I know this is perhaps a bit off topic, but speaking of such bad signs: Here in the Helderberg we have a massive shortage of schools. Even kids living inside the so-called feeder areas, with good marks, and sometimes from families that were in the schools themselves or had siblings there (all the usual things that tends to get you in more easily) are not getting into the local high schools because there is no space. Apparently (so I am told), when the government is approached about this, the response is that we're an affluent area and there are enough private schools (yes there are... at a 100k a year... and then you heave to weather all the little better-than-thou blond ladies in Range Rovers every day). So let me put that in every day language: Thanks for all the taxes you pay, but you ain't getting anything back, you're rich already.

5 hours ago, pilotfish said:

will be a quick fix (like a day or so) [ Edit: the motorised tilt system ]

It would be good to know how much you reduce that 50% winter penalty by at 45° tilt, compared with 27°.

Edited June 24, 20188 yr by Coulomb

6 hours ago, Coulomb said:

It would be good to know how much you reduce that 50% winter penalty by at 45° tilt, compared with 27°.

Yes, it is a pity that I didn't get to it early in June, but hopefully by mid July it will be sorted.

17 hours ago, Coulomb said:

It would be good to know how much you reduce that 50% winter penalty by at 45° tilt, compared with 27°.

 I have a manual tilt on my system and without doing the calculations it seems I get about 18-19 kWh on a 10° tilt in summer and about 11-12 kWh on a 45° tilt in winter.  One of my problems is to get sufficient load to get a perfect bell curve. I am hopefully getting two new Pylontechs this week which would remedy that.

So I decided to take a closer look at my PV output today and noticed this:

My panels are 2 x [2S5P] and it looked suspiciously like one of the 2S pairs wasn't delivering, a quick measure with the clip-on ammeter confirmed it. It turns out that 1 fuse was blown, that fuse was 10amp whereas the other 9 fuses are 12amp - it seems that my supplier chucked in a 10amp by mistake and it wasn't picked up during installation.

A couple of minutes to bridge out that fuse holder while I wait for a replacement and this is the result;

I guess it is worth checking on these things from time to time

On 2018/06/25 at 12:56 PM, pilotfish said:

10amp by mistake and it wasn't picked up during installation

@pilotfish

are these inline fuses (MC4)at the end of the string connections and nothing at the PV isolator?

Interesting topic.

 

I have been ponding the same thing for some time and am interested to see how my Solar Frontier CIS 170W panels compare.

Looking at PVoutput;

Mid June

6:45 AM is when the MPPT turns on and I produce power till 5:35 PM. Peak power of 2400W, my array is 3400W. 4.409kWh/kW Efficiency. 15KW for the day

Looking back to January

5:25 AM is when the MPPT turns on and I produce power till 7:10PM. Peak power of 3180W, my inverter is 3000W. 7.1kWh/kW Efficiency. 24KW for the day.

 

My best day in history was 17 November 2017. Peak power of 4,331W, 7.373kWh/kW Efficiency. 25.068KW for the day. 

 

These CIS panels seem to work great in low light and I could not be happier with them. Looks like it's still the most efficient "single axis" array in SA on PVOutput. System has been running for over 2 years now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, flamegrilled said:

are these inline fuses (MC4)at the end of the string connections and nothing at the PV isolator? 

Hi @flamegrilled,

I have 20 panels wired in [10x2] to a combiner box on the roof. The negative terminal of each pair goes to a common negative buzz-bar, the positive goes via a DIN fuse (pic below) to 2x positive buzz-bar (5pairs/10panel each).

 

From the combiner box I have 2x 10mm [pos/neg]  pairs going to 2x 45amp DC PV-in breaker (1 per inverter).

Damn all this talk of checking pannels and angles has got me feeling guilty. So I cambered on to the roof, and low and behold I lost a string due to a bad connection on one pannel. Never mind that I've decided to remake the pannel mounts and change the strings from three to two in a string after doing a bit af testing

On 2018/06/22 at 7:31 PM, Mark said:

Get another MPPT and add that as your vertical E string...  that would be the most efficient... fiddle the settings so they all work in partnership  

Another plus on that is having some redundacy. My single mppt was popped by lightning and I had to run on genny for a week. I now have 2 arrays through two mppts so the risk is spread at least.