New to solar with 5 200 watt panels

[Josef15111]

Hello community my name is Joe and I have wanted to do a solar setup for a long time. I have finally gathered up 5 200 watt 12v renogy panels and I have them wired into a 1000 watt grid tie inverter.  I have some basic questions that I would love some help with.  So I have purchased the midnite 6 breaker combiner box and I'm looking for the breakers that fit it and the correct ones.  I see it takes the slim .5 inch ones and I beleive I should use a 10 amp or 15 amp size.  My question is what ones do I need?  I'm running them all together for maximum power 1000 watts so all parallel.  I know I won't see 1000 watts but 800 would be cool in dead summer.  I have a cheap ebay inverter for now  and no batteries but that's what I wanna start collecting next.   

I would love to get some batteries and a inverter/ charger that will keep me using my own power 24/7.  Does anyone have any recommendations for such inverter.  It does not need to power .y entire home just supplement some use.  1000 wattsish would be great.  I will more then likely buy lead acid batteries for the cheaper price and for me learning as I go.   So if you guys can point me in the direction I need and throw me some advice and product info that would be so amazing.  Can't wait to learn more and get to saving on my bill. 

I'm in Cincinnati Ohio and have my panels facing south.  I do have room for 1 more panel to make it 1200 watts and I may do so.  Thanks again everyone can't wait to talk with you all!!


Joe

[ClassicCrazy]

You size the breakers for the wire that you are using.
So if your pv has 12 gauge wire on them you can use 15 amp breakers in your combiner
Same for the wire that you are running from combiner back to your controller . Where you have the breaker for pv input you would use breaker for whatever size wire you ran in . The size wire you use depends on voltage drop and future expansion plans for your pv system.
For example the Classic 150 maximum power in would be 60 amps so you could go up to 6 gauge wire and use 60 amp breaker. Larger wire size you use the lower resistance and voltage drop you will have. There are online calculators for that.
The slimmer breakers you are talking about are Din rail mount - you will see the rail in back of combiner box that they mount on. The wires on those you just slip in and tighten up . Make sure you tighten those well and recheck them in a week or two .
The other breaker that fits in the combiner box are panel mount and those are wider . The advantage of those are they go up to higher amp ratings and they have 1/4 stud mounts that take ring terminals .
There are a lot of choices for inverters.
Check out the new line Midnite DIY which are at a lower price point . I haven't studied up on them but I think they have controller inverter all in one . Advantage to mppt controller is you can run some of your PV in series and get the higher voltage so you then have less voltage drop in wire coming inside and can use smaller gauge wire too.
Otherwise Samlex has some good inexpensive inverters.
You should really check out Lithium - these days they are not priced so much higher than lead acid if you do the long run calculation.
If you want lead acid batteries to last a long time  you only take 20% out of them. Then if you were sizing your system on that 20% capacity you would see you don't need as large of a lithium battery since you can draw those down deeper with more cycles .
Read up on forums here to info Steve Smith has about lithium batteries and sources for them.
There are lots of good educational videos on Alt E webpage , as well as Midnite's, and Will Prowse makes a lot of videos on lithium and solar charge controllers ,etc.
In the long run you are a lot better off spending the $ getting a better charge controller than a cheapy one , especially if you want good monitoring capabilities.
Larry