Solar Panels Query

[River Song]

Hi Guys

Firstly a minor disclosure. I live and work in a village where my house is provided for me as part of the job. (This has upsides and downsides which I won't go into here).

My employer and owner of the property, has recently paid for loft insulation and cavity wall insulation at her expense.

She is now going to put sikar oanels on the roof, again at her own expense and is allowing me to obviously use the generated electricity free of charge. Any money generated from the kit goes to her.

Fair enough. My question is what kind of technology/switchgear will be installed apart from the solar panels themselves and do you think I could take a link off the kit to chage some batteries? How?

Thanks people

[BeardyMan]

Depends on the system she's gone for. I presume (probably incorrectly) that it's going to be a tied into the national grid? So it'll power your house and the excess gets sold back to the electricity company.

What type of batteries would you be looking to charge? If normal ones just get a few of the decent battery chargers and run from the wall socket as per usual. AFAIK you should be able to isolate your property from the grid in a SHTF scenario, so you'll still have power (when the sun's shining)

If you want a rechargeable battery bank (leisure batteries for go off grid) then you're going to need to tap into the system. Remove the link from the internal system to the grid, put your charge controller there and hook that up to your battery bank. I'd buy the bits now (they're not extortionate) for use at a later date. I wouldn't want to get myself hoofed out of my home for making unauthorised changes to the brand new PV system

[Tigs]

depends if they are fitting a system that gives extra electricity to a power company too, some of these systems are free but have no battery back so you only get free electricity while its being produced

[Lightspeed]

Lucky you RS!

BM is right these systems are normally tied into the grid and waork as he describes.

Nix is our resident expert on the sort of installation you would like. Hopefully he'll pick up on this thread ad let you know exactly what needs to be done.

Good luck

[Geordie_Rob]

I'd go with BM for now. Normal car battery charger with a 3 pin plug. After any event, bugger knows I'm afraid.

[Highlander]

River,... if the panels are linked to the grid, there are no batteries at all, all you will have is an inverter in the loft [ probably] this is a box about two and a half foot high by about 18 inches across [ or at least mine is], like this http://www.fronius.com/cps/rde/xchg/SID-...G_HTML.htm.. you may have a devise down stairs run by blue tooth techknowledgy that shows you what the inverter is doing, .. whats being produced at any one time, how much has been produced in the week etc

There is a way of taking the power to batteries if tshtf, but I have yet to find out how it works,.. still looking for this information, it cant be hard, just that I dont know how

you will both get a good deal,.. you will get your free electric, and she will get paid the tariff

How many panels is she putting up. the most is 14, that gives you the maximum for a domestic house,.. more than that and you enter the business rates

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(21 August 2013, 08:50)BeardyMan Wrote: What type of batteries would you be looking to charge? If normal ones just get a few of the decent battery chargers and run from the wall socket as per usual. AFAIK you should be able to isolate your property from the grid in a SHTF scenario, so you'll still have power (when the sun's shining)

If you want a rechargeable battery bank (leisure batteries for go off grid) then you're going to need to tap into the system. Remove the link from the internal system to the grid, put your charge controller there and hook that up to your battery bank. I'd buy the bits now (they're not extortionate) for use at a later date. I wouldn't want to get myself hoofed out of my home for making unauthorised changes to the brand new PV system

Can you go into more detail about disconnecting from the grid to a battery bank after shtf please.

Although leisure batterys are ok, they dont recommend them [ in a perfect world] leisure batterys are designed for starting things there are deep cycle batterys designed for this job that do the job better, if you have the time and money to spend in preperation

I have just bought a bank of 6 batteries at just under £800....
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/27TMH-Trojan-B...4174804279

[I-K-E]

for post SHTF I'm assuming that you will need a suitable charge controller that will connect to the solar panels and the charge the battery bank

if you look at the camping type solar setups that all that they do you would just need to up scale according to the solar setup on the roof

[BeardyMan]

(21 August 2013, 21:29)Highlander Wrote: Although leisure batterys are ok, they dont recommend them [ in a perfect world] leisure batterys are designed for starting things there are deep cycle batterys designed for this job that do the job better, if you have the time and money to spend in preperation

I have just bought a bank of 6 batteries at just under £800....
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/27TMH-Trojan-B...4174804279

A leisure battery is a deep cycle battery? They're used in narrowboats/caravans etc

Someone told me that the best ones you can pick up for the price are used golf cart batteries.


To hook your panels into a battery bank instead of the mains you need to drop back to a basic PV - Charge Controller - Battery set up. So into the loft, where the connectors from the PV panels terminates in the inverter you have in the roof, swap this with your charge controller, then feed that into the batteries.

Of you could be really fancy and stick a switch/relay in there (before the inverter / charge controller) and divert the flow of electrickery wherever your heart desired.

[Nix]

Hi guys n gals! Been away for a week in North Devon (Exmoor is great! ) so only just back this evening.

Need to know what set up the installers have done to offer advice here. As everyone has said, this will undoubtedly be a grid tie set up. This means that, left as it is, if/when the grid goes down, so does the grid tie inverter. Please read my solar thread for more details here.

If SHTF then you really must be prepared. You need a suitable controller, the right inverter and a bank of deep cycle batteries along with various connectors and correct cabling.

DON'T mess with the installation without understanding what it is first. If the set up is such that the solar panels are connected in series for a high voltage, you can get a shock! Also, if there is a problem cos you've touched it then they'll try and sting you for it.

Re batteries, never tried the Trojans so can't comment on them. However, I do use Xplorer 125ah deep cycle batteries which, so far, do a great job. You can check 'em out here (you can find these guys on fleabay selling a pair for £169.99 delivered - item 120734871401), they are an excellent price and have a 4 year warranty. Definitely far superior to the deep cycle 113ah Lucas batteries I originally tried.

First things first. What system have they put in ie what voltage solar panels, how many, how are they configured for what input voltage to the grid tie inverter?

[River Song]

Nix

Thanks for the response. They haven't installed yet.
All I know is that my employer is putting into my house (owned by her).
PV on south facing bit of roof and somehow tied into the grid.
Supposed to mean that I get some cheaper electricity and she gets
something from generating and sellback.

That much I understand. Obviously I would like to get some prepping use out of it was well.

As soon as I have got some indication of what is what --- I will repost

Cheers
RS