Split East/West system in New Forest

DREKLY

Hi Everone, it's me again, usually lurking, to compare how others
systems are doing; may I ask opinions of a friend's recent installation in South Hampshire, near Lymington, fitted 20th Nov 2015...

Comprises of 12 Enphase 260W panels, 3.16 Kw, 6 each facing East and West,
and a "Growatt" 3600 invertor, (which I have not come across before, but seem to be common in Australia)

He is coming up to his first quarter reading, during the worst three month period, and we estimate it will be about 200 Kw, recent sunny days seem to produce about 5Kw per day;

Does this seem about right ? He has an Immersun which "lights up regularly" according to him.
Does anyone have experience / knowledge of the Growatt invertors, anyone?

Thanks in advance for any information

Martyn1981

Hiya DREKLY. I can take a complete guess, with further guesses and assumptions if you like?

So, using PVGIS I just put the whole 3.16 as east (-90), as it won't make too much difference for targets.

I left the slope default at 35d, but a shallower roof will be slightly better on an E/W split.

That gave the following kWh's for each month:-

Nov 75, so only 10 days, the later end, and an awful month, so lets guess at 15kWh?

Dec 46, but it was my worst month ever at 55% of target, so lets guess at 25kWh?

Jan 58, pretty average I think, but can't be sure for exact location, but stick at 58kWh.

Feb 100, going well here, been a nice month so far, but it's a growing month (starts low and rises) so including today lets guess at 50kWh.

That gives us 148kWh, so if it's seeing around 200 that sounds fine, or I've completely mucked up the numbers/guesswork!

Heard of the inverters, but know ...... nothing.

Mart.

DREKLY

Hiya Martyn, thanks for quick response ! Yes, I did a similar search via
PVGIS, as trying to do 1.6 for both East, then West, seemed to come up with much less output... so I settled for 3.2 Kwp overall, for south-facing.

I think the friend is well impressed so far, AND output is better than my 4Kw system down in Cornwall, with Solar Edge,as I have winter bare tree shading,that only managed 137 Kw from Nov + Dec + Jan; abysmal figures, but as you say, awful months...


I have no idea why the company (SOLARLEC) used the Growatt inverter, I guess they considered it the most suitable / profitable for
the smaller installation, a pity they didn't fit 285 Watt panels as well !

I will wait and see what other responses appear in time on this thread,
cheers

nivag

I'm not too far away from the New Forest, being in Chichester. I have daily recordings from my generation meter and on my 3.96kw system facing SSW I've got 295kw in the same period so he has done ok on a smaller split system

Martyn1981

nivag wrote: »

I'm not too far away from the New Forest, being in Chichester. I have daily recordings from my generation meter and on my 3.96kw system facing SSW I've got 295kw in the same period so he has done ok on a smaller split system

Apologies for butting in, but I like number games and puzzles and I think that's a very helpful post.

Taking 295 and ratioing it 3.16/3.96 gives 235kWh.

E/W probably gives about 80% of the gen of SSW, so that's 188kWh.

Also worth bearing in mind that the 80% isn't true across the year, it'll be worse in the GMT months, and better in the BST months, so that again suggests it's doing quite well.


BTW, quick check back and I think I got 270kWh over that period (really poor, worst winter by far). So size for size it beats me hands down, but I don't see anything that concerns me about my gen, other than the weather.

Mart.

jonokimber

Regarding the Growatt 3600 inverter I have one as my installers reckoned it was compatible with a Growatt storage battery that I might be interested in later.

I have a wifi dongle on mine that is about the size of a 'highlighter pen' and plugs into and is then screwed nicely into a port on the bottom of the inverter. To set it up you have to find the wifi SSID it sends out, go to it's web set up page and add the settings of your home's wifi. Once rebooted it will connect to the house wifi and ping a generation reading back to the Growatt server every 5 minutes, fully automatically.

Accessing the info can be done via a web browser or an app on iphone (and maybe android). I prefer to use the web browser and basically you register minimal details about the inverter and the site automatically sorts everything out. If you have more than one system it will appear within your 'generation site' and the stats would be quite impressive giving total generation on a daily, monthly and annual basis for all or single devices at your generation site.

The graphs are good and allow you to see the new reading every 5 mins which i have found to be very accurate and to be honest often enough to get a good idea of what's happening and what you are generating. I'm not able to post pictures on this forum site right now as i'm a newbie but if you add 3 w's and dot to the line below you will see a picture of a graph from the growatt site.

dropbox.com/s/hexvznylg6ia7as/Solar%2015%20Feb%202016%20.png?dl=0

If you have any more questions just let me know.

Jono

DREKLY

Many thanks for your response Jono, It's very late here where I am, (don't ask...) so will digest all the info tomorrow, and comment after;
Just wanted to say a big thanks for the posts you made regarding this, cheers!

UPDATE.... Very interesting about how the wi-fi dongle fits to the inverter. does that have to have a SIM card inside it to operate?

I am sure I can get said friend to install the same, as he DOES have wi-fi plus laptop, plus semi-smart Huawei Ascent Y330 sainsberries phone, so would give him access to
the instantaneous info, that i can see on my kitchen Solaredge inverter.

I wonder if that too has the facility to accept a similar dongle? I am not at the property for a while, so will have to wait to find that out, but no wi-fi probably precludes that possibility for me....