Small off grid system with tracker at island cottage, Lac-Simon Quebec.
Specifics:
2 - Kyocera KD250GX-LFB2 250W 20V Solar Panel in series,
Classic Lite + WhizBangJr Battery Monitor,
2 SPDs,
MNDC175 Mini 175 Amp DC Disconnect, MNPV3 Combiner Box
Samlex PST 1500W 24V Pure Sine Wave Inverter
4 8L16 6V batteries
The controller is overkill for this system but I wanted to be able to monitor the charge state with my android app.
More pictures at https://solartracker.codeplex.com/ (https://solartracker.codeplex.com/)
(http://frame3.jpg)
(http://controller.jpg)
VERY nice job on the tracker. I always wondered whether at atmel had enough floating point to do the math to calc solar position. Which algorithym do you use? When i did this in php on a ARM7 is was quite slow. And ARM actually possesses a FP unit.
One thing to note on the 500W /24v into a classic. Best you measure the idle/tare loss in that setup. You might find that it bites hard.
Quote from: zoneblue on August 12, 2014, 03:59:39 PM
VERY nice job on the tracker. I always wondered whether at atmel had enough floating point to do the math to calc solar position. Which algorithym do you use? When i did this in php on a ARM7 is was quite slow. And ARM actually possesses a FP unit.
One thing to note on the 500W /24v into a classic. Best you measure the idle/tare loss in that setup. You might find that it bites hard.
I ported the code that calculates the sun azimuth and elevation from javascript to C#, the original javascript was used at the NOAA's Solar Calculator web site. The tracker only moves when it position is at least 5 degrees off the calculated azimuth, so it has lots of time for the math.
The cottage is only used from May to October, so I don't have to size the system for late fall...
The KID would have probably been better suited for this setup but since it doesn't yet have serial data access, I opted for the classic for now.