Sharing is caring right?
Got more of the system hooked up today (Sunday).
Course it took waaaaaay longer than its allotted time, I am not happy with the performance, we have zero automation as yet (since it’s a work in progress I refuse to spend time coding when it still could (will) all change) and well… then there is the wiring…….
I think we can just be happy that a) I did a better job wiring Garys RV and b) that I don’t do this for a living.
Ok, so we have some Opto hardware, the key to it all really.
Some solar power coming down the wall.
Some batteries (crash test dummies, not the real deal yet).
The grid tie inverter on the lounge next to the Opto.
A multimeter.
Then, all the lovely data ends up in groov.
This is the current messy screen for it all.
Below this section is a bunch of trends, you don’t need to see them yet, but they help me track whats happening over time.
The one trend you can see is the power pulled by the house from the grid and the power pushed into the house from the grid tie inverter.
I am pulling around a kW and am pushing between 100 and 200 watts. Pretty lame.
Panel 2 is charging the battery. Negative power is charging, positive power is drawing from the battery. This way I can keep track of watt hours (amp hours) added and watt hours taken – well, thats the plan.
Panel 3 is doing nothing.
Looking at the trend, you can see the orange line go from 100 to 200 watts, for that duration, I had panel 3 switched into the grid tie.
Note that I do the gti efficiency calculation. According to the math, it’s pretty good. The heatsink gets hot (you can see the temp to the left), I am going to have to do something about that (Like bolt a real heat sink to the back of it), and given the heat it pushes out, I think my math is wrong, other than that… its a pretty number.
So yeah, I can ‘force’ the gti to work harder, but don’t see why I should…. Panel 1 is only outputting half its rated power.
Then again, so are the other two. Its like I have 120 watt panels, not 255 watt panels. Watch this space because when I test short circuit current, I get 8 amps, so I know it can deliver the amps, but the voltage seems to be fading more than expected. (And yes, I have very thick wire coming from the panels, so thats not the issue).
Right now, I have to press on with other honey-do jobs, so have left the batteries charging off panel 2 and panel 3 boosting the gti.
