Another PV Photovoltaics installation goes active.

clockmanfran

Another PV Photovoltaics installation at ‘Le Vivray’ goes active.

 

Hi Bill, I thought you might like to see what us Europeans are up to. 

France, Normandy. This installation is on the New Garage south side of the roof.   It is a 3.6kW installation with the latest 10off 360 watts 120 cell Monocrystalline panels. The Monocrystalline panels are good at producing electricity in the gloomiest of light conditions, they do not need direct sunlight.

 I have separated the panels into 2 strings of 5 panels, and each with its own 1.7kW GTI, MPPT Grid tied Inverter. These 2 GTI’s were second hand from EBAY in the UK, £40 each, from an installer who had updated some of his customers PV.

Under UK regulations and most other counties, Old equipment on a PV GTI that is connected to the Countries Main Electricity Grid is not allowed. So, for us these machines are a bargain and we re-use  them as is.

Our ‘OzInverter’ creates our Mini Grid 236vac electricity supply, these GTI’s take the DC voltage created by the PV panels and uses the Electricity Grid they are connected to and the 50HZ Frequency to then backfeed a few Ac volts back into the Grid, and for us they backfeed to the ‘OzInverter’. The Ozinverter is a H bridge design so the AC voltage can charge backwards and charge the 48vdc batteries.   This whole process is called …. AC COUPLING.  The neat trick is that these Slave GTI’s and yes they are slaves, they need our MINI GRID, can then supply direct to appliances around ‘Le Vivray’  so DC battery charging and extra cabling is not required, and a bonus is the batteries are not constantly be asked to supply the Mini Grid.  So a better life and less wear and tear on the batteries.

We now have 5off GTI’S connected on different buildings around the place, and supplying into our Mini Grid up to 11kW of electricity.

Cost of the panels was £1200. about $1,600

I have also written up the information of this install, 'HOW TO' on this Web Site site as it may help others, this will also be a chapter in another publication .

 http://www.bryanhorology.com/pv-photovoltaics-installations.php