Lower Zambezi Valley, Southern Zambia, Africa

[Hein]

Some of you may cringe at my untidy wiring, I know I do.

18 x Conergy PE 300P (5,4kW)
6 x Midnite Classic 150's
1 x MagnaSine 2.7kVA inverter / charger
6 x Rolls S-1380 cells
6 x Rolls S-1450 cells (total battery size 2,174Ah @ 12V 20Hr rating)
1 x 30kVA Hardy Diesel Generator

We are off grid and run our home and two small guesthouses off this system. I have a lawn irrigation system that comes on every day using the "waste not" function on one of the classics, we irrigate a two acre area with the excess power.

Location: Lat: -16.300777, Long: 28.819185

[offgridQLD]

 It looks reasonably neat to me.

I have a question though. Why so many charge controllers?  6 x classic 150's. That's a lot of charge controllers for a 5.4kw array.

I have almost that much PV on one charge controller.  The classics max output is limited a lot at 12v I guess.

Kurt

[Hein]

Yep, unfortunately the inverter/charger I had was 12V - I could either use that in the system with 6 x classics or buy a higher voltage inverter/charger with fewer classics, which turned out to be slightly more expensive. In hindsight it would probably have been better to pay a bit more for another charger and inverter, and have less classics to worry about.

More thoughts anyone?

[Hein]

Better view of the pv array

[Mtn Don]

Cool.    Is concrete block home construction commonplace there? 

I used to have one built from concrete block about 30 years ago.

[Hein]

Mostly block yes, or brick. The extent of our resident termites is phenominal. If you leave a cardboard box on bare ground overnight, it would look like a chocolate covered item the next morning. When you touch it it crumbles, cardboard gone. They even go up block walls in search of anything edible. That building still has to be insulated and stucco'd, very hot over here.

[Zambian Kid]

Very tidy work there. If u ever upgrade ur inverter and wanna off load a classic you can give me a shout..

[Zambian Kid]

Very nice setup. Just wondering if I may pick your brain and get some info. I was wondering if you would be able to share ur irrigation setup. Is it running off the batteries as a 12v pump or through your inverter and what kind of pump and sprayers u using? Much appreciated

[Jacotenente]

Very nice set up. I think a 24v or 48v upgrade is in order for better efficiency along with running those panels in higher volts. This will help reduce the amount of Classics. I recommend keeping the Classics on hand as either spares or to be used later for expansion. Beautiful location.

Chris.

[Hein]

Zambian kid, sorry for the late reply. Haven't been back to check this thread in a year.

I run a 0.75kw submersible straight into an automatic sprinkler system. It switches on whenever the batteries reach around 95% capacity, at which stage one of the midnite's aux relays kick in. It gets its juice straight from the inverter, in our case 220V AC.

[Hein]

Chris, I did end up upgrading my system to 24v, changing my 12v 2.7kw magnasine charger inverter to a 24v 5kw victron model. Very impressed by the quality and functionality. And yes I now have three spare classics as backup. Photos of new setup to follow

[Hein]

Still have to tidy up the wiring a bit but here's the system

[Hein]

Planning on employing a very small airconditioning unit inside this room to help with cooling down the system since it heats up considerably in our area during sept - feb. I can easily run a 4,000 btu unit with the spare pv power between 11am and 3pm, exactly when the batteries get the hottest.

Any other ideas to cool things down?

[Hein]

On a slightly unrelated matter, we just commisioned a solar irrigation project which runs off a 21kW (84 x 250W) pv array. It runs a 15kW 3 phase ac submersible and works like a charm, delivering around 450,000 liters per day at 5 bar pressure

[CDN-VT]

Good work !
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