New member introductions (READ THIS FIRST)

Started by Halfcrazy, November 24, 2010, 07:09:37 PM

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tallfellow

The gas version is great for a small camping trip. Now build me one that is solar powered. I want the most bang for the buck here.

Imagine I spend 5 days in the city and 2 days in the country. I want to run my generator 8 hours a day at 1000 watts  or 24 hours a day at 250 watts.

How many panels?
How big a charge controller?
How many batteries? what size?
How big an inverter? (1000 watt inverter doh)
Obviously want digital readouts of what's going in and out.

I can wait for sales at various stores like walmart and  piece it together.  But maybe it would be cheaper to build it myself and install the whole thing in a box. or better yet in a small portable trailer.

That's what I want. a DIY towable solar generator. That has enough Gas (stored battery power to work all weekend.)

Now I was thinking:  250 watt  panel, a 20 amp charge controller. 20 12 volt 100 amp car batteries and a 1000 watt inverter.  But what if I wanted to plug the unit in and charge at home from AC? Or better yet. Wanted to juice it up from my small camping generator.  Now I need a car battery charger.

By my calculations I could get the hours of operation I want from a system like this.

So build this. List your parts and their prices. 

PS Guys could you make this it's own TOPIC in the forums please.




Tritium

Thurmond,  Rural Texas 100.9 West by 33.4 North. Two solar arrays.

Halfcrazy

Quote from: Silvertop on January 03, 2011, 03:19:21 PM
Hi,

My name is Mike and I live, with my wife, Beth,  in the NW corner of Washington near Bellingham.  I have a 1KW PV system that has been growing for the past year.  I am looking to possibly replace my 2 Xantrex controllers ( C60 and C35) with the Midnight Solar Classic 150.  I have mismatched panels in the array, and I'm not sure that the Midnight Solar Classic will allow mismatched panels in the programing.  All of my panels are within +/- 3% of VPM. Any suggestions?  ???

Thanks,
Mike :)


The Classic works similar to all MPPT controllers. If there is a mismatch of modules, it will find the spot that results in the highest output of the two "humps". That means it would not be operating at the optimum voltage for either hump, but would average the two humps and act accordingly. IT is fine to have slight mis-matches in voltage, but not wise to have large mis-matches in VMP of different panels. There are ways to use oddbal panels, but it takes a bit of thought and some luck on panel mismatch.

I copied Robins response from a similar thread for you. You will find the wizard will not support mix and match pannels but the Classic will. It would just plain be to much work to try to have the wizard allow for all that. I would recommend any body that has a specific question like this start a thread and post as many specifics as possible and we will answer the questions.
Changing the way wind turbines operate one smoke filled box at a time

Silvertop

Thanks Halfcrazy thats what I was hopeing would be the answer.  I tried working the online simulation and just was not sure if I could bypase the Wizard. It appears that you go into CHARGE and MODE to manually set up the Classic for PV is this correct ?   When I saw the Wizard looking for ONE ( pm) WATTAGE, AND ONE SERIES FUSE RATEING I THOUGHT I WOULD HAVE TO PASS ON THE CLASSIC......   :'(  The Classic has many features that allow me to grow, and more than makes up for a small loss in  (VPM ) . I just wanted to be sure before I ordered one   ;D

boB

Quote from: Silvertop on January 04, 2011, 10:09:18 PM
Thanks Halfcrazy thats what I was hopeing would be the answer.  I tried working the online simulation and just was not sure if I could bypase the Wizard. It appears that you go into CHARGE and MODE to manually set up the Classic for PV is this correct ?   When I saw the Wizard looking for ONE ( pm) WATTAGE, AND ONE SERIES FUSE RATEING I THOUGHT I WOULD HAVE TO PASS ON THE CLASSIC......   :'(  The Classic has many features that allow me to grow, and more than makes up for a small loss in  (VPM ) . I just wanted to be sure before I ordered one   ;D

Yes, you sure can bypass the wizard.   That would be a PITB if you couldn't bypass it. I'm a manual kind of guy myself.
We will normally ship the Classic with the wizard coming up on boot unless it is part of a pre-wired system with known parameters and battery size etc.

3 button pushes into the wizard, just select "skip", OR, go through the questions to completion and it won't come up at boot again unless you want it to.
There is also a menu item where one can get back into the wizard to go through it again at any time.

The "charge" and "mode" menu has the necessary items to set up the Classic just like you saw in the demo.

boB



K7IQ 🌛  He/She/Me

Wirewiz

#35
Hello, My name is Larry Liesner. I design and install grid tie and grid tie battery backup systems for a solar company in Westport, CT. I am also a dealer for Ampair wind and water turbines. And I am a marine electrician for sail and power pleasure boats which is where I started installing solar and wind on cruising sailboats.


Thanks!

Paul Farren

I'm not sure whether this is wher I'm supposed to be posting, but I'm Paul, the owner of the Energy Store in Hollywood, Florida. I am interested in asking about the Classic in wind applications. Since we don't have a lot of wind down here, I'm not to well informed about the charge controller working with wind. Does it require a dump circuit? I like many of you am an old fart...

RickW

Hi,
My name is Rick.  We have been off the grid for 5 years and run solar and wind.  We have a neighbor using an MX-60 for a Kestrel e220/230 and were curious about the Classic's application for these turbines as well as the Bergey XL.1 48 volt.  Since we are planning to retire our SWWP Whisper 200 asap, we are looking at the available options.

Rick
Website www.Power-Talk.net
www.Taprootfarmsak.com

Arkansas Tom

Hello All, We live in Northern Arkansas. We built our place here in the woods four years ago and love it. We are off grid, capture our drinking water off of our roof and supplement water for gardening in the summer with our spring. We have one kilowatt of panels. We heat with wood that is growing on our 28 acres.

WindFarmer

Hey Guys
  Marc here, I am a wind and pv installer/dealer out in Northwest Nebraska. We have been involved in the installation 250 kW of wind (122kW's of that in NW Nebraska) and around 11kW of PV.
   We have been using MNS gear for about 3 years now and have always been inpressed with the tight products. We look forward to getting our Classic to help out with a problem we are having with an off grid project. We installed a 48v ARE 110 2.5 kW wind turbine that came with a outback 80 amp charge controller that has a hard time kicking into absorb.
   We are installing 2.5 of pv to this system and my question is how well will the 2 Classics play with eachother? Will they be able to be networked together to set up which one will perform the absorb time on the batteries and be able to shift this chore back and forth depending on whether the wind is blowing that day or the wind is still and the sun is giving us 700 to 1000 Watts per m2.
 
Peace, WindFarmer

zulu

I'm a part-time RVer looking to become full-time in a few years.

I've done two PV installs -- a 250W (good enough to for minimum RV battery maintenance) and a 760W RV install.

That was on my old RV: http://gallery.me.com/hughes54311#100076&view=carouseljs&sel=0

New RV has no panels, but plan to have a 2 to 6-panel array in the near future -- hopefully with a Classic.

I document cranes in my day job: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSHel2Dapg



dcs

Hi, I'm Dave Petrie from Australia and the one who demanded a 120V battery capability for the Classic and no doubt delayed the product release by at least 12 months (sorry Robin!). Now just need parallel-ability to work on a 20kW array...

sewaneesolar

Hi my name is Chris,
I live in Sewanee,Tn and have lived off-grid since 2002. All my charge controllers have been designed by these savant brothers the Gudgels ( first a Trace C- 60 , currently an Outback MX- 60), so since I am overdue on adding to my 1440 watt array , I have been waiting for what feels like years for this " Classic".
  I started with my system because I had an obsession with living off grid and one thing led to another and I began putting in systems for others- I install a few off-grid and a few grid-tie systems per year and use Midnite Solar products whenever possible - I am waiting for them to recover from their classic marathon and put together a nice off-grid inverter for us end of the roaders.
Bright sunbeams, steady winds and soaking rains to you all
Chris

mobleyle

Hello,

My name is Pete Mobley and I live in Spencer, IN.  I live off-grid using solar and a 20kw Kohler LPG genset for backup.  My system consists of:  two Xantrex SW5548 inverters (in series), two XW60 charge controllers, nine 190w Evergreen panels, twelve 210w Evergreen panels, and eight S-530 batteries.

I'm hoping to add wind and hydro in the coming years.  Also, I'm excited to swap out one of the XW60's for a MidNite Solar CC!

Amy@AltEStore

Hi there!  I've been selling RE products, including Midnite's excellent products for 3 years now.  I deal a lot with PV and wind, but my specialty is solar water heating.  My house in New England is solar heater with both solar air heating and a solar water heated fan coil heater.  It's amazing how well the sun makes heat, go figure!
AltE Store
Making Renewable Do-able.