My PV Solar Stuff
Doubling My PV System Capacity
I doubled my system capacity / size by fitting a 2nd row of 9 PV panels and a 2nd Eversolar TL1500AS inverter.
This time I fitted 9 X NESL DJ-190 D/A 190 Watt mono panels. I can now monitor the performance differences between the original Trunsun Solar TSM190 /MONO using the EverSolar PMU and AS Control software.
It is definitely not an economical way to do it. Consumers should always install the absolute maximum system size they can fit and afford in the first place. 2 X 1.5kW inverters cost more than 1 X 3kW inverter. The resubmission of paperwork, the re-inspection fees etc all add up. But it does have at least one advantage, it gives me redundancy, if something goes wrong with one of the systems instead of losing all of my generating capacity, I only lose half of it.
My Smart Meter was reprogrammed today
When I got home from work tonight, I started the dishwasher up as it was full and I was running out of crockery and cutlery. Then as part of my ritual, I went outside to read and record my electricity meter readings for usage and solar fed in for the past 24 hours so I could add the data to my spreadsheet.
I was confronted with a usage reading of 0000.4 kWh and a feed in of 0000.0 kWh. They showed 2251.9 kWh and 116.1 kWh yesterday.
1st June 2011 output
Using the Solmetric data and punching it into the CEC spreadsheet, June is the worst month of the year for solar generation. The following is my generation for the 1st day of June 2011 and it was a cloud free day..
Accessing the EverSolar PMU remotely
My Inverter and PMU are in my garage and my 4 port wireless router is inside the house. Initially to get the PMU running I had to temporarily run a CAT5 network cable from the garage and into the house this was a pain and a trip hazard.
So off to eBay I went looking for a cheap wireless bridge. I settled on a Vonets VAP11G that cost me $28AUD delivered. It came with a disk and was easy to set up and so far has been working just fine.
Prova 210 I-V curve tracer
At work I have access to a Prova 210 Solar Panel Analyser / I-V curve tracer.
It is a very handy instrument for testing solar panels and analysing their I-V-P curves.
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