raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
|
Post by raydas on Oct 24, 2019 21:51:03 GMT
Any spreadsheet gurus here? I did a ~24 hour log of my system. I entered the .csv file into a spreadsheet, and got about 1410 rows of data. Now, what would be the formula for getting a value that tells me how the solar panel array system, in watts, produced in that period of time.
|
|
raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
|
Post by raydas on Oct 25, 2019 15:43:17 GMT
So far the data for the working state of my solar system, is very dismal. For the data sample that I worked with, it shows that the solar panel array was active for 9 hours. And during that 9 hour period it produced ~45 watt hours. And the days are getting shorter, so it will get worse.
The sample day was cloudy in the morning, and then it was partly cloudy the rest of the day. Since I have 4 x 100W and 2 x 50W panels producing 45 watt hours, and I have a 35Ah + 100Ah battery (1620 watt hours), this looks like I would need a whole lot more solar panels.
Now I can see why you need to spend $30,000, if not more, for a solar system that powers your house. And I am thinking all the conveniences, that one enjoys at the moment, would be powered.
This is a real eye opener for me. So basically, at the moment, with lets say $1500 investment in the solar system, I can keep a 45 Watt bulb lit for 9 hours.
I guess looking at it from a different point of view, if I did not have any load on the system, I guess it could keep my batteries topped off. $1500 for a trickle charger system.
The solar system has been tinkered with to the best settings for the available panel locations. The whole point of my experiments was to get a real idea as to what the solar system could produce under the given factors.
|
|
|
Post by retrodaredevil on Oct 25, 2019 17:21:13 GMT
I'm guessing you've figured out that you can use the daily kwh charging field to see how much it has charged. (This is in watt hours). There's a lot more data you can get from the rover. If you have a load connected to the load panels, you can see how much it is currently discharging and also see your daily kwh discharging. If you wanted to calculate the watt hours yourself, you would have to do some sort of an integral operation. So far the data for the working state of my solar system, is very dismal. For the data sample that I worked with, it shows that the solar panel array was active for 9 hours. And during that 9 hour period it produced ~45 watt hours. And the days are getting shorter, so it will get worse. Also as it gets colder, solar panels will do better. And when there's snow on the ground, depending on how your solar panels are set up they might get more wattage than they're rated for from the light reflecting off the snow and onto the panels. But this all depends system to system and I'm no expert on that.
|
|
|
Post by bupkis on Oct 25, 2019 19:21:15 GMT
if a 45w light uses 45wh in one hour then it would use 9 times that in 9 hrs or 405wh.
|
|
raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
|
Post by raydas on Oct 25, 2019 20:23:35 GMT
Sorry, that is a bad example. I am still trying to get a handle on that watt hour stuff.
"...daily kwh charging field...". In the .csv file there is no field for that, unless it is actually called something else. The field that I actually wish they had is, something that shows just how much the panel array produced for the day.
|
|
|
Post by tattoo on Oct 25, 2019 21:00:16 GMT
Like I have always heard "Talk is cheap...".
LOL Yep you are correct........ so keep on talking........... LOL
|
|
|
Post by retrodaredevil on Oct 25, 2019 21:01:43 GMT
LOL you crack me up with your lack of knowledge...........
Dude, you've been harassing raydas in just about every forum post he's made. If there were mods on here they would ask you to stop, but mods don't seem to exist on this forum. Please, stop harassing him in every single forum post. You can tell him why he's wrong or when one of his statements is incorrect, but reading your nasty comments is not fun.
"...daily kwh charging field...". In the .csv file there is no field for that, unless it is actually called something else. The field that I actually wish they had is, something that shows just how much the panel array produced for the day. I think it's called something like "power generation of the current day" for daily kWH and then it's "Power consumption of the day" for the daily discharging kwh. These values are in watthours, but I like to divide them by 1000 to get kWH.
If you still can't find that in your csv file, try giving us a link to the file through dropbox or something, or tell us all the fields it does give you.
|
|
raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
|
Post by raydas on Oct 25, 2019 21:14:31 GMT
Above is the fields that are shown in the .csv file, this is what I am working with.
********************** To the Forum Moderator: Please inform tatoo to quit disparaging or high jacking my thread(s). Or maybe add a blocking feature, so I can block him all by myself. **********************
|
|
|
Post by retrodaredevil on Oct 25, 2019 21:46:50 GMT
Above is the fields that are shown in the .csv file, this is what I am working with. So with those data points, you will have to basically do some sort of integral on them. You x would be your timestamp in hours and the y would either be "Array Power" or it might be "Battery Current" * "Battery Voltage". I'm not really sure what battery current is. If it is the charging current, then using that would be more accurate. If it's something else, then it would give you something you don't want. Now, if you wanted to go the integral route, you'd basically accumulate kWH or WH throughout the day. If you want to go that route, I can try to help you do that. There might be some better ways though. On the rover itself, I believe it shows you amp hours, kwh or both. So you could physically go to your charge controller and find the menu that displays it. Another option would be to use the Solar Monitor Program manually to see the kWH or WH. There's also the option of using a program like solarthing or solarshed. I made solarthing and it works well to store data in a database. I will admit there is definitely more setup required for solarthing, but if you are willing to try it I think it would give you a lot more data. Recentlyish I've been trying to make it more configurable. If you want a feature such as exporting a csv file for every day or for every hour, that's something I could add to the program. If you are interested: github.com/wildmountainfarms/solarthing. I'm really surprised that the program that exports csv files doesn't expose power generation for the current day. The rover has a bunch of data you can get from it and what you have above is just a fraction of it.
|
|
raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
|
Post by raydas on Oct 25, 2019 22:15:34 GMT
I am using Libre Calc on my Linux box. The 'Array Power(W)' is what I started with, using '=(SUM(F88:F609)/521)'. I was thinking that if you multiply that function by 9, which is the time between F88:F609, that would give you an approximate watt hour value.
The values or rows in the .csv file, which is generated by the Monitor program, are showing data that is collected every 2-3 seconds, so I know that does not represent a true watt hour representation. To get the integral involves a lot more detailed Calc function that I do not know how to do at this point. I am not sure that Calc has that Integral feature, I will have to do some more research on the Calc features.
Thanks for offering to help.
|
|
|
Post by bupkis on Oct 26, 2019 0:15:36 GMT
you'd need the time between rows converted to hrs or something useful.
then you'd multiply that by panel power and add them all up.
3 secs or 3/60 = .05 minutes or .05/60 = .008333 hrs x 50w panel output = .04616667 wh
not sure what the time math (subtracting one row from anther yields, secs, min, hrs?)
please ignore the children at play that are not helpful and just pests, all of them!
|
|
|
Post by tattoo on Oct 26, 2019 14:17:56 GMT
********************** To the Forum Moderator: Please block raydas from continually harassing me. He made a deal with me and he keeps breaking it......... Or maybe add a blocking feature, so I can block him. **********************
|
|
|
Post by Guest on Oct 27, 2019 4:56:04 GMT
********************** To the Forum Moderator: Please block tatoo from disparaging and/or high jacking my thread(s). Or maybe add a blocking feature, so I can block him all by myself. Also if you could, please delete all of his posts, from my thread(s). ********************** Keep in mind that there are no Forum Moderators here.
|
|
russ
Solar Advocate
Posts: 63
|
Post by russ on Oct 27, 2019 5:29:44 GMT
Any spreadsheet gurus here? I did a ~24 hour log of my system. I entered the .csv file into a spreadsheet, and got about 1410 rows of data. Now, what would be the formula for getting a value that tells me how the solar panel array system, in watts, produced in that period of time. If I am not mistaken, you are using a Rover charge controller. Why not just read the amp hours from the display after sunset. If you want watt hours, simply multiply the amp hours by the system voltage. One of my solar power systems has two 100 Watt panels in series with a 20 amp Rover charge controller and a 100 amp hour battery. Typically, by the end of the day, after sunset, the charge controller shows that it has charged the battery with 40 to 50 amp hours. (This includes power use from the system after the battery has reached the "float" charging stage. So the battery hasn't been discharged 50 amp hours.) Lets say I read 45 amp hours as an example. Multiply 45 (amp hours) by 12 (volts) = 540 watt hours. So the solar panels supplied the system with 540 watt hours that day. As soon as the next charge cycle starts the charge controller starts measuring the amp hours again from zero. Keep in mind that what you power with the system can influence how much energy the panels provide to the battery. If I disconnect all external loads from the system before sunrise, the amp hour reading after sun set is something less than 10 amp hours. Lately, it has been hot in the afternoon so I plug a fan into the inverter that requires about 50 watts. The battery has usually been fully charged by then (late afternoon) and is in "float" charge mode (13.8 volts for a gel cell battery) so the charge controller just maintains 13.8 volts. When I turn on the 50 watt fan during the float stage it has no influence on the battery because the sun is still powering the panels and the battery is fully charged and sitting at 13.8 volts. The charge controller draws more current from the panels (which are being under utilized at that point) to maintain 13.8 volts while suppling 50 watts to the fan and that is added to the daily amp hour reading. So, when I want to see my solar power "harvest" I just take a look at the amp hour reading on the charge controller after sunset. It might be fun to put those numbers in a spreadsheet and see how that changes over time.
|
|
|
Post by tattoo on Oct 27, 2019 12:43:02 GMT
If I am not mistaken, you are using a Rover charge controller. Why not just read the amp hours from the display after sunset. If you want watt hours, simply multiply the amp hours by the system voltage. Yes sir, that's exactly what I do if I want to know how much power I made on a cloudy day.......... That's what I said in an earlier post in this thread........
|
|