Are you happy with your Solar PV System?

thenudeone

Cardew wrote: »

In the context of the discussion on mains supply, he was stating that 230volts @ 16 amps = 3.68kW.

"in old money" was just a turn of phrase to explain that it was in different units.

Unless anyone knows of a conversion between Amps and pounds-shillings-pence;)?

grahamc2003

thenudeone wrote: »

"in old money" was just a turn of phrase to explain that it was in different units.

Unless anyone knows of a conversion between Amps and pounds-shillings-pence;)?

Yes, making a few reasonable assumptions for the context of this thread, 1A = (or is about equivalent to) about 4p/h (or £0 0s and 10d/h in the requested units), and 5 amps is about, errm, err, .... 5 times 10d/h

(How did we ever manage to £1 1/6d to £3 17/11d in our heads, instantly?)

(4/2d and £4 19/5d before anyone supplies the answers).

zeupater

grahamc2003 wrote: »

... (How did we ever manage to £1 1/6d to £3 17/11d in our heads, instantly?) ....

Hi

Because sliderules wouldn't easily fit in your pocket and education hadn't been dumbed down to suit the lowest common denominator at the time ??

Mixing base 2, base 4, base 12, base 20 and base 21 just to go shopping down the highstreet would blow the mind of anyone under 45 as mental arithmetic seems to be impossible for modern brains, as does estimating the result to roughly check the validity of a sum ... well that's progress for you .... :D

Z

MintMark

Freepost wrote: »

By the way, if you stick a voltmeter across the mains what does it measure now?

F

Oooh I know this one! It depends on whether you have solar panels installed.

Normal reading for me is just over 240V, when the sun is shining it is 3 or 4 volts higher.

Freepost

Just to expand on the 240v vs 230v. Since you are only allowed to export 16A to the network, how is this 16A derived. We know from Azrael's post that power is measured in Watts and since watts are calculated by V (volts) x I (Amps) we can see that at 240v x 16amps we will export 3.84kW and at 230v x 16amps we will export 3.68kW. A difference of 160watts.

I've heard that if you install a 4kWp system then you may run into difficulties with the local electric company unless your system is restricted to export a maximum of 3.68kW but this isn't 16amps at my home.

Have I got this wrong?
F.

zeupater

Freepost wrote: »

Just to expand on the 240v vs 230v. Since you are only allowed to export 16A to the network, how is this 16A derived. We know from Azrael's post that power is measured in Watts and since watts are calculated by V (volts) x I (Amps) we can see that at 240v x 16amps we will export 3.84kW and at 230v x 16amps we will export 3.68kW. A difference of 160watts.

I've heard that if you install a 4kWp system then you may run into difficulties with the local electric company unless your system is restricted to export a maximum of 3.68kW but this isn't 16amps at my home.

Have I got this wrong?
F.

Hi

I went through this thought process some time ago ... unfortunately the 16A is classified as being at a nominal 230V, not local supply conditions ...

HTH
Z

thenudeone

zeupater wrote: »

unfortunately the 16A is classified as being at a nominal 230V, not local supply conditions ...

Or fortunately? because Fronius make an inverter that limits output to 3.68kW (IG TL 3.6)

zeupater

thenudeone wrote: »

Or fortunately? because Fronius make an inverter that limits output to 3.68kW (IG TL 3.6)

I think that the clouds have been a bigger factor in limiting most inverters this summer .....

Z

celerity

Very happy with ours so far (3.91kWp installed end of April 2011).

Stats so far:

Month       Output (kWh)     % of predicted     
May         602.219          136.0%     
Jun         559.889          142.6%     
Jul         502.237          119.8%     
Aug         413.261          103.5%

As you can see, August was a bit of a washout, but we still scraped above predicted output.

/\dam