Off The Grid

I'm shaking my head.... Went to a funeral today and the chatter after the ceremony the back chatter was about this storm rolling in. One lady said her husband was running all over town trying to find a generator. My wife looked at my like "don't say a word"... I can't believe people are not even prepared a tiny little bit.

Silver is at $99.31.

I saw it make 13.4kw but couldn't catch it in a screen shot. Also 209amps into the battery may seem like a lot but it's spread over 4 batteries, so 50amps each. The BMS's are rated for 150amps and these MB31 cells should be charged at 0.5C rate which means 157amps.

We test everything periodically. here's the generator running and dogs supervising. Also, the EG4 chargeverter is just pumping 7500w into my batteries.

This system has 6 strings of panels. Each string is 4 in series on the front facing roof and 4 in series on the back facing roof. We have run each string of 8 panels into the mech room and into a breaker. So there are 6 breakers. We combine two breakers into one terminal strip and that goes through another breaker to each MPPT. Now there are 3 mppts making 4480w each making 13.44kw together. Those 48 panels on the roof can make 26kw in total, so the overpanel factor is 2:1. This means even on cloudy days we should still make almost 13kw from about 10am until 4pm. We'll see today!

Yesterday evening I went over to add an additional MPPT unit to the neighbor's system. The original design requirement was that we neded to make 10kw at solar noon in winter. Two victron 250/100 units would do that, but one got hot and let the magic smoke out and another one got taken out with it. We borrowed two spares from another guy and he wanted his units capped at 80% power. We saw that they didn't get hot at all. So while my guy got two units replaced under warranty, he ordered a 3rd unit. With three units installed and hobbled at 80% we can make 13.2kw most of the day. picture above is at 8:40 local time, just getting started.

https://youtu.be/fx0Grh4SWLc

Well..... harbor freight is out of generators. Everyone in panoc mode for the winter storm.