Hey Guys...
Sitting hunched and shivering over my laptop and a cuppa coffee in my fridge office... At my desk its 12.5C... I'm frucking fozen....
Weather is overcast, miserable and raining, I don't know how you buggers can handle the snow, sleet and slush... You can keep it!
Been playing with some demo software on the solar/inverter system for the past few days - ICC (Inverter Control Center) - Its basically a nice dashboard/front end with data logging facilities for the Axpert 5KVA unit I've got hooked up.. Runs on a RaspberryPi and seems pretty damn stable and usable! I think I'll save up a bit and stick some money their way, looks more than capable for what I need...
Interestingly, with the logger running, I have been able to plot my power harvest curves and make a couple of minor tweaks to both settings and installation, power becomes usable here at around 06h30 where the 4Kw array starts picking up some rays and gets about 200-500W flowing into the batteries. The batteries get out of bed at about 08h00 when they have a bit of juice in them and their voltage gets above the threshold I have set, allowing the inverter to come on and start doing some work... This continues through the day, running pretty much the entire place (if there's sun of course...unlike today when its miserable and shitty)... Peak solar I have measured over the past few days has been around 3Kw, enough to run the whole place, offices included, as well as the old power hungry dishwasher... I'm happy with that!
Evening power drops below self sustenance at around 16h00 and it starts being aided by the batteries, this continues on till around 17h30, then the system goes to sleep and we run on the grid... Time to start working on some decent lead acid battery making soon, I think... But, there is one wee little thing I am planning on before I beef up the DC bottles... I am planning on one more solar string, wasn't sure whether I should make it a morning or evening string, but from the logging I have done, it looks like it will be an afternoon/evening facing string that will come out tops.... Anybody done this yet? Faced a string upwards at midday to see max yield and then horizon West in the evening to see potential capabilities from the same string? C'mon Glort, at least you should be able to gimme an answer!!
If I can extend another hour or so at a Pv output of about 1.2Kw out of the system, I think I will have met my goal!
Enough rambling...
Coffees' getting cold....
Cheers
Ed
PS - My new (old) toy has arrived... An old Landini tractor I am going to rebuild (not restore) and get running again, a largish one... Mechanically, most bits seem present, bodywork is best described as "15 000 rust holes moving in close formation"...