Panel and Charger

Had some 12V 100A Lead acid batteries laying around. So used a couple of them for this project.
Was just charging them and keeping track through a cheesy charge monitor box.
Didnt record any of the first values, and wasnt routinely discharging the batteries, So solar panels were just keeping the batteries full.
Wasnt using much of the power .

Mar 19, 2023 Realized that the Renogy charger has a RJ12 port that is really a serial port and can output data using the ModBus protocol. Bought RJ12 cable to talk to charger. Pretty silly to play with power and not be able to measure it.

Apr 5, 2023 Finally started getting data from the charger! The first day, it made about 0.3kwH. A few days later, made 0.373!
Thats about how much it takes to run a good sized refrigerator for about 5 hours.
It was getting too hard to keep attaching different useful things to the batteries to keep them from charging all the way and wasting power. I decided to to hook up a 12V inverter to run my ice maker that takes about 200W and runs most of the day.
It would only run the ice maker for about 1/4 of the time it needs to run to keep it full.
Real pain in the butt to keep unplugging ice maker from inverter and plugging into house, and disconnecting inverter since it takes alot of power even when its not outputting.

Apr 15, 2023 Bought 3 more panels and Y splitters. $321 Total of $530

Apr 17, 2023 Bought Rover 40A charger $181 Total of $711

Apr 17, 2023 Installed new solar panels.
Total of 0.4kW into 2.4kWh of batteries
Over the next few days, got increasingly better sun, and I was moving one of the panels to face the sun every hour or so. Ramped up from 1.73kWH to 2.16 over the course of a few days

3 on a table, 1 pointing at the sun

Apr 23, 2023 New Record 2.1687 kWH Max of 285W
Messing with the inverter was getting really annoying.
Found a better way: instead of powering a device directly with normal inverter, they make a device called a Grid Tie Inverter that connects to whole house and helps power it.
It ever so slightly adds to the existing house voltage so the devices use its power first, instead of whats coming from the power company, and you can add as many as you want.
Seems like a pretty slick idea to me.

Apr 24, 2023 Bought GT inverter $150 Total of $861

Apr 26, 2023 Switched system over from 12V to 24V in anticipation of connecting the new inverter. The inverter needs at least 22V to operate.
Unrelatedly, got 2.71 kWH after a few days

Dont plan on having the panels laying on a table forever. Eventually they will be mounted on a really tall pole.
I dislike ladders enough that I took extra time to give the pole a hinge. The hinge will allow it to tilt right down to the ground. Plan is to attach panels to the pole at ground level, then winch the pole until it is upright.
Pretty Stupid huh?

Apr 26ish, 2023 28 ft of fence post and several ft of 1in and 3/4in pipe Total of $1061

Pole that will be mounted to

Hinge on pole

The frame for the panels to mount to is made from 3/4in pipe. The middle horizontal pipe pivots in a foot or so of 1in pipe.
The 1in pipe is welded to a piece of fence post split up the side to allow slipping over the mounting pole.
Plan is to weld a sprocket to the fence post part and have a motor turn it.
The up/down action will be handled with a linear actuator.
Would have just done the turning with a linear actuator, but in the summer it needs to turn quite a bit more than 180 degrees, which gets alot more complicated to do with a linear actuator.

Progress on a frame to mount panels to a pole

Closeup of the frame pivot points

May 11, 2023 New Record 2.7149 kWH Max of 342w

Woohoo! Got the frame done and mounted to pole.

Frame on pole

May 15, 2023 Mounted all 4 panels to the pole.

Closeup of frame mount

Frame mount with highlight

Panels on pole!!

The Closeup of frame mount is kinda hard to tell whats going on.
The sleeve that goes around the pole looks too similar to the pole.
2nd picture shows sleeve highlighted in yellow. All the yellow parts pivot on the pole.
The little red parts are where the main frame pole pivots up and down.

It has motors that move it in each direction, but no smarts to make it move automatically.
It doesnt even have switches to move it. Just bare wire to plug into a battery for a second or so until its about right.
Next few days, as I got better at estimating where they should be pointed, got better and better wattage.

Was getting pretty close to making too much power quite often (cant remember how I knew).
Seems that I was monitoring power usage of some things, and making sure inverter was making less than that.

When the inverters make more power than you are using, it goes backwards through your power company meter.
Besides wasting power by sending it to your neighbors, you get charged for it too, as if you were using that much. So you lose double. And Ive heard anectdotal stories on the internet of people getting in trouble for sending power out through the meter.

Anyway, I decided to get a Shelly EM to monitor each side of whole house power directly.
I have nearly 50 of a few types of their other devices and they are wonderful.
Each device connects over WiFi, and has their own web page, but more importantly, they have a simple, documented http interface/API that you can call to check stuff, turn stuff on or off, etc., depending on the device.
I imagine their EM will be just as awesome.

May 18, 2023 Bought Shelly EM Energy Monitor $100ish Total of $1161

May 21, 2023 New Record 3.9136 kWH Max of 355w
Was so happy that it was going so well that I went crazy and ordered 4 much larger, 320W Renogy panels and a 2nd charger.
Decided that they would use LiFe batteries, since they are supposed to be much more efficient and last much longer.

The lead acid batteries were used for the inital setup because I had them around. They are needed for other things, and plan on replacing them with LiFe ones in the near future.

Because I was making so much power, I had to add the other 2 12V 400AH batteries to the system to be able to have somewhere to put the power until I could use it.
It would be a total tragedy if batteries got full and power went to waste.
Total of 0.4kW into 4.8kWH of batteries

May 22, 2023 Bought 4 320W $1194 Total of $2355
May 22, 2023 Bought Another Rover 40 charger $163 Total of $2518
May 22, 2023 Bought 2nd GT Inverter $139 Total of $2657
May 22, 2023 Bought 2 12V 100AH LiFe batteries $643 Total of $3300

Made a little cron job that runs a Ruby script every minute.
It talks to the Shelly EM to check the power usage and various other things. It also checks the DB for battery voltage every minute and turns inverters on and off accordingly.
Some time later I realized that the Shelly EM has a few triggers it can run. Like when power usage goes over or under a certain point.
I made triggers to call a simple PHP script to immediately turn off an inverter when making too much power.

May 26 2023 Installed new charger, batteries, and 2 of the 4 panels
(man they are huge and heavy)
These panels are on a completely separate system, except they both contribute power to the house.
A couple days later, I `installed` the other 2.
When I say installed, I mean they are all just leaning on the fence with other end laying on a couple of tables. Not really installed at all, but they are charging batteries.
Total of 1.68kW into 7.2kWH of batteries

May 28, 2023 Made 100kWh so far Happy Giggles!

May 29, 2023 Bought 2 24V 100AH LiFe $1351 Total of $4651
Total of 1.68kW into 12.0kWH of batteries

May 30, 2023 New Record 11.5685 kWH Not an awesome day, but first one in awhile without alot of clouds.

The 4 100W solar panels are wired into the laundry room with the lead acid batteries.
The charger for the 4 320W panels has been moved around alot.
Had it in the laundry room with the other charger and batteries, but then started getting cramped in there when I got more batteries.
Moved it to the garage for awhile. Lots of room in there for batteries. Then I started getting concerned that they wouldnt like it when it gets below 40 degrees in the winter.

Decided that the best place was in a little room under the stairs with the servers.
Coincidentally, I have the UPS for the server running on large external 24V lead acid batteries.
The stupid little black batteries that come in the UPSs are so wimpy and they dont last very long.
Since the solar system runs on 24V and has gobs of batteries at 24V, it only makes sense to wire the UPS to those batteries instead.
I have it so the UPS is normally always unplugged from the house with a Shelly Plug.
If we have several shady days in a row, the house will sense a low battery voltage and 'plug in' the UPS. This takes the load off the solar batteries and ever so slightly charges them, with maybe 50W.
The whole server room now runs its continuous load of about 200W off the UPS for free!

Jun 8, 2023 Made 200kWh so far Happy Giggles!

Jun 14, 2023 Bought 3rd 24V 100AH LiFe $676 Total of $5327
Total of 1.68kW into 14.4kWH of batteries

My 100w panels have been putting out very nearly, and sometimes over their rated wattage. The 320W panels from the same company are making more like 75% of rated, and never come close to the rated ever. Not even after clouds obscure the sun for a bit, then come back.
After the clouds go away after hiding the sun for a bit, the 100W ones can go as much as 10% over their rated wattage for a bit. This made me think that maybe the charger cant handle all power, since full blast would be very near the rated amperage.
I ordered a 3rd, identical charger to split the power between them to see if that is the problem.

Jun 14, 2023 Bought 3rd Rover 40A $166 Total of $5493

Jun 16, 2023 New Record 12.1661 kWH
Quite often, the batteries dont have a chance to get drained down to low enough over night, and the next day, house gets really close to fully charging the batteries. Inverters need about 500W or more of usage before they can come on. Seemed like the best way is to buy another inverter to help drain the batteries when using more than 2 inverters can deal with.

Jun 17, 2023 Bought 3rd GT inverter $137 Total of $5630

Jun 25, 2023 New Record 12.4196 kWH
Seemed to be getting slightly better wattage than before splitting the chargers.
Not by much though. Maybe a couple percent. Not really valid to compare a few days against a few other days. If it was a huge difference, it would have been obvious.

Jul 01, 2023 Ordered 4th 24V 100AH battery $675 Total of $6305
Total of 1.68kW into 16.8kWH of batteries
Since the panels are still just propped up on fence and tables, Made a couple of rafter looking braces to tie the 4 panels together. They are made from 1 1/2in and 1in angle iron. It holds them side by side in a row of 4, about 12ft x 5ft.

There is a provision for the middle of the 2 rafters to have a 2in schedule 40 pipe hold the rafters together. Plan is for them to be mounted solidly to the pipe and for the pipe to rotate to allow pointing them toward the east in the morning, and the west at night.

Some time around here, I changed the PHP script that the Shelly calls when making too much power to be a Ruby script. Instead of it turning off inverter immediately, it hangs around for awhile to see if power goes back to normal, and counts the usage while its waiting.
For example, if its only 5 or 10 watts, it will wait up to a minute.
If its making 500W too much, it will turn off right away.

Decided to buy a couple more panels from a different company. They are BougeRV 200W ones.

Jul 7, 2023 Bought 2 BougeRV 200W 12V panels $471 Total of $6776
1 delivered Jul13, other on Jul17

Since separating the 4 panels into sets of 2 didnt make much difference, so I combined them back in anticipation of using the other charger for the new panels. Before I even received the 2 panels, they went on sale, about 30% off! I probably shouldnt have, but I ordered 4 more, for a total of 6.

Jul 9, 2023 Made 500kWh so far Happy Giggles!

Jul 12, 2023 Bought 4 more BougeRV 200W 12V panels $747 Total of $7523
3 delivered Jul21, other on Jul25.
One of the 4 was a completely different brand. Returned for replacement.
Replacement delivered Jul28

Jul 17, 2023 Added 2 200W panels to house.
Total of 2.08kW into 16.8kWH of batteries

Jul 15, 2023 Bought 2 more 24V 100AH LiFe $1351 Total of $8874
Total of 2.08kW into 21.2kWH of batteries

Jul 22, 2023 Added 4 200W panels to house.
Total of 2.88kW into 21.2kWH of batteries

Made a pair of similar rafter looking things for the 6 200w panels, about 14ft x 4ft. It also stacks them in a row, in a way that makes them as wide as possible.

Aug 17, 2023 Made 1000kWh or 1 MEGAWATT Hours (1MWh) so far Happy Giggles!

Aug 10, 2023 New Record 16.4645 kWH

Aug 22, 2023 Got 6 200W ones mounted to a 12ft ish long 2in pipe.
One end of the pipe rests in a 8in wide piece of gate post that has welded on brackets with bolt holes to mount and pivot on. Pivoty bracket is bolted to middleish of 10ft tall post. Other end is held up with cranky straps. Setup allows whole contraption to pivot east and west, with variable adjustment of tilt towards the south more or less for seasonal difference.

A few days later, added the 4 320W ones to the same pole.
[Insert pictures that dont exist here]

Aug 28, 2023 New Record 19.8185 kWH This is a solid 20% increase from before they were able to tilt.

12ft long pipe was long enough to sag quite a bit from 500ish lbs of panels on it. Also, it was way too wide to get a good angle to the sun at noon. Taller pole needed to be at least 20ft tall for that to work. That tall would have to be alot beefier than simple 2 in pole. A nearby tree that had been hit by lightning a decade ago, and is basically a 12ish ft tall stump could be a great place to mount one of the sets of panels.

Sep 17ish, 2023 Removed Lead acid batteries from service.
Just for fun, decided to try connecting solar directly to Grid Tie inverter. Oops! Forgot GTI was only rated for about 50V. It would have worked if I changed the configuration of the panels, but thought nothing about it. GTI died in a puff of smoke.

Ran wires from Laundry room charger to charge LiFe batteries.
Voltage drop between charger and batteries was too high, so the next day or so, moved charger to same room as other solar stuff. 80V @ 5A loses alot less than 25V @ 16A.
At least all 3 chargers are next to each other close to the batteries now.
Total of 2.88kW into 16.8kWH of batteries

Sep 25, 2023 Bought Another GT inverter $137 Total of $9011

Still been having a hard time towards the end of the day with batteries nearing full charge.
This makes sense cause only have 16.8kWH of battery and making around 16kWH on average.
Even if the batteries were dead in the morning, they would be nearly full in the pm.

I dont let the batteries get much below about 25.8V, which is about 20% capacity, so theres only 80% left before it gets full.
More often than not, they arent able to drain all the way overnight, and start off around 26V or more, 26.2V is around 40% capacity.
Had been turning on various lights around the house that didnt need to be on, just to be able to turn on more inverters.
What a waste to have lights on for no reason.

I rigged up 3 120W fish tank heaters in the hottub, 1 is on a Shelly switch, and the other 2 are on a separate Shelly switch.
This way, when the house really needs to have inverters on, I can turn on 120, 240, or 360W of them on, and it keeps the hottub a fraction warmer.
For comparison, the heater in the hottub is 5500W.

Just for funny, since the house already controls the ice maker, I decided to tell the house not to turn it on after about 7pm to keep from filling it up at night. That way, it can run most of the day when its needed to help use more power during peak house.

Oct 10, 2023 Realized that the Shelly EM that measures the power the whole house is using, has the ability to output its values automatically to an MQTT server. I installed a Mosquitto server on my web server and told the Shelly EM about it. Pretty awesome! It spits values instantly when they change, and any other program can connect to the mosquitto server and subscribe to whatever messages it is interested in!

A few days later, I had a program written in Ruby that subscribes to the Shelly EM messages, and some others, to handle the inverters in an immediate way, instead of every minute.
It controls fish tank heaters too, except now 1 of them is on variable. This way, when the house really needs to have inverters on, it can turn between 0 and 331W of them on.
(For some reason, the variable one only does about 91W when on full blast instead of 120?!?!)

When house was making too much power before, the only alternative was to turn off an inverter. Now it can react in real time, and the hottub stays a bit warmer than it would have before.

I still think of this as kinda waste, since I have no way of measuring the temp of the hottub water, so I dont know how much using 1kWH or so per day is maintaining the temp over a couple weeks. If it was running anywhere near full blast much of the time, I would like this even less, but usually cruises about 50W, and daily power usage is still decreasing.

24 hrs of power from pwr co

24 hrs of power from inverters

24 hrs of power to heaters

Notice how most of the time, on the power from power company, the wattage of the blue is very close to 30W.
That is my desired setting. I tried 20W, but would go negative way too often.
Setting it to 100W would pretty much keep it from ever going negative, but would use way too much power.
High part in the middle is when the batteries get low at night. Used 5.5kWH from pwr company, solar contributed 10.02kWH, and heaters used 1.54kWH.
That doesnt count the 4.5ish kWH that the server room typically takes, and 1.54kWH is only a fraction of what the hottub takes when its on in the summer.
Still have to turn the hottub on every few days for 30 mins or so, just to keep it clean and mix the water in the tub with the water in the piping, which gets cold faster.

Oct 25, 2023 Moved the 4 320W panels off common tilty pole to its own X/Y tilty thing.
We just winched the whole 300ish lb assembly up the tree with a come-a-long and several cranky straps. Took about 2 hours! Pretty Stupid!

You can kinda see the cradle that the yellowish pole will sit in once its up there at the top right of the picture. Its just a piece of fence post split down the middle with some brackets welded on.
I made the cradle stick out over a foot from the tree, since the tree isnt quite vertical and the panels need to clear stuff sticking out from the tree.
The mounting allows the panels to rotate about 240 degrees, and to be able to pivot from vertical to nearly horizontal.

Since the pole that the 6 200W panels are on was considerably shortened, its angle is much closer to ideal. You can kinda see it in the background in the right picture.

Winching panels up a tree

About an hour later

A couple days later, I managed to raise the upper end and lower the lower end of the 6 panels pole to make the angle even better.

Oct 27, 2023 Made 2000kWh (2MWh) so far Happy Giggles!

Oct 29, 2023 Got 17.89 kWH. Not a new record, but really good considering had less than 10 hours of usable sun, vs about 12.5 when made record on Aug 28.

Having a program control the inverters in real time is pretty slick, but not very awesome unless you have a way to watch what it is doing to make sure its making good choices.
So I made a little webpage dashboard that shows all the important things in real time.
It has a little Ruby program that runs in the background and subscribes to messages that the inverter controller and some other devices send out, and periodically updates some additional things.
All the data that the program collects is sent over a websocket connection to the webpage in real time. The web page updates nearly every second.

Stupid web dashboard

The 3 main squares toward the top is pretty much everything I want to know about where the power is going.
The outer 2 show usage for the A and B sides of the house power.
The top line is how much power is coming from the power company.
The middle line is the state of the inverters (Need new icons). The 11 on the A side means there are 2 inverters, and both are on (state of 1). The 0 on the B side means there is 1 inverter, and its off. Dont really need the text, since the icons change according to the digits.
You can click on the light bulb icons to turn an inverter off or on manually.
The bottom line is how much power the inverters are making.

The middle box is for overall stuff.
I put the time in there just to see when the last msg was received. It was having a hard time staying connected at first.
To the right of the time, is the battery voltage. One of the most important things.
To the right of that, is the current target voltages. Top value is the lower limit, and the bottom is the upper limit. The program acts differently when it goes above or below these values. On a sunny day, the voltage will go quite a bit above the upper target.
The bottom line shows current loads running the hottub heaters. Middle value shows current solar power being generated. BMode corresponds to the comparison between battery voltage and target voltage.
Mode 0 is when batteries below the low target. Mode 1 is when between the values. Mode 2 is when above upper value. Mode 3 is even more above upper value. There is a mode 4 that means WAY ABOVE upper value where it will try its hardest to keep all the inverters on.

The bottom list just shows history of the last few msgs.

This is the control for the battery voltage:

Battery Voltage Control

Each slider corresponds to each hour in the day.
Most of the battery settings have fairly low voltage in the morning, and lets go higher before the sun goes down.
The white buttons are for moving groups of values up and down.

Front of 320W panels

Back of 320W panels

Front of 200W panels

Back of 200W panels

Nov 17, 2023 I finally got around to mounting the 200w ones on an X/Y pole.
The ladder is still there from getting things adjusted.

Dec 24, 2023 The sun has gone to minimum a few days ago and is on its way back,
but the worst thing is most of the leaves on the neighbors trees havent fallen off all the way.
This means I am getting 4 periods of shading on various panels.
Even worse than that is that it seems that we have been getting mostly very foggy, hazy, and cloudy days.
Most days I only get 10-20% of normal power lately.
Finally got a day with very little clouds and only a bit of haze today.
Made 14.63 kWH today, with only 8.5 hrs of sun!

Power Chart, Oh joy

Power Chart, Oh joy

Power Chart, Oh joy

Power Chart, Oh joy

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