raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Aug 20, 2019 18:23:47 GMT
I am really starting to regret starting this thread. If I would have known, in advance, that these two guys were lurking in the shadows, I probably would have thought twice about it. So be it, this is the reality I have to deal with. I will not be baited anymore, so go ahead and trash this thread all you want, you will be ignored.
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russ
Solar Advocate
Posts: 63
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Post by russ on Aug 20, 2019 18:56:14 GMT
I was looking to see if there was some forum rules displayed. I think it is up Renogy to decide why this forum exists, we are only guests here. |
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Post by mediadogg on Aug 20, 2019 19:00:17 GMT
I would appreciate not being lumped into a group, if in fact you were including me in "these two guys". My words and my comments stand alone, and only I am responsible for them. And I am definitely not lurking in the shadows.
My first post to you ended with "Follow these suggestions, and you will be on the road to creating an even more effective and usable system. You will get other ideas from others and add your own good ideas as you learn, but I think I have given you a couple of good places to start exploring."
My last post to you ended with "I would be happy to continue any kind of "personal" discussion with you via private message, and reserve our public conversation to technical issues. Even in the absence of official rules, we could mutually agree to that, right?"
I don't think either of those comments merit being thought of as trashing the thread, regardless of whether you want to acknowledge them.
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Post by tattoo on Aug 20, 2019 22:09:28 GMT
I am really starting to regret starting this thread. If I would have known, in advance, that these two guys were lurking in the shadows, Who is lurking in the shadows? I've been here for years where have you been hiding? |
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Post by tattoo on Aug 20, 2019 22:12:31 GMT
I will not be baited anymore, so go ahead and trash this thread all you want, you will be ignored. That's nothing different than what you have been doing from the beginning of this thread with everyone..... |
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Aug 21, 2019 10:29:44 GMT
Yep...
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Sept 16, 2019 15:30:22 GMT
An update for what I am doing with my solar system. I have upgraded all the wiring to 10/12AWG, where appropriate. instead of doing the fuses, I am going to use circuit breakers. Now I have to create a bracket or something to hold the breakers in place, in close proximity of the CC location.
I have been using the 'Ideal PowerPlug Luminaire Disconnect' for some of the wiring, but those are only good for 12AWG-16AWG wires. I need something like that for 10AWG stranded wire. So far no luck in sourcing a product. I like the idea of having a quick disconnect, to separate the wires from the CC in a quick fashion.
Now, I am starting to think about those inverter/charger things, to see if it would be functionally appropriate addition for my solar system. It would also make it a whole lot more complex and maybe a little harder to implement.
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Oct 9, 2019 17:41:26 GMT
Another update. I have finished with the wiring, and I implemented the circuit breakers. WOW, what a joy, no more unscrewing the wires when you want to do a reset on the Rover CC.
I now have a heavy duty terminal bar connection point for all of the panels, which are wired in parallel. From the terminal bar, I am feeding two Rover CC, one is for the flooded battery, and the other one is for the 100Ah gel battery. I was not sure how the two Rover CC would deal with the panel power, but it looks like it is working out very well. The two Rover CC seem to share the power, I thought maybe one of the Rovers CC would just hog all the power.
One Rover CC, the flooded battery, is using the Load terminal, which is set at 0. this is powering a 3W test light that I have outside. Just wanted to see how well this works. If I like it I will add more lights to the setup.
The other Rover CC, 100Ah gel, is also using the Load terminal, which is powering some devices. The devices are 24/7, and it looks like it is using 15W of power. I am now doing a test run to get an idea of how well the 100Ah battery will handle this. Because the panel power is getting to be less, because of the shorter days, and more cloudy rainy conditions, I believe that I will be implementing a battery charger to help with keeping the batteries well charged. I have a 6Amp battery charger that I am using, manually, but I think I will have to upgrade to a 10Amp battery charger, and automate the charging cycles.
After I complete some of these tests, then I will decide on what kind of inverter I will be getting to run my two servers, and peripherals, plus the power that is now being used by the Load terminal. I already have a sneaky suspicion that I will have to add an automated battery charger function to this setup.
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Feb 27, 2020 20:01:15 GMT
I upgraded my system, I added a 100Ah AGM battery to my other 100Ah battery. I also added a 3000W inverter, plus I have a Suoer 10A Smart Fast Charger.
I have the two 100A batteries, in parallel, with the Suoer 10A battery charger hooked up the 200A battery array. I also have the inverter hooked up to the 200A battery array. The battery charger is running 24/7, to compensate for those cloudy days. My killawatt is showing that the Suor battery charger is using 145W with a power load on the batteries.
The inverter is now powering all of the electronics in the immediate area, but not all of them. I want to see what the battery power level is after a nights run. I am curious to see if the battery charger maintains the battery power level at night.
The reason I got the 3000W inverter, is to see how it would handle a 1000W space heater. The inverter worked just fine, but, boy did the battery array start losing its power fast, even with a two battery array. I think I will have to time the space heater draw on the battery array. Maybe I can run the space heater for an hour, turn it off, let the battery array recover, and repeat the process.
I had a talk with an electrical person, and it was mentioned that if I wanted to run a 1000W space heater from a battery source, I would need a 100A battery charger. Hmm, I wonder how much AC power it would take to run something like that.
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Post by mediadogg on Feb 27, 2020 21:41:37 GMT
Well it would be 1000 watts. AC power is usually quoted as an "RMS" value (root mean squared).AC voltage and current vary according to a sine wave, and for resistive loads, they vary in phase. So, 1000 RMS Watts AC provides the same amount of heat from a resistive load as 1000 watts DC. That's why the electrician said you needed 100A at 12V to be the rough equivalent to 1000W AC.
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Post by bupkis on Feb 28, 2020 1:53:19 GMT
I had a talk with an electrical person, and it was mentioned that if I wanted to run a 1000W space heater from a battery source, I would need a 100A battery charger. Hmm, I wonder how much AC power it would take to run something like that. ya want to use a battery charger hooked to battery bank hooked to an inverter hooked to an AC heater. 120vAC > 12vDC > 120vAC - assuming both converter and inverter are 90% eff then 1235w vAC > 1111w vDC > 1000w vAC load or 1.235 kW or for 1 hr @ $0.10/kW = $0.1235 or a dime and a couple pennies. Plug the heater in the wall and its only a dime/hr! |
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Feb 28, 2020 13:17:58 GMT
Thank You bupkis for the evaluation, one of these days I will have to put some of your calculations into a spreadsheet. I like the way you present your posts, some of the other peoples posts are so terse, I end up scratching my head trying to figure, what the heck was this post all about.
Since I am data logging my battery voltage, my data, for last night did not show any voltage amounts above 14.0V, so that means that battery charger never when into a full charge condition. Last night the battery voltage was at 13.2V and this morning the battery voltage was 13.2V, the battery charger was maintaining the voltage. Today I will be adding the rest of my electronics to the inverter.
Since I tested the space heater connected to the inverter, with no adverse affects, I now feel confident that when a power outage occurs I will be able to use things like a coffee maker, during the outage.
Since the killawatt, that is connected to the battery charger is showing 145-150 Watts, I guess I am using about ~2.0 Amps to power the battery charger. I wish the killawatt had some way of providing a means of data logging the activity, that I could tell what current usage of the battery charger is at specific times of the day. That way in my database I could make some kind of correlation between Rover CC and the battery charger as to what is charging the battery array, and when. More to do with this system.
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Post by mediadogg on Feb 28, 2020 14:10:49 GMT
... some of the other peoples posts are so terse, I end up scratching my head trying to figure, what the heck was this post all about. Guess I will save your time and mine in the future and not bother posting. |
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Post by oliverm on Mar 3, 2020 14:02:50 GMT
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Mar 3, 2020 21:45:33 GMT
I hope some people, by reading this thread, are learning from my mistakes.
I have connected all my electrical stuff, in my work area, to the inverter. I have my battery charger connected to the battery array, which will be on for a while, just to see how it interacts with the Rover CC, and how well it keeps the battery array charged.
After having this setup run for about 8 hours, the battery charger seems to be just keeping up with the battery array draw. This morning it was partly cloudy with a little bit of sun that worked the panels. The little bit of sun was short lived with clouds that moved in, and the panels are on low activity.
Since the battery charger is just keeping even with the battery draw, the next step will have to be, plug the killawatt into the inverter and then plug all the electrical stuff into the killawatt, to see what the power usage is, with my electrical stuff. The battery charger is rated at 10 Amps, so I am not sure why it is not slowly charging the battery array past the draw rate. But before I do anything, I will wait another day, tomorrows weather report shows considerably more sun than today.
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