.
Cool, thanks, I'll do that.
So really quick takes on the victron equipment.
1. the relay problem with the quattro is probably that the quattro tries to take more than the generator is rated and then the voltage and frequency of the genny Drops and the victron disconnects, try set a Max Amps AC in to a lower value
2. panels: The thing with the panels, im almost certain you have so little power because your panels are always in a short circuit, the LFP batterys have so little internal resistance that you are always in a short circuit and not even closely getting the potential power from them, get a victron mppt, just a small one, it will make a huge difference. The mppt will truely keep your Pavels at max Power Point and charge your panels. But you’ll need to rewire your panels
We have one mppt in Europe so way south with around 8kwp, we generate with lots of clouds and rain around 15-25kwh per day, potentially more because the battery is full too early. Right now similar clots clouds to your weather, putting out 1,2kw, with sun doesent matter which direction the sun shines
The panels probably would pick up the sun if you would have a mppt, and I’m pretty sure you are damaging you battery with uncontrollably charging the battery like this.
i set the max load on the quattro gen input line to 5 amps less than the gen max, it is doing the weak gen soft start, and its only transferring a few hundred watts of load. the gen is also set to full rpm and has no drop when connecting, which only switches the load and then slowly loads in battery charging. i just cant figure out why it will do it 6 times in a row, or just work fine irrespective of load. but if i do a power off reset, it picks up every time regardless of load. drives me nuts. if you have any changes i could try, id be appreciative.
The panels make full rated power when they get full sun, its not that the system isnt working in that regard, but its been a year of little sun. mango harvests didnt happen, watermelon crops failed, other crops matured 4 months late. the news says its a strong la nina... people have run side by side tests with the electrodacus and a MPPT, and it does well if matched up riight.
i ran tests with panels and fixed resistance heater coils (load dumping hot water project) and with dead shorting the panels into the elements i was able to pull the panels rated output, as witnessed by an ammeter. Not that MPPT controllers arent great, but a well matched system can get by without them, at least with lithium batteries.
chris
the entire point of the electrodacus project is to do so without a charger, and its been proven to work well. there a lot on his page and even more on the google group discussion. its a cool system, but a different take than traditional for sure.
as far as damaging batteries, nope, they get charged up at the maximum available to to the limit set at .5c (which i never get close to). there s nothing uncontrolled about it. I did have some wonderful conversations with an incredibly intelligent engineer who worked with the engineers at the big chinese battery manufacturers and they said the common thing they were discovering was the LifePo4 was best charged as fast as possible and then ended rather than left to trickle or float.
chris
With the low cost of electricity in Ecuador, how long do you think it will take to break even on all of that equipment compared to just buying from the grid?
Personally considering solar as back up/supplemental to grid power. Or, maybe hydro, depending on the property I get. But I'm about a decade out or so. A long time, I would think. But, they get to live off grid.
its about 7 years by my best calculations. but thats not a fair number. the real number is comparing available power sources and thier price per kwh, in our case the next available power is a generator and that gets much pricier and with pollution and noise i dont want. we are quite a ways froma power line and want to keep it that way, we enjoy having no neighbors. compared to that the break even is closer to 3 or 4 years, but as i sit here watching the sun come up over the mountain and the birds singing in the trees, i cant fathom having to have a generator running all the time.
@@tinyhandsbigdreams Yep, wasn't suggesting a generator. I was just curious if solar is economically viable in Ecuador even if you have grid power available. Did you happen to get a price for running grid power to your property?
grid power is cheap here, its true. at 8kwh per day, our equivilancy point is 20 years. Funny enough, it was offered to run the poles and wires all the way to us for free. Not sure the price, but is wildly cheaper than the US. problem was they were going to be high voltage lines which is problematic for us for 2 reasons. 1, it means neighbors would be more likely (we enjoy our own little valley), and 2 is my wife had her arm nerves badly damaged by a shit doctor in washington state, making her have a life of pain and the arm is now crazy sensitive to EMF fields. Driving under them can make her arm go rigid for a week and cause other issues. We figured out 120v was the most we could have here and the only way to guarantee that was to do it ourselves.
If you live in an area with cheap grid power, I would only recommend a backup system with inverter/charger and batteries only(no solar panels). Use the grid to charge the batteries when grid power is back.
Check the voltage on all the panels, in case its lower on one and that that is pulling the rest down. Maybe use a DC to DC converter to up the voltage on a weaker string to get more usage out of it.
I checked the voltages and they're all extremely close. I just gave the panels a scrubbing and that made a solid improvement.
Inverter generator problem is grounding/bonding problem. You grounded probably when you should be bonded.
interesting. the inverter is grounded to earth, and the generator being a portable non hard wired unit bonds with the extension cord. or so i thought. its also crazy intermittent and the only time it does anything predictable with charging is after i power cycle it and then it works every time. are you thinking i should disconnect the ground?
@@tinyhandsbigdreams might have to find out that the main breaker is also grounded. If so then decide which should be the ground point. In DC might not matter much but in AC it does Onr main ground point that everything is bonded to neutral and no ground bar from the neutral bar
If your generator is putting out a modified sine wave then the gen port could have issues with the generator. This is a problem on some of the best Chinese inverters. The solution is to connect your generator to the AC/shorepower port. That input is somehow more forgiving. Good luck.....
The Honda is supposed to have a true sine wave output. i could switch it to the other input and see if that helps, but lately it's been working just fine. Intermittent problems are the worst!
I’ve been running a Victron Quattro for over 15 years now and it’s been faultless. It’s a shame about the damage caused by shipping but I wonder how other LF inverters would have fared. If you’re having problems with the generator, perhaps you could try a non inverter type generator with an AVR as inverter type generators are not recommended by Victron. Also have you got “weak A/C” selected on the inverter?
yes, they have a good rep which is why i got it. Its a weird intermittent fault but if i do a reset on it then it works just fine so i dont think its the gen. i do have weak gen helper installed, and also set it to force to float as it stopped charging reliably without it. since it goes away on reset i wonder if it isnt some stray static charge building up on a circuit or chip. problem is its critical and i just cant remove it and send it away for many weeks.
@@tinyhandsbigdreams perhaps there is more damage from the rough transit. Inside, there are some Integrated Circuits mounted in sockets, perhaps one has been dislodged?
Possibly. I did a thorough inspection and found nothing seemingly damaged or loose, except for the transformers. While it is possible it is damaged, it also sometimes works totally fine for now apparent reason. Intermittent problems are the worst.
@@tinyhandsbigdreams Why did you pick a quatro? They are designed for grid installs with mains and generator backup. The multiplus would have been fine. I wonder if you have the generator connected the mains input and the relay test is failing looking for grid conditions. If you want to get another system you can and set it up as mains input in the quatro and have 2 completely different systems running with hardware you want to test.
You must get hybrid inverter- charger inverter, makes life easier. It controls solar panels, and battery. After the battery fully charged it provides power from solar straight to your house loads and connects battery back only when solar energy is not enough or it is just already dark outside
Did you have a particular model in mind I should look at?
Just MPPTs for charging the battery would do way better, the LFP packs have little to no resistance which means your panels are constantly in short circuit, put in a small victron mppt and let it charge your panels, youll ranp up your production way more
@@tinyhandsbigdreams Ok I have just gone down the biggest autistic rabbit hole, I dont remember what you have your voltage at but, I would recommend a 48V, I think thats what you said but I cant remember. There are 2 major chinese designers/ makers out there in the all in one market space SRNE and Voltronic. I know they make whitelable systems that other companies slap their name on, and then there are the knock off clones that are probably made by the whitelable lines or overruns from their suppliers who supply them. Right now the eg4 are popular because its really easy to run them parallel for split phase or daisy chained for increased capacity (that one is a SRNE) and MPP has a similar voltronic based design those are the 2 good ones that are sub $1000usd. There is a serious jump in quality and cost for the next tier but at that point... sigh victron. If it was something that is the difference between life and death I would do a component system using outback, midnite solar, morning star... there are MANY good manufacturers these days. BUT I would absolutely keep an AIO as and emergency spare as you could use it to replace any single broken component in your system with it. The problem with an aio if you are relying on it for life then you need 2 AIO a main AND a back up one as well. If one part goes it can take down your entire system. I get why a lot of people go victron its like the early days of mac when steve jobs was alive , you just plugged things in and they just worked. Tiny shiny home youtube channel has a great video about protecting your system from lightning definitely worth a watch.
I bet cleaning the twigs off those panels is a pain?
Not at all, actually. The very occasional leaf, but otherwise not debris falls on them, as there are no trees above the panels.
Is it just me or is the audio desynced?
It's fine for us. But sometimes the computer to bluetooth headphones causes a delay, other times it's fine.
Yeah, the high humidity is an issue. That is why they run the air conditioning 24/7 and people have to wear jackets inside, LOL.
well maybe you know now that single phase is only 1/3 from three phase.
Yes, we only needed single phase for our property.
wow I pay 70$ for 450W Panels here in Switzerland which is almost double the power and new. 250W Panels should not be more than 25$ nowadys, especially used ones.
Always overpanel to the max the mppt spec is allowing FOR FREEZING weather condition. This gives you more power on cloudy days, you will loos some on full power but you have to plan for cloudy rainy days.
In Canada solar panels roughly run 0.5 - 1 dollar per watt, depending on how many you are buying and their quality. That's only new pricing though.
I was about to say it, i bought new panels with double the power for that price.
@tinyHandsbigdreams i think those new panels have also a drastically better performance in part-shade and indirect light
wow, i never saw them at that price, the lowest i have seen is bulk pricing at .25$ a watt, and they werent great panels. originally i designed our system for a place 4 hours from here with different weather, but the local microclimate here is much more clouds. i am in process of adding more.
when i bought these (3 years ago) they were the best deal i could find. i do have friends that ask for what to buy, if you have a link i could forward it to them.
chris