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  • A good inverter

    I am in southern Indiana and wanting to do a grid tie system, I am looking at 26 x 325 panels for a total of 8450 watts. What would be a good size and brand inverter for me?
    Thanks

  • #2
    Fronius make a good line of grid tie string inverters in northern Indiana. Good products and very good service.

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    • #3
      Does your local city code require "Rapid Shutdown" system ? If so, a string system with optimizers and a central inverter may be a good choice, as the Optimizers will perform the Rapid Shutdown requirement.

      If you have shade issues, only then would micro-inverters be a preferred choice.

      Micro-inverters are more complex and handle higher power DENSITY than Optimizers and have lower reliability.

      (clarification - Power density kills electronics, complexity = more parts to fail = lower reliability )
      Last edited by Mike90250; 06-24-2018, 06:10 PM.
      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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      • #4
        Originally posted by Mike90250 View Post
        If you have shade issues, only then would micro-inverters be a preferred choice. Micro-inverters are more complex and handle higher power Density than Optimizers and have lower reliability.
        I would say that Optimizers handle higher power levels than micros, and usually by quite a bit more.
        Micro inverters are only a better choice if the array is very small.
        Last edited by Mike90250; 06-24-2018, 06:08 PM. Reason: changed levels to Density to be consistent with corrected post
        OutBack FP1 w/ CS6P-250P http://bit.ly/1Sg5VNH

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        • #5
          A couple of things to consider. If you have any shading issues at all, lot to be said for optimizers. If you get snow on occasion but no other shading consider getting a grid tied inverter with dual MPPT inputs and orient the lower part of the array string where snow may accumulate on one of the MPTT circuits. If your power goes out occasionally SMA makes inverters with Secure Power Supply (SPS) which supplies a small amount of AC power to a dedicated outlet when the sun is shining and the grid is down ( I think its 15AMPS each SPS) . You could put in two smaller SMA inverters with SPS and end up with two SPS circuits. I expect its gee whiz feature far more than a practical one.

          I tend to slightly oversize inverters which is the opposite of most installers who undersize them so they clip on occasion. I would rather have some headroom between the Array wattage and the inverter wattage, others disagree but my theory is not to push the electronics so they are clipped out at max input frequently.

          Speaking of Gee Whiz, unless you really want or need to geek out, don't spend extra on fancy monitoring. Once the PV array has been installed for awhile it becomes an appliance and most folks will tend to ignore it. Your call but the Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) approach is my choice.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by peakbagger View Post
            Speaking of Gee Whiz, unless you really want or need to geek out, don't spend extra on fancy monitoring. Once the PV array has been installed for awhile it becomes an appliance and most folks will tend to ignore it. Your call but the Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) approach is my choice.
            +1.

            If you want to learn some things about how much and where energy is being used as well as save a few bucks (and probably reduce your usage as a side bennie by the effort), record what the vendor supplied array monitoring and POCO meters say on a daily basis at about the same time each day. Then, be amazed at how much information you can squeeze out of a kiil-a-watt meter and keeping an eye on major energy hogs like A/C and refrigerator run times, and a little ingenuity. Assume an accuracy of ~~ +/- 1% on the array monitoring but no better than that unless it can be justified. That's probably close enough anyway.

            Do that for about 30 consecutive days or so and you'll learn more about energy use than you probably wanted to know - much more than simply throwing instrumentation at it that you'll probably not understand and quickly bore of.

            When you're done, you'll have saved yourself a few bucks on monitoring equipment which would probably and quickly fall into disuse anyway. If you want to proceed further, you can always get more sophisticated and costly equipment that requires more involvement. But if you do, you'll have a lot more knowledge of what you want and how to use it as well as what you're measuring from having done the measurement exercise.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by peakbagger View Post
              Speaking of Gee Whiz, unless you really want or need to geek out, don't spend extra on fancy monitoring. Once the PV array has been installed for awhile it becomes an appliance and most folks will tend to ignore it. Your call but the Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) approach is my choice.
              Or, you can just ask for it to be tossed in as part of the negotiation. I had my consumption meter tossed in for free, and SolarEdge has built in production monitoring. That said, you can get the monitoring meters off e-bay for pretty cheap, I wouldn't pay much extra for one, but they are definitely nice to have (at least for a while.) My wife stop running the dish washer during peak hours when she normally ran it after I showed here the power consumption from it. We had already stopped using the Oven except on rare occasions because of the electric rates - which meant I grilled more... but you can really see the things that are really spiking your power consumption when in use from a consumption meter.

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