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Hi all,

Thanks to the admins for the join approval...
I've been looking for a forum like this for a while...

Just an intro, will post questions in other sections (hopefully the correct sections)...
I have 16 x 250W panels in 2 banks of 8 in series and situated on my east and west facing roof sides. I had read quite a few articles on the whole east-west setup and decided it was the way I wanted to go and seems to work pretty well. I don't have enough north facing roof the mount that number of panels anyway...
The panels connect to an inverter, started with an Axpert but changed to an InfiniSolar 3kw+ (plus - for searches) and 4 x 12v 250ah AGM batteries in series as 48v.
I have setup a separate DB off the inverters load circuit and from that supply the lights, offices and a few other important plugs (like the TV unit) and have left the kitchen (stove, fridge microwave, kettle etc), the geyser and some other plug points in the house on the Eskom/council fed DB. The plugs fed from the inverter load DB have the flat earth pin (typical of office UPS red plug setups) so that things like the vacuum cleaner cannot be plugged in...
The inverter also has a connection from the Eskom/council DB.
We typically run between 1.3A to 3.8A on the inverter load circuit, so well within the 3kw spec of the inverter and have no issues during load shedding.

I've been considering adding some panels to my north facing roof, but purely to run the pond pumps and would then want to upgrade my pond too, but with the water issues in the Western Cape I don't really want to be putting in a larger pond that would need to be kept topped up, so this is still on hold (planning more rain water storage tanks then may look at it again).

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That flat earth pin is a smart idea to control what can be run off solar.

Are both the solar arrays running into the same MPPT on the inverter? You may be able to get more power out of your existing array if you use one MPPT for each array, if you are not doing that already.

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@DeepBass9 Yes, both arrays are running into the same inverter, it only has the one solar input option. The setup seems to work pretty well, if I isolate the arrays (separate fuses) during varying times of the day from sunrise to sunset I can see the different the array not ideally facing the sun makes.

Shortly after installing the whole setup (early Feb 2016) I wanted to test both the solar generation the anti-islanding feature of the inverter so I set it to grid-tie mode and turned on the oven and kettle, microwave and geyser (those items not on the inverter load circuit). I have a simple digital ampmeter inline from the Eskom to inverter cable and and noticed it showed up to 9A feedback to the house, over an above the 3A that was fed to the load circuit, which was fairly impressive. I still had an old non prepaid meter back then so was not concerned that my meter would have an issue if any current was pushed back to it but with the stove, kettle, microwave and geyser all running I didn't get to see the meters disc move in reverse (would love to have seen that though).
I then switched off my main breaker outside that feeds from the council to the house, to test the inverters anti-islanding, and the inverter instantly stopped feeding back to the grid and had switched to supplying the load from the solar only (with battery available if solar was insufficient).

I'm pretty happy with the system and its performance so far. I've posted a topic under the Inverters section (Infinisolar 3KW Plus Hybrid inverter) about something I'd like to do but not sure yet if the inverter will handle what I want.

 

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10 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

You could get another stand alone MPPT and go direct from one array to the batteries, and use the MPPT on the inverter for the other one.

I agree I could do that but then I'd be slightly worse off, in terms of use of the solar energy, unless I'm not understanding correctly.
If I split the arrays to separate MPPTs then I'd only have the one array feeding the inverter and therefore the load circuit and the separate MPPT would basically just be keeping the batteries charged. I only use the batteries when the Eskom feed fails..
 

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