Ronski's Solar & battery DIY build with whole house backup

Journey said:
The Renesolar 410w are £189 inc VAT. and they are the right size for your application as well.
Click to expand...

I ordered the panels yesterday, its only 180w difference.

I had some toys, sorry tools arrive yesterday.

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Spent the day at work again today, but got finished mid-afternoon. Should be the last day I need to do stuff at work, only minor stuff now apart from actually installing everything.

All the main rack fabrication is done, there are still some minor bits to do, but they will be bolted or riveted in place.

Rack-built.jpg
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Then it was a case of strip it down, clean it all up ready for spraying.

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The other one I hung on our engine crane for spraying.

I've also sprayed all the mounting clamps black, as well as some end frame brackets, although I neglected to take a picture of them.

I've now brought the rack home, and will assemble it tomorrow, when the colour will be revealed - any guesses as to the colour?

I have some more goodies arriving tomorrow, two charge controllers and I think the Lynx Power In.
 
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No, not yet, was planning on testing them, top balancing etc but just not had the time, will end up doing what you have and let the BMS sort it out.

Have you compressed your cells? Would like to do mine with springs, but still need to get my head around that.
 
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There seems to be a lot of conflicting advice and opinions, so I'm not really sure. The most my inverter can constantly pull is 160A, which is 0.57C, once I have two packs it will be half that. Maximum charge current is 140A, so 0.5C with one pack, don't know if that would count as an easy life.
 
Yes, I've sorted the breakers, pretty sure I originally bought the ones you linked to for the battery rack, I'd also bought some smaller ones for other duties, but it transpired that they are not by-directional, and therefore could catch fire in a fault condition with reverse current flow.

I've purchased a complete set from https://www.zjbenysolar.com/ via Alibaba, experience so far has been excellent. SolarEdge actually suggests using ZJ Benny in some of their literature, and their breakers are 'no polarity', so bidirectional which is what we need. They should all arrive next week.

I ended up going with a 160A breaker for each battery, and 250A for the whole rack. Victron states to use a 400A fuse, which I have, but a breaker doesn't trip instantly and will easily handle substantially more for short periods of time, you just need to understand the trip curves. I've also ordered two of their 32A 4 pole DC isolators for the PV strings, electrician said I had to have them, an MCB was not sufficient.
 
My Mega fuses arrived today (still waiting on the t-class fuses).

2 x 200A for the inverter cables
2 x 60A for the MPPT charge controllers

Also my bolts, nuts and washers arrived, still waiting on the copper lock washers, but my Lynx Power In now holds fuses.

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This also arrived today, its a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

Cebro-GX.jpg


Inverter should be arriving Monday.
 
@Mafia_GF My Cerbo is also just within the affected range, guess I'll be needing a suitable capacitor

@Troop Its better than Christmas, apart from carrying a 51KG box in from the car on my own - daren't ask the wife to help.

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Got to say the service I received from ZJ Benny was exceptional, order was started on 31 October, and I received them today. All breakers are bi-directional or no polarity as they refer to them.

PS. Voltacon sells some of the ZJ Benny stuff, but for what I paid for all above you couldn't even buy the three large breakers from them - I got 2 x 160A and 1 x 250A
 
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