Neat setup. I assume you have no excess given the two EVs.
Looking at your roof I realize I’d never contemplated the data comparison potential for the various clusters of an array (S, SE, SW?). Are you able to assess that?
Something that might be handy moving forward is if submissions here could have a directional calibration (which way’s North?)
Clearwater, FL - 9.1 kW with 27 Silfab SLA-M300 with Enphase IQ7 Micron Inverters. Net Metering with Duke Energy. I opted not to add batteries due to their cost. My system has been active since May of this year and im saving over $200 a month on my power bill.
The modules are facing south. So the rear is North. Left is West. Right is East.
East A array (Far right of the garage in the image above.) gets early morning daylight to wake the inverter as early as possible. West A array gets the remaining light before complete sunset.
So from 6:45AM to about 7:30AM East A array gets most of the light. 8AM the main array South A and South West A start to get light. At about 12:45PM on a clear day. All arrays get light. At about 5PM South A & B and West A stay active and East A gets less light. At around 6~7PM West A is facing the sunset to keep the inverter up as long as possible.
In the Solaredge monitoring portal it shows how much each array is doing.
Early Morning.
Middle of the day.
Just before sunset.
As for return for grid amount is varies from 6~15kWh. Depends if my wife and I are charging on the same day. Or if I am working in the shop. But usually something gets sent back to the grid. And that amount usually covers our night usage. Unless we have a full house over the holidays.
En mi caso yo tengo un inversor aims de 12k dicho inversor tiene 12 paneles solares de 365w que cargan 24 baterías troyan 6V de 225 ah en 3 bancos de 8 baterias a 48V puestos en paralelo.
En la actualidad compré el sense solar pero las lecturas de producción solar no eran precisas. Me hubiese gustado mucho sacarle provecho.
I’m in Charlotte, NC and I have a 18.9kw system comprised of 60 CertainTeed panels and a pair of SolarEdge investors. System was just activated on New Year’s Eve.
I have a gas generator that I’ve owned for quite a while. Batteries don’t make financial sense for me just yet.
I bought and installed Sense to help me get the most of the solar panels and save on my electrical usage.
Do you have a rough idea of your electrical consumption? 18.9kW should easily be able to top 100kWh on a single sunny summer day.
We are a family of 6, and the system is sized to meet about 90% of our consumption. I also work from home so there is almost always someone here unless we are out of town. I have taken a lot of steps (LED bulbs, smart switches, timers, Sense, etc…) to reduce our usage since the system was sized so I’m looking forward to seeing what the summer will be like.
18.9 KW system, that is huge! What is your big consumers? Even with 4 kids, Tesla and pool I think we would still be under that on a consumption side.
I’m not sure what the biggest drivers are - yet. I wish I had installed Sense a year ago prior to looking into Solar, then I would have a better idea. I was on an equal payment plan with the power company, and my bill was $280 a month. If I had to guess, I think the biggest culprit is going to be my AC units.
we just completed or second installation, 16KW this time. Established a pretty good rapport with them and when I asked about batteries they suggested I wait 3-5 more years for price to come down (like 30%) and issues to work out.
Not a full answer to your question, but maybe useful advice.
We just went live with our solar system. It’s a DC Optimizer system, 10kW, 26 x 385W panels with 9 facing east and 17 facing west. We went with combined inverter/EV charger. No EV yet, but once we get one I’m sure Sense will be confused. Does anyone have any experience with Sense and a combined Inv/Charger?
@rod.tiedemann, what exact inverter/charger model do you have? I’ve not heard of integrated EV charging…L1/L2 EV charging at home is from 120 or 240V AC, with the AC2DC conversion (i.e. the “charger” integrated into the car. Sure, EVs support fast DC charging too, but I’ve not seen this for home systems.
Maybe you mean your inverter is an inverter/charger combo, but where the charger is meant for DC battery charging and not EV charging. Something maybe like the schneider xw6848 inverter that was discussed recently in Solar Energy back to the Grid?
It’s a SolarEdge SE7600H-US; inverter with an integrated L2 EV charger.
Sense may only see the load of EV charging that exceeds the output of your panels. If your panels are putting out a lot of power, plugging in your EV may appear (to Sense) that a thick cloud just moved over (and solar output dropped accordingly or went negative). No matter how good the EV models get in Sense, a scenario like this may never be detected without extra data from the inverter on the charging output (do I smell a wishlist item?).
I signed the contract for the solar purchase/installation before I got my Sense monitor. After installing the Sense monitor and getting sucked into the data analysis I’m experiencing some buyer’s remorse over the combined inverter/charger. There’s no way that Sense will be able to give me true solar production or EV numbers, unless I limit charging to the middle of the night.
What a strange product. I’ve always thought that electrical main panels, or certainly solar inverters, are not physically located in a garage or near driveway where an EV would be charged…none of my houses have ever had these in close proximity. I guess having the option for a 240V AC EV charger cable/connector (I don’t want to call this a “charger”) sourced from a solar inverter would be useful for some homes, like @rod.tiedemann’s, would save install costs vs the alternative option of separate inverter and “charger” devices.
Sense would certainly not like this solar inverter combined with EV charging device.
The solar CTs are intended to have only the net solar generation current flowing through them, however with this setup they would have solar generation minus EV charging flowing through them.
This seems to have turned into a bragging post lol, So i’ll throw my install into the hat! My goal was to do it for as CHEAP as possible, but still built well… Open to opinions. 20 Panels, 5.2Kw
Here are the full install progress photos: https://notallmine-net.blogspot.com/2019/11/solar-install.html
If it makes you feel better, a direct-to-EV inverter probably saves the inefficiency present in going from DC->AC (via inverter) then AC->DC via EVSE or car charging circuitry.
Yes, but this SolarEdge inverter+“charger” is not that. The “charger” is still 240V AC, just sourced from the SolarEdge box rather than a main/sub panel elsewhere. So the DC->AC->DC inefficiencies are still present.
Yes most ev chargers are not “transformers” or ac-dc converters… anything with the J1772 charging plug just transfers AC to the AC-DC converter built into the car. The ev “charger” box just tells the car how much AC current the on-board ac-dc converter is allowed to pull. This goes for almost all of the tesla chargers (except super) as well.
