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  • #31
    But they sure are nice to look at.
    2.2kw Suntech mono, Classic 200, NEW Trace SW4024

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    • #32
      Sure - I new pics I'll cut the resolution in half - easy with Flickr - just pick the res you want to share.

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      • #33
        Originally posted by tyab View Post
        Sure - I new pics I'll cut the resolution in half - easy with Flickr - just pick the res you want to share.
        I try to keep size under 150K, which seems to be plenty for this app. Bruce Roe

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        • #34
          Couple of early mornings and later evenings dealing with cold and mud and mounts 3 and 4 have their rails installed. That completes all of the 32 rails for the four mounts. It feel really good to have all those rails installed.



          The mud is a lot better today after a day of sunshine. Next item for mounts 3 and 4 are the custom brackets/junction boxes and 3/4" EMT tubing. Plan is to install all remaining 68 panels on Saturday so I have to get that EMT tubing in place by Friday night - Thursday and Friday will be days of limited sleep and lots of time in the dark and cold.

          After getting the rails done I went and setup the flood light and went looking for the 690.47(D) ground rod for mount #3. This was buried when the excavator graded and filled the elevation change from mount 3 to mount 4. I had a general idea of where it was, and I knew it was still covered by one of the Home Depot buckets I put over every ground rod. This was one of the times I enjoyed the cold so I could really go at it - and after some digging I found it about a foot underground - mostly where I thought it would be. Then I dug a trench from it toward the left toward the West/North vertical pipe where it the GEC will go. The rest of the trench will need the hammer drill for the concrete that filled over. Not shown is the digging I did for the NFPA 780 bound trench to get it ready for splicing.



          Over lunch I wend down to check out how the retaining wall is going. With the good weather, my excavator friend had a day off and was here all day working on the upper retaining walls for mounts 1 and 2. He is making good progress - he thinks it will take him another two or three weeks to finish (just doing it a day a week - as long as we don't have another massive rain). He is really having to pack in that dirt on the uphill side of the wall due to all the rain. He believes we have enough blocks now to finish the walls - we have basically bought every block from every yard in a 40 mile radius.


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          • #35
            Those blocks, around here, the ready-mix yards call them eco-blocks and mold them from leftover truckloads, Are they certified for retaining walls, with only the 1 rib to restrain them ? A mound of wet mud behind them, could upset them.
            Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
            || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
            || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

            solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
            gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

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            • #36
              Local code here allows non-engineered walls as long as they do not exceed 4' in a single face. Terracing allowed but I don't know what the rules for that are specifically - I'm relying on my friend but he is a licensed excavation and erosion contractor so I'm assuming he is doing this to local codes. We did not file any permits for the wall - when I did the solar permit I asked the building department and they simply asked - will any single wall be over 4' high? When I said no - they said no permit needed. But the AHJ will want to see erosion control for the top soil which is generally here seed with something on top of it to protect the seed - like hay or mesh mats. They also said what they don't want to see is that small landscape type of brick against a hillside - it does not have the mass. Also no grading that exceeds 20 degrees until it hits the natural slope. I called the building department early last week and asked if I could get the solar final if the retaining wall was not done and they said no problem since what we are doing does not require a permit and thus the solar would not depend on it.

              When I had the first inspection the AHJ asked what we were going to do and I described those large concrete blocks and he simply said - "good - your not using the small stuff".

              Helps that this is a rural area. From my online searches, if you are in any of the larger cities in the CA central valley the requirements can be quite strict.

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              • #37
                With the clear sky in that picture, it should produce. Always an issue here in NW ILL. Getting the panels in place will probably be
                a lot less effort than wiring them up.

                With my array following the slope of the ground, I had a lot less mud. BUT it was all on a slope, and by the next summer a lot of
                stuff had washed away and expanded the mud area. I hired a landscape outfit to fill, plant and mesh matt it before it got worse.
                Leveled some ridges from past farm buildings at the same time.

                Will you be revealing the cost per watt? Bruce Roe

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by bcroe View Post
                  With the clear sky in that picture, it should produce. Always an issue here in NW ILL. Getting the panels in place will probably be
                  a lot less effort than wiring them up.

                  With my array following the slope of the ground, I had a lot less mud. BUT it was all on a slope, and by the next summer a lot of
                  stuff had washed away and expanded the mud area. I hired a landscape outfit to fill, plant and mesh matt it before it got worse.
                  Leveled some ridges from past farm buildings at the same time.

                  Will you be revealing the cost per watt? Bruce Roe
                  Probably depends on what the OP feels his time is worth.

                  Although it looks like he does nice work and I would hire him in a heartbeat.
                  Last edited by SunEagle; 12-01-2016, 12:39 PM. Reason: added last sentence.

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                  • #39
                    This weekend the entire family was on solar work - and we finished installing all microinverters and panels. It has been a week since those heavy rains but now we have freezing mornings and when it starts to thaw that ground gets insanely slippery. I drove down to the site with a load of panels in the back of my 4WD Yukon only to almost lose it going down that hill and completely unable to get back up until I chained up all four tires. Sunday warmed up quite a bit so it was much better and safer but I still chained up.



                    Torquing the last bolt on the next to last panel. That panel is about 8'-6" off the ground there. Kids are making sure that ladder is steady at the bottom.



                    Now the real fun finally begins - internal wiring. Time to haul all that #6 down there and start hooking all of that up.

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                    • #40
                      Excavation was broken into three phases - initial clearing and tree removable - pad work, trenching, filing and sand - and retaining wall which is still an estimate currently. I know I am getting all of this part of the project for about 1/2 of what it really should have cost.

                      If you take everything including all the cool tools I needed to do this and the initial package from Wholesalesolar and all the hardware (stainless stuff and raw metal) wire, conduit and endless hardware and misc stuff - I'm right around $4.70/watt. What is missing from that is a mileage adjustment and I still don't have a bid on the asphalt driveway repair. And I now have so many new tools now. An of course my time is considered free. About 1/2 of the total costs are the microinverters, panels, rails and directly related hardware. The rest is excavation and everything else I needed to for this location - wire, conduit, tools, hardware and on and on.

                      My best guess is a ground system for my situation ended up being 40% more expensive than a roof location - if it were possible (which it is not for my home layout).

                      We are at 3200' elevation so we are above all that central CA valley crud - we have mostly clear air and cooler temps so output should be good.

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                      • #41
                        I know I have been really quiet lately - between work travel and the rain and endless hours finishing up this project in the freezing cold/mud/rain have kept me really busy. I passed the final inspection today and already submitted my NEM 2.0 (cry - just 2 weeks late for the NEM 1.0 cutoff...) application to PG&E. I have a ton of pics and will post updates in a few days.

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                        • #42
                          I'm testing all my microinverters now that I have passed the final and of the 80 inverters 79 are communicating - barely. Seems the Envoy-S is having a very hard time over the distance which is over 400' from the house to the solar subpanel. Took hours just to get the inverters to be found, and the mobile app is showing 0 bars for every inverter. Heck I don't even know if that one inverter is ok or not given the communication is so poor. I'll go down to the system (in the light rain with snow expected tonight) and check it all out in a bit to see if that inverter has a loose connection or something stupid that I did.

                          I have the Envoy-S plugged into a dedicated 15 amp circuit - nothing else on it - and this circuit is literally right behind the main service panel. Maybe 6' of wire total. It is impossible to get a closer outlet at the home. Nothing else is on this circuit - just the one outlet. All of the wire from that subpanel down the solar system is very oversized with total voltage drop around 1.7% for the entire path to the farthest inverter (that distance is a bit over 600'). It does not seem to matter - the closest inverter is about 420' away and the farthest one is over 600' and all are 0 bars.

                          So I'm thinking about switching up the problem. Instead of having the Envoy-S trying to communicate the 400'+ to the inverters, I'm thinking about moving it into its own NEMA 4X box down at the solar and using Home Plug AV2 networking to get communication down there. That way the Envoy-S is only having to deal with distances from 15' to 200' down there with everything using #6 wire. My thinking on this is (and I don't have any hard data yet) is that whatever communication Enphase is using is based on something similar to the old X10 which I know has horrible distance issues and the newer Home Plug AV2 stuff is really high frequency with lots of forward error correction and so on and it might be far better at that distance.

                          I have never used the Home Plug stuff but I did some searching on other networking specific type of forums and the problem I'm running into is I can't find anyone that is using it over the distances I would be using it (maybe 420' total including the new #10 wire that box will need to hook up to that solar subpanel down there). I did find a reference to a max supported distance of 300 meters but it was just in a forum post - I can't find the actual spec (yet). Everything I find is about getting max speed within a residence and nothing about longer distance. I'll keep looking.

                          Has anyone here worked with Home Plug AV2? Oh and have a great New Years!

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                          • #43
                            The combination of long distances and many competing data sources can be fatal to a simple communication protocol. The time lag messes up collision detection and retries.
                            I would definitely put the Envoy as close to the inverters as possible and then relay the IP traffic with any available long distance bridge.
                            SunnyBoy 3000 US, 18 BP Solar 175B panels.

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                            • #44
                              Ditto. I'd use a RF wireless router from the array to the house, trying to do 2 different powerline comms will be problematic.
                              Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
                              || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
                              || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

                              solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
                              gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                For RF - line of site is going to be an issue - there is no line of site between the solar system and the house. The solar is on the lower back side of a hill from the house. It would be possible (but hard at this point) to dig a trench up to a point where line of site exists, and install a RF directional antenna there. Man I am simply kicking myself for not running an empty 1-1/4" conduit all the way down there in the trench with the electrical when I did that trench - then I would have had a number of long distance wired solutions available. To be honest I figured with that oversized cable the Envoy would have no issue but I failed to think about all of the massive interference my house and most likely my home office is generating on the power lines.

                                When the weather clears I will try taking that Envoy-S down there, and temporarily patch it into solar subpanel and put it in AP mode and see how well it communicates with the microinverters via the mobile app. My suspicion is it will have good communication down there. If so then I will try using Homeplug AV2 units. If that causes too much interference then options become much harder and expensive to achieve. I do have a pool about 1/2 of the way down there, and it would be possible to setup a RF repeater there since that location does have line of sight with both the solar and the house.

                                I guess the cost to including recent powerline communication technology for Enphase is too high while keeping the older stuff for backwards compatibility.

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