Renewable Energy Photo Thread

5 x 345w East and 7 x 345w South for now with 5kwh Diverter and 10kwh Pure drive batteries in the Midlands.

room for moar!

Loving the neatness of those setups above but when stuff is out of sight in the attic it looks like this 😂

7kwp South facing on a 6kwh Solis hybrid inverter

DIY Installation on my Shed. Finished about a week ago. 2.3Kwp in total all facing 180deg exactly (due south). Micro-inverters used for the install. 2x2 panel micro-inverters for the guys on the roof and then 2x1 panel micro-inverters for the two vertical ones. I could have used 2 panel micro-inverters for the lot and saved 300 euros, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was using micro-inverters for the first time so wasn't sure what to expect, hence using 1x panel inverters for the vertical ones as they were the 1st part of the project.

Far left of the picture on the roof 2x400w panels at 30deg incline, then 2x 345W panels at 10deg slope and finally 2x400w panels vertically mounted on replaceable structs, so the panels can go flush against the wall when I want to use the decking area. Currently the vertical panels are angled at 57 degress (in relation to the horizontal plane) Got as very solid 13kwhr out of them on Monday, 12.5Kwhr yesterday and probably again same today.

@DrPhilG - "7.44kWp system. House facing west, garage south."

With those roofs, I would have 30kwp up, I swear! 😁

But seriously, not doing east on the other side of the house?

System installed recently on July 20th. Appreciate its not totally ideal being in the attic due to the higher temps there, especially in this very hot weather we've been having recently, but there was absolutely no other place in our small house for the equipment - so attic it had to be. Solis 6kW Hybrid Inverter mounted on concrete wall & fire resistant board mounted on 2 sides. 4 Power Sockets available for me to use in the event of a mains / grid failure. These are fed from the Pure Drive battery source etc.. I usually leave the attic trap door open in this type of really hot weather to help with airflow passing through the attic. I also have a Wi-Fi Temperature Sensor up there which I keep an eye on via an app on my phone. Ambient Temperature in attic has reached approx 35 Celsius in this hot weather. Inverter Temp under heavy load ( - eg when max solar energy being generated or when the full load of battery is being drawn at once) reaches approx 58 to 62 Degrees Celcius. Fireboard surface temps, at their nearest points to Inverter Casing / Heat sink, reach approx 42 Degrees Celcius at times where Inverter is under heaviest load. Its connected to 16 x 370W panels (5.92kWp system). 8 Panels are SE Facing & 8 Panels are NW facing. Since July 20th, when the system went live, Its generated 516 kWh, so pretty good I think. Last few days have all been over 30 kWh each. 2 x 5kWh PureDrive batteries for a total of 10kWh battery capacity. This typically covers house load from 7pm to 7am at present. House load from 12 Midnight to 7am is approx 1.4kWh (200W per hour). At present, at 7am, there is usually approx 34% remaining in the battery). System appears to be working flawlessly so far (have I just jinxed it :-)) & its exceeded my expectations. Just waiting on the Eddi to be installed. Here are a few pics for anyone interested...

Thank you. Every day is a learning day, but no regrets so far.

It'll be interesting in the Winter months when I get a feel for what the system can / cannot do at that time of year & how I may need to adapt my habits to try maximize available energy generated..

Can we get photos of your set up? Probably the biggest PV set up on a semi D and it’s probably the common house type in Ireland so could be great inspiration for others.

Not so keen to put up photos. On previous threads people were admonished even for putting up pics of perfect installs that some viewers seem to have critique of. I know the new moderators on this forum have stated they won't allow that sort of stuff and fair play to them, but I'd still rather not.

Anyway, I have only 1.45kwp on my main roof, 5 old panels that have to compete for space with 3 velux windows and 40 solar thermal tubes. Another 5 panels (total 1.825kwp) on my kitchen extension. Still nothing to write home about. Until I had a large shed build early last year, which now has 14 panels on it (5.25kwp) and a sneaky 7 panel string on my outside boundary wall (2.66kwp) and a single panel on a micro inverter (0.375kwp), total 11.56kwp

Next year or so I will cover my virgin north facing road facing roof with panels, not quite sure how many will fit and what the shading situation is (chimney) but I guess about 4kwp, for a grand final total of about 15kwp

So far this thread seems to be minimal on comments on photo posts which is kinda good, maybe it should even be marked that people just post photos without making comments on setups explicitly.

Where did you get or what sort of hinges did you use on the vertical panels. Have a cabin that I'll be doing the same on (2 panels East and 2 West).

I have seen some interesting ground mount setups. "Lean-to" style, sheds, car ports, tree-anchors requiring no concrete, manual tilting options.

Might be worth a thread for sharing ideas or advice.

I came across this pergola image on a group elsewhere. Makes a lot of sense for anyone needing shade in their garden. Ensuring a setup is able to stand firm against any wind load would be important on my own site.

You need a solid 10 deg slope anyway, just for rainwater runoff.

Christ how many regulations is he breaking in that video, could play bingo with that

Normally I'd tend to agree with you mate......but using earth cable as phase.......hmmm, that pushes the boundary of what even a cowboy like me would do!!

Yeah I know it's off grid and he's probably the only one to be looking at it and he knows, but still....electricity will kill you stone dead if not treated right. Good wiring is a skill worth doing . I suspect he may even have done it for a laugh to invoke a response on the video?

Still though I'll give him credit, he's progressed the field of information in the sector and that in itself is worth acknowledging. Respect on that front

Hi slave1. A rubber grommet on rear cable entry/exit would be as good addition as the edge of that cut-out would wear though the cable easy enough.

There isn't a whole pile to them after.

I wonder would this do as an alternative? https://www.tindie.com/products/edgetech/highly-integrated-evse-ev-charger-controller/

obviously you don't get the nice housing & leads with it but its potentially a whole lot cheaper (I am no expert though as I have neither EV nor charger)

I think you need the fans to blow upwards. This basically sucks the rising hot air out of the inverter quicker than it does by natural convection.