Hi All

Apologies for the long delay in continuing the thread, it's been busy in the barn and a three week trip to catch up with friends and family which included a week with a couple of old shipmates trying to drink the entire supply of Metaxa brandy in a Greek marina bar in 6 consecutive nights, has slowed me down somewhat (The brain thinks it's still capable of behaving like a 25 year old Bootneck, the body knows it's not......

Anyway, the photo is of one of 4 panels I picked up in the UK for £70 each, apparently from a solar farm, 4/5 years old. the insurance company replaced everything after some were storm damaged.

Bruce, as I'm sure you - and everyone else who has been using the forum! - are aware, I'm pretty much in the dark with anything electric, and even worse with electronics, so please feel free to question my thoughts, but....


The immersion elements  (3) I have in the hot water cyclinder are 1000w / 220v, odes this mean I could just link all four panels in series and then connect them directly to one (or more) of the elements?

Cheers
Stef

Hi once again Gents

Sorry for the slow reply, I'm off on a bit of a trip on Sunday, Greece, Holland, UK and back and trying to get caught up with things before departure, it's not going to happen!

Thanks once more for further food for thought

Bruce,

A couple of points....
 The Victron is a Multiplus 12v/3000va/120amp, it supplies a nominal 240v dc, not 120.

As for solar panels, I don't have any yet!

When I do I'll have to try and hide them from the Mayor, he refused my mate permission to have a pair of small arrays, about 8 feet long by 5 feet high in a field behind his house because the land is 'red zoned' for agricultural use only and anyway it would spoil the view, even though you can't see the site from anyone else's land. he's now got permission to mount them on the slate roof of his 300 year old farmhouse, clearly visible from the main road, the Mayor don't like that but has no power to  stop it as the regs for that come from a higher level of administration, apparently....

My place is a barn conversion and it says in the conditions of conversion that PV panels on the (slate, has to be slate, nailed, like Grandaddy did, not clipped even though you can't tell the difference from the road, 300 yards away) roof and my land is also red zoned......


Bruce / Mi,

I like the idea of direct from the panels straight into an element, is that something that would be self regulating, ie under less than optimal cloudy conditions or at night, it would simply render the element less efficient, or 'off'? any links to the inverters would be appreciated.

I'm, hopefully, going to build a small shed for the hydro plant later in the summer so I guess I could put the CS in there with an automatic timed start stop on it and run it 3 hours a day, I've got loads of WVO......

Veggie,

As I clicked to post this reply your post came up.....

Looks very promising, I'll get onto it, thanks very much.

Cheers
Stef

Hi All
As posted else where I'm well into the off grid barn project, anything mechanical isn't a problem, but if it has anything electrically challenging I get to my limits in very short order!

Here's the first situation I could do with some input on.

At present I have a wood fired oven with a back boiler (a converted 1980's oil burning Rayburn) which supplies a 20mm (3/4'') coil in a very well insulated 110 litre (20 gallon) domestic hot water tank, before going on to feed 2 towel radiators a large cast iron radiator and underfloor heating. It works surprisingly well with thermo syphon, tho' I have built in a pump, just in case.

It gets the water up to 45 / 50 degrees c (110 / 125f)  from around 25c (left over from the night before) with no trouble and warms the rest of the barn too.

The cylinder has 3 standard (2 1/4 BSP) 1000w 220v immersion heaters fitted - as I had the tank custom made I had three immersion heater fittings and a few extra 3/4 BSP fittings for temperature gauges ect put in, so that I have the choice of heating water by PV panels, the generator or a hydro genny without having to have any change over switch gear. It also gives a large amount of redundancy.

 I did mention that I try to avoid anything complicated in the electronic department, didn't I? (It was only by being a member here that I discovered Mosfet wasn't a resort on the Red Sea)

A couple of weeks ago I did a bit of a trial and an hours run with a 3kva genny supplying one 1000w heater, it raised the temperature in the tank (at the very top) from 25 to 35 degrees c in an hour.

As the days are getting longer and warmer I'll be using the stove less and don't have time to start on a little hydro plant yet, I wondered if there is an easy way of connecting solar panels to one of the immersion heaters and dumping everything into heating the water. A system where a temperature gauge in the hot water tank switched the output into the batteries would be good. As of today we're getting in excess of eight hours sun a day, The barn is in a north / south valley and we loose a bit at each end of the day behind the ridges either side, we get quite a lot of sunny days and the air up here is clear too.

For 220v power I have an HGI remote work station genset I picked up (unused) off eBay which has a 3 kw Hatz single cylinder diesel charging four deep cycle batteries (in parallel) through a Victron Multiplus 3000 inverter charger, which all works automatically, as soon as the voltage in the batteries drop below the preset.

No, I didn't design, programme or set it up in any way, I just plugged all the connections in, added batteries and filled the tank, honest!

It would be nice to get a little  solar power into the batteries but I'd rather heat the water first (I'm only burning around 1.2 litres / 3 pints of diesel (with 20% wvo) a day, depending on power tool usage)

The one small issue I have encountered so far is that the Victron is so sensitive that it doesn't like to power the immersion elements, all three have a very tiny earth leak and and this causes the Victron to shut down automatically. I did the trial with a 1960's Villers powered genset that didn't object at all. I checked with the heater manufactures and the tech guy was most helpful, and said he's not surprised and that under mains fed circumstances the 'leak' would not be enough to trip an RCD. This leaves me to believe a totally separate circuit would be better.

I don't object to changing the immersion heater to a 12v model, I made a few enquiries and they seem to be available, with adaptors to 2 1/4'' BSP

So, as you can see I'm trying to keep everything simple, Any suggestions on size of panels,  controlers, size of cables and anything else I don't know about is more than welcome, I can probably stand a little abuse too!

Thanks in expectation....

Cheers
Stef

Hi All

Well, I've only gone and kept on doing it!

I've been busy over the last couple of years. the hoverbarge project took up a lot of time, I hit 66 last year and left, but they manged without me and got it going, despite more problems that man can imagine, for those interested there's a clip of some of the trials, in the Caspian, off Baku here....

http://mangistauacvsolutions.com/#home

For the last year I've been plodding on with the barn and it's getting pretty respectable now. I've been living up here for the last two months, with a Rayburn wood fired stove for cooking, supplying hot water and underfloor heating. Even with the temperatures down to -4/5 and occasionally 10 degrees (C) I've been comfortable.

The big jobs are now all done, road,  septic tank, bathroom etc. now it's down to the steady plod of all the trim and having fun with the 'add ons' solar. hydro and keeping the Landies running.

This means there will be more posts from me, Land Rovers are easy enough but I'm going to need some help and advice on the other two, so O thought I'd bring this thread upto date before posting other topics.

I hope everyone has had as much fun as I have in the last 3 years or so, pandemics and military interventions notwithstanding and arestill keeping on keeping on!

Cheers
Stef 

Thanks from me too!!

Cheers
Stef

Welcome back Gary, glad to hear your health is improving.

Cheers
Stef

Hi All

I thought I'd 'bump' this thread in support of Veggies 'Simple starter' thread.

As you can see its pretty simple, but a bit of fabrication is needed.

I still haven't got around to getting it more 'startomatic' yet, the refurb of the barn has taken off and five weeks back I got called out to  Azerbaijan on the hoverbarge project I've mentioned a time or too before.

Cheers
Stef