Aloha from a Solar Newbie in Hawaii

[WH6FQE]

Hi All,

I just find it hard to believe that there is not a warehouse somewhere in Hawaii thats full of solar panels battery's and inverters, CC's you need to make this happen, surely if you called the biggest solar installer in Hawaii and explained your situation they would be able to point you in the right direction. It seems Sunking is busy with a new business venture but I am sure he will help you design a system that will meet your needs.

Seriously I suggest the OP calls the biggest privately owned solar installer in Hawaii, so not vivint or sunrun or any of those clowns a real electrical business, explain your situation as you have here and I am sure they will be able to help you, let me know how you go, cheers.

There are lots of warehouses full of solar panels here in Hawaii, along with lots of solar companies that want to come and install the system for you, that is the problem though. They won't just sell you the panels. They want you to LEASE the system from them. And I do not want anything to do with their grid-tied system. Almost everyone in the neighborhood has those systems, and everytime the power goes out at night they are screwed because there is no battery backup in their houses. The system is tied into the grid so that in the daytime you are feeding electricity into the system to HECO, but when an outage occurs, you are just like everyone else that doesnt have 30 panels or so on their roofs.

I want this system completely separate from HECO. I am not asking HECO for their permission to have a solar system and getting on a waiting list now because they have reached the immaginary cap that HECO set for our area.

I'm not feeding inthing into HECO, if they want power they can generate their own. Mine will only be generating for my use.

[WH6FQE]

Good to hear that you were successful.

I don't know what your antennas look like, but if they shadow your roof, solar won't work very well. (And yes, even if they only shadow a little of your roof. Any crystalline panel loses most of its output if even a fraction of it is shaded.) You can get around that to some degree with things like DC optimizers, but that won't restore capacity, just make the remaining (unshaded) strings work better.

If that's the case you would probably be better off installing on a neighbor's roof and using the DC from them. Or (again) installing a generator.

My antennas do not shadow my roof at all. I have no shadows anywhere on my roof except for shadows from the east/west roof itself as the sun moves across the sky. My house is the tallest structure in the area, and even our palm trees will take many years to even reach our roofline. We have lived in this house for 17 years now and in that time they have grown less than a foot tall, so at that rate, I will be dead and gone before I have to worry about them causing shadows on my roof.

Also you are going to want to see how all the EMI from the solar stuff interferes with your system. Unfortunately solar arrays are pretty good antennas for the crud that gets back onto the array wiring from the MPPT.

Yeah, thats the part that is worrying me now. I may be doing all of this for nothing if it interferes with my radios.

[bcroe]

My antennas do not shadow my roof at all. I have no shadows anywhere on my roof except for shadows from the east/west roof itself

Yeah, thats the part that is worrying me now. I may be doing all of this for nothing if it interferes with my radios.

Do not use optimizers, which turn each panel into an interference generator. From the description,
you have no need for them anyway. The equipment can be quieted, more on that when you get that
far. Bruce Roe

[WH6FQE]

Do not use optimizers, which turn each panel into an interference generator. From the description,
you have no need for them anyway. The equipment can be quieted, more on that when you get that
far. Bruce Roe

Ok, will be a few weeks before the panels get here, so I am just in a holding pattern until then I suppose.

Will the interference be coming from the panels or the controller? I could possibly rethink my antenna / panel / controller setup to place the majority of house between the interference and the antennas, possibly.

[bcroe]

Ok, will be a few weeks before the panels get here, so I am just in a holding pattern until then I suppose.

Will the interference be coming from the panels or the controller? I could possibly rethink my antenna /
panel / controller setup to place the majority of house between the interference and the antennas, possibly.

Panels do not generate interference, switchers do. Bruce Roe

[WH6FQE]

OK.

Two propane fed 2200 watt generators are about $450 each, from Walmart (so you can get them there.) Get a few rebuild kits as well...

Would you happen to know where off hand I can order the rebuild kits from? I ordered 2 of the generators from Home Depot when WalMart canceled my order, along with the connection kit in case I need to connect them together for 4400-watt generation for anything, but I plan on only running them one at a time. I like the idea of keeping a spare set aside as a backup.

I am hoping that I will be able to get away with solar during the day and if I have to propane at night if the batteries can't handle it. Along with all of the other emergency supplies that I stock up, I would want to have a 21 day supply for the generator, which would basically be 21 tanks since according to what I read about the generator shows that a tank would last about 13 hours. That's a crapload of propane in the garage. I am already nervous about the single tank I have down there now for the BBQ grill, lol.

[solar pete]

Hi WH6FQE I think its time Solar Panel Talk stepped up and did something for the greater good. If you are prepared to work with me I am prepared to sponsor (pay for) your system. I can get all the equipment to you BUT it must be planned properly for SPT to be involved. I am going to send you an offline email and I am going to call on the assistance of a couple of the experienced people here, Mike and SK come to mind AND I want a experienced pro to put the system together with you, I believe I can arrange that, check your email, cheers

[WH6FQE]

Panels do not generate interference, switchers do. Bruce Roe

That what I was thinking, which is going to definitely be a problem. I could have created some shielding between the panels and my antennas with them being on the opposite side of the house from each other, however the solar controllers and radios are in the same room. Ouch.

[WH6FQE]

Hi WH6FQE I think its time Solar Panel Talk stepped up and did something for the greater good. If you are prepared to work with me I am prepared to sponsor (pay for) your system. I can get all the equipment to you BUT it must be planned properly for SPT to be involved. I am going to send you an offline email and I am going to call on the assistance of a couple of the experienced people here, Mike and SK come to mind AND I want a experienced pro to put the system together with you, I believe I can arrange that, check your email, cheers

I will be watching my email.

[solar pete]

Email sent, I have emailed a couple of other people but it will take some time for a reply, just so you know I am in Australia I emailed the sites owners about this and one of them was reading the thread at the time and suggested we see what we could do to help you out, so I am going back to re read this thread again as you may have already given most of the info we need but in a nutshell we need to know

1. Load requirements or a loads analysis, how many watt hours or kilowatt hours does the system need to deliver to run your radio equipment as I dont envisage building a huge hybrid (on grid and off grid system) I am assuming this will be a separate stand alone system to keep the radio gear running
2. Where is the system to be installed on your house, on your shed, in another building somewhere else

I had a look at your website and see you have some golf cart batteries so you may be further down the track that I first though but either way think we can help you out, cheers

[Mike90250]

I finally got Matthew at Renogy talked into shipping 4 of their 300 watt 24 volt solar panels to me today. They won't be here for a few weeks because they are going to come on a container ship and the shipping cost was almost half the cost of the panels, but at least they finally agreed to ship them to me now. They also agreed to ship me additional panels in the future if I want to pay their international freight shipping charges.

1,200 nameplate watts = 960 harvestable watts under great conditions, less power with more heat.
So you have about 900w for 5 hours. Thats 4,500 watt hours, and you can count on that only being able to feed a 6kwh bank ( you are only allowed to use half of your flooded battery bank, or you are deeply cycling your deep cycle batteries and they won't last too long

Any daytime running usage amps will be subtracted from your battery recharge amps

Where are the electronics and batteries going to live ?

Does your gear run off 12V or 120V ? Antenna rotator ? Station lights ? vent fan ?

900W @ 13V = 70A (700ah bank)
900W @ 26V = 35A (350ah bank)
900W @ 52V - 18A (180ah bank)

This chart may help:

BatteryWattHourCapacity.jpg

[WH6FQE]

Email sent, I have emailed a couple of other people but it will take some time for a reply, just so you know I am in Australia I emailed the sites owners about this and one of them was reading the thread at the time and suggested we see what we could do to help you out, so I am going back to re read this thread again as you may have already given most of the info we need but in a nutshell we need to know

1. Load requirements or a loads analysis, how many watt hours or kilowatt hours does the system need to deliver to run your radio equipment as I dont envisage building a huge hybrid (on grid and off grid system) I am assuming this will be a separate stand alone system to keep the radio gear running
2. Where is the system to be installed on your house, on your shed, in another building somewhere else

I had a look at your website and see you have some golf cart batteries so you may be further down the track that I first though but either way think we can help you out, cheers

I just emailed you back. Thanks a lot. I was actually just speaking with my counterpart down in Australia about the difficulties I have been having getting real panels here instead of these 100-watt toys.

[WH6FQE]

1,200 nameplate watts = 960 harvestable watts under great conditions, less power with more heat.
So you have about 900w for 5 hours. Thats 4,500 watt hours, and you can count on that only being able to feed a 6kwh bank ( you are only allowed to use half of your flooded battery bank, or you are deeply cycling your deep cycle batteries and they won't last too long

Any daytime running usage amps will be subtracted from your battery recharge amps

Where are the electronics and batteries going to live ?

Does your gear run off 12V or 120V ? Antenna rotator ? Station lights ? vent fan ?

900W @ 13V = 70A (700ah bank)
900W @ 26V = 35A (350ah bank)
900W @ 52V - 18A (180ah bank)

This chart may help:

BatteryWattHourCapacity.jpg

Right now the radios batteries and everything are in the same room, upstairs in my house. I know you normally wouldn't want to have flooded lead acid batteries stored indoors, but the room has windows on 3 sides that have never been closed once in the 17 years I have lived here. They provide really good cross ventillation for any offgassing from the batteries. As an additional safety measure I also have a small 12-volt fan hooked up to it's own small solar panel and battery sitting outside on the lanai to direct airflow across the battery bank at times when the wind is not blowing strong enough.

All of the radios all run off of 12 volt, as does my station lighting. The only thing that is on 120 are the computers and monitors. My radios and lighting are currently connected to a pair of 50amp power supplies and battery isolators that will be connected to the system. When the AC power goes out the isolators will automatically switch over to the battery bank power until the AC power is restored, and then switch back. At least that's what they said when they sold the battery isolators to me, lol.

[bcroe]

That what I was thinking, which is going to definitely be a problem. I could have created some shielding between the panels and my antennas with them being on the opposite side of the house from each other, however the solar controllers and radios are in the same room. Ouch.

If the off grid experts and you can solve the energy problems, I might be able to help with
switcher noise. There are a couple boxes of near new EMC filters removed from equipment
in my attic. If some fit the issue, could get to HI in a Fixed Rate Box, instead of cluttering here.
Bruce Roe

[Mike90250]

How many batteries do you have ? I worry about the dead load. Water beds weigh more, but are spread out over more area.

do you close the windows in storms (not likely to have much charging going on then)

You should exercise the auto switch over once in a while, pull the plug or switch off the breaker. Make sure it works, and also, batteries on float 24/7, sometimes forget how to discharge, and should be deeply cycled at least once a year to keep plate material active.

Are your computers laptops or desktops ? Big difference in loads, 80W for laptop, 300w for desktop & more for it's monitor