The other day I started to convert my system to 24 volt from 12. I thought I had all the possible kinks worked out (wrong) Everything even my outback flex 80 needed to be reconfigured. Panels connected to it however didn't, that's one area I was right about. what I had figured would be a 4 hour job ended up taking a day and a half. Good thing I had a portable Honda capable of running all night. I still have 10 75 watt shell panels to rewire but those are usually buried in snow so they normally wouldn't be supplying power in the winter anyways. I want to remove them from the roof and place them on a pole anyways so that can be done all at once. Is it worth all the trouble? At this point it is hard to say this time of years is bad for solar here. It looks like the batteries aren't getting drained as quickly but I haven't had much sun to see if they are getting charged any faster or slower. In the end I'll lose my 12 volt turbine (it didn't produce much anyways) I freed up one charge controller (Trace C40) to maybe do a dump load with or use at another location. Since all wiring had been installed figuring a 1% loss for 12 I figure I should be getting close to a near 0% loss now.
I discovered after days of debugging that my Magnum remote RC wasn't compatible with the newer 4024 PAE inverter I guess you can't always just expand a solar setup or at least not without Upgrading something. Seems you need at least revision 2.5 of the RC for it to see the inverter mine is 2.1. A new remote has been ordered (wish WindyNation carried Magnum stuff) this time I went for the ARC remote as it offers a few more options. I also decided to upgrade my AGS (auto generator start) which will now allow to start and stop based on voltage instead of just start on voltage and run for a set time.
OK so I've had this running a few months now, still haven't rewired the roof modules to 24 volt (been to wet to get up on a steel roof). I believe I have all issues worked out I had missed a connection in my battery bank so I was only running off 1/3 the bank. So using 1/3 the bank I wasn't seeing any improvement nor not much if any degrade in performance either which is probably why it took so long to find. I'm seeing some benefit with this move in that the battery bank isn't draining as quickly (this is same battery bank just rewired for 24 volt). Turning on the coffee maker in the morning use to cause the backup generator to fire up that is no longer the case unless I've gone days without sun. This is saving on propane though the generator only ran for a short period in the summer (if I remembered to manually stop it) Battery bank charges quicker, granted I now have more panels supplying a charge even though the roof mount ones aren't connected yet. Added a new array with 8 off grid panels (no tracker for it yet) The amps coming in from the old panels is less but I'm also using less amps@ 24 volts. Having laid wiring for a 12 volt system and running 24 volts now is obviously a benefit (less power loss).
Final managed to get up on the roof and wire in the panels up there for 24 volt. I had originally thought of bringing them down an placing them on a pole. However they catch more late afternoon sun being up there so I'll leave them up there for now. I turned my new grid tie panels towards where the sun comes up this time of year (what a difference) Battery bank was charged to full according to my Trace battery monitor at 7:30 this morning
This summer has been terrible for sun however I've yet to run short of power. The Back up generator has only comes on to do its maintenance tests. The other day one of the local stores had a 140 amp MIG welder on sale (which I've always wanted) so I picked it up. I had tested a buddies MIG welder here on the 12 volt system without success so I was interested to test on the 24 volt system. It was another cloudy rainy day so I wasn't expecting good results and figured if it didn't perform on a sunny day I could always use the welder in the city. Since my battery Bank was not up graded when I switched to 24 I expected the backup generator to come on if I didn't trip my inverters breaker first. I had a small welding job setup which I figured I'd just tack weld but to my surprise the system supported the welder and I was able to get some nice weld beads. The Backup generator didn't even come on! I'm impressed! I figure the system can handle a large welding task with the system getting full Sun. Was the upgrade to 24 volt worth while? Most definitely!
As stated above when I moved to 24 volt I also added an array of grid tie panels. Wanting to get this up and running quickly I opted to purchase the array mount rather then build my own. I had seen plans for the mount I eventually got and was sure I could modify it to eventually add a tracker. The problem was Windy Nation did not carry an actuator I felt was strong enough hold up in strong winds. I found a place that carried actuators with double the ratings of the HD actuators WindyNation carries and today I finally got it all setup (E/W operation) I still use a Suntura controller with my new array though it needs some fine tuning (off about 5degs E from compared to my original tracker) Yesterday I got about 4 KW hours from the array (no tracker) today over 8 KW hours and it is still in the sun. Both days were same condition wise so this is looking very promising.
