Post AVp265JlJsHvwVesfA by welshpixie@mastodon.art
(DIR) More posts by welshpixie@mastodon.art
(DIR) Post #AVp263VO3gOmJz58VM by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T16:08:18Z
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Done!They arrived about 10am, and just left now about 6pm. Four guys doing the install. We have 10 panels, five on the front and five on the back of the roof so should get good coverage, and a 5.5kW lithium battery. Alas they finished as the sun was going down so there was barely time for it to charge, but the battery did charge to 20% while they were hooking things up to it. We also have an app to check everything. (cont)#Solar #RenewableEnergy
(DIR) Post #AVp2648jhNsGI1UYq0 by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T16:09:51Z
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Before he started, he said he'd keep the hot water geyser (heater) and the stove on the grid, they usually don't hook those up to the panels at all because they're such big power draws. Then while they were hooking everything up he noticed that we barely have anything running and suspected there would be plenty of excess from the panels to handle them, if we manage them with sunlight levels, so he's put them onto the inverter. He then also noticed that our geyser was -
(DIR) Post #AVp264nrEUleLYjOvw by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T16:11:06Z
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- barely drawing any power, so I said we both had showers yesterday then I had a bath last night, and it heat up the water since then and once the water's hot it stays hot for a few days and doesn't use much power after, and he was amazed at that :D So yeah, we can just turn the geyser on to heat the water when the panels are in full sunlight. The battery charges with a trickle from the grid when there's nothing coming from the panels, if the battery isn't full -
(DIR) Post #AVp265JlJsHvwVesfA by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T16:13:32Z
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- but we can also turn that off, or tweak the settings, etc. The app isn't quite real time but refreshes every 10 minutes or so, which is near enough real time for us to get good metrics of use from it :) (Or we can just look directly at the screen on the inverter, which is real time.)The battery is set to never go lower than 20%. It's currently 25% and we have loadshedding at 8pm so we'll see how it does with the lights :)
(DIR) Post #AVp265w31WufrFZSL2 by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T16:15:41Z
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We're also just going into winter, and we have a mountain near us that shaves about 30-60 minutes off sunrise time in the mornings, then houses close behind us that hide the sun close to sunset, but also this is South Africa and even in winter it can be heckin' sunny most days. We don't have much rain forecast this week, a little bit Sunday morning and a bit Wednesday afternoon, with a 'partly cloudy' forecast throughout, so we'll see how it does. :DI'm excited!
(DIR) Post #AVp266YKjBXPlzU20u by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T16:23:08Z
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Ooh, also interesting - this is getting so big here now that all the solar companies are fighting for components. The batteries and inverters are made in the Western Cape, but then they're shipped to this company's HQ which is in Joburg on the other side of the country, and the installers on this side have to beg for them back. He said AC components are easy to get, but DC components they're waiting on them every day on a day-to-day basis -
(DIR) Post #AVp267LFnIfaDiN6GW by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T16:24:18Z
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- this morning they were late showing up because they were literally waiting for the parts delivery that was supposed to get to them at 7am ready for them to start installs at 8 - 9am, and then they left part way into the day to go scouring the local hardware shops for something else they needed. Which is great, I guess it means it's creating loads of jobs here!
(DIR) Post #AVp268BieEdYqQv02i by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-18T18:59:19Z
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The battery charged to 45% on a trickle from the grid in about two hours, then the power went off for loadshedding. It's been running the fridge/freezer, air purifier, lamp, and my desktop with one monitor on watching TV, for an hour and the charge dropped 1%. Now Jaco's turned his puter on for the second hour, we'll see how it does. ^.^
(DIR) Post #AVp268xDncdPDl8w5I by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T06:04:49Z
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Look at it goooIt started at 7:40am when it was barely light out, making 11 little watts, now it's picking up :D☀️
(DIR) Post #AVp269dPGmNXKascq0 by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T06:47:22Z
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I'm running the washing machine now, and got my PC on. It's set to draw from the grid if our consumption exceeds the solar input, so that the battery stays charged (you can configure all those paramaters, but they set it up to make sure the battery is always full because we're having some 4 hour loadshedding slots). I can also just flip the grid switches off so it never pulls from the grid, but want it to keep doing it while we manage the system.
(DIR) Post #AVp26AHoqWhlLvmtpQ by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T06:49:01Z
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9am, the sky is partly cloudy with thin hazy clouds, and solar production is up to 310W. Consumption is fluctuating between around 300W and 2.5kW, spiking when the washing machine heats water. It's drawing a teeny 18W from the grid to manage everything and keep the battery charged. \o/
(DIR) Post #AVp26B0q98iXbYqr0C by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T07:38:47Z
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Sun has broken through the clouds and we've shot up to 1.34kW production at 9:30am :D (The capacity of the panels on the SE-facing side of the roof is about 2.2kW, but the roof's slope is shallow and when the sun gets high enough it'll start hitting the ones on the other side too. \o/)
(DIR) Post #AVp26BazyhdnPhljMW by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T08:23:26Z
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Right, washing machine finished, we run the coffee machine (it's a big commercial one that heats the water with an element so it's high power use for the 10 mins it takes to heat the water), and Jaco ran the kettle to heat water for porridge - battery dipped to 95% while the washing machine was pulling a lot, and we pulled some from the grid, but now that those are out of the way, we're generating 3x more than we're using so I've turned off the grid entirely.
(DIR) Post #AVp26CIFNuEfZq0Gm0 by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T09:08:28Z
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Here are our metrics for the morning. Red is consumption, blue is solar generation. The big red spikes are the washing machine heating water, the last thin red spike farthest to the right is the coffee machine running for the second time. The left flat red section is when just my PC was on, then when that red baseline climbs higher it's when Jaco turned his puter on too. We're averaging about 350W consumption right now, and generating 1.7kW.
(DIR) Post #AVp26CwIyyHJa4kGDA by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T09:08:37Z
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Now that we've stopped running the coffee machine and washing machine, and the sun is higher and clearing the cloud, or production has outpaced our consumption so much and on 100% battery that we've turned on the hot water geyser, and our battery is staying stable at 100%. :D
(DIR) Post #AVp26DaiYibXbPeXCa by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T10:44:56Z
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Had the hot water heater on for an hour and it drained the battery to 75%, then turned it off and the battery recharged to full in 40 minutes ^.^
(DIR) Post #AVp26ELrjQJnxdiBgu by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T12:31:44Z
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So the hot water heater took about 1h30m to fully heat the tank, at which point it stopped drawing power. During the first half of that it drained the battery to 75%, but then the clouds cleared and the battery recharged back up to 100% for the last part. We know it keeps water hot for 2-3 days, so we can just have it on for two hours during the day when it's sunny and that's our hot water sorted \o/
(DIR) Post #AVp26F1LFDUm2H7JL6 by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T12:40:08Z
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Fun statistic that's shown on our solar graphs: 'trees planted'. We've planted 0.5 trees today :D
(DIR) Post #AVp26FjIbmeoEbgPr6 by welshpixie@mastodon.art
2023-05-19T13:47:13Z
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An interesting thing has happened. There's still sun on the back panels but it has stopped producing, more or less. The battery is staying full, though, and our consumption is a stable 400W. So it must be something that just stops it pulling in when there's excess that has nowhere to go, since it doesn't go back into the grid.Edit: confirmed with solar peeps, yeah, if there's no load and the battery is full the panels won't produce ^.^
(DIR) Post #AVp26GKsM4iO79GQQS by grumpy@grumpys.online
2023-05-19T19:11:35Z
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@welshpixie I'm interested that your grid provider doesn't buy your excess power. My power company (Pacific Gas & Electric) bought my excess production and paid me to drain half my battery during peak hours last year. It felt kinda nice to fight the duck curve. But jealous of all the sun you get over there! Congrats on the install!