earthrealm:


just wondering...so for an old house....one would have to run the hot water pipe from the solar heater to the various hot water points in the house?...........if yes..that would be untidy and a bit difficult in some builds.

for a new house having a central hot water piping traverse the whole house might be a tidier option...though when one factors in the cost of the copper pipes...it might add up to much...especially for a large build eg 5br duplex..
what are your thoughts/advice?

earthrealm,
yes, for a house with an already existing electric hot water plumbing network, you definitely have to
run your solar water heater hot line to the various points but its not really as untidy as you think.
provided it has an existing hot water line, you can retrofit the solar water heater outlet to link up with
your existing plumbing system.
for a new house, it becomes even better. the cost of copper plumbing drops drastically because in this
instance you can run your hot water line directly either from the roof downwards or through the floor
of the house.

DUNKA:
Thanks a million . I will run it by my plumber and see how it goes. What did you do with your former water heaters?

dunka,
i dismantled them and gave them away. there was really no point in keeping
them around as i wouldn't be needing them anymore. and, several months down
the line, i'm still glad i took that step.

DUNKA:
chiefo the plumbing is also what had been putting me off installing a a solar water system. How did you handle the plumbing for multiple bathrooms and kitchen without extensive modifications of the existing plumbing works? Please further explanation would be appreciated to enable us understand the re plumbing

dunka,
plumbing does not need to be a headache for you when it comes to solar water heating.
first of all, get the package and measure the total height of the assembly, i.e from the top
of the water heater tank to the foot of the frame carrying it. add one or two feet to this value.
that would be the clearance from the bottom of the main water tank to the top of the water
heater tank.
after installing the water heater, run your hot water lines direct from the hot water outlet to
the inlet of your existing electric water heater inlet. use a t-connection copper tube. you
only need to bore a little hole from outside your bathroom to gain access to the existing
plumbing.use the t-connection to introduce the hot water into your bathroom.

pranil:


May times but the plumbing headaches stop me from doing so. Now the solar panels are dropping in price I am thinking of converting existing geysers into solar geyser using SolarPV-

e.g. One 200 Ltr Solar water heater at 200 K + plumbing upwards is similar to 3 x 300 Watt + one Gyserwise controller -
http://www.geyserrobot.co.za/Technical_Details/technical_details.html

I will switch off NEPA to Gyserrobot using a Relay based on SOC. So If the SOC is high then Gyser will use the PV

pranil,
plumbing for solar water heating is quite straight forward when you put your mind to it - especially for gravity feed systems like mine.
your geyser idea while laudable may meet with several hiccups when put to real world situations. from personal experience it pays to have a dedicated system for solar water heating. reason being that your solar water heater continues to heat up your water regardless of whether it is a cloudy day or not. however, with your geyser idea, on the same cloudy day, unless you massively oversize your solar panels, your battery bank will struggle to get enough juice and there may be no excess power available to divert to water heating.

pranil,
thanks for the insight. Indeed there is joy in living a diy lifestyle - which is why most of us are here in the first place. ever thought of incorporating solar water heating to your setup?

hello pranil,
quite an interesting setup you have there and rather complex for a water supply system. I'm really trying to understand what you really wanted to achieve with such an elaborate setup? I got banned twice now when I tried quoting your post.

foonshur:
Who made this inverter?

foonshur,
that inverter looks very much like my old prostar 5kva modified sine wave inverter which I used for over two years. it's performance was anything but spectacular and then one very quiet morning I got up to power the inverter and it blew up in my face without any warning!
to say that I was shocked is an understatement. up till this day I couldn't fathom what could have made a perfectly working inverter go up in smoke just when the power switch was activated. I wasn't using solar at the time so that was out of the question. there was no phcn supply at that time so no question of overvoltage. and besides the same inverter had worked all through the previous night without any issues and I only just shut it down for an hour or two to give it some rest...and then boooom!
worse still, the very next day I took it down to the dealer only to be told that the model had been scrapped and was no longer being supported...
this experience was a turning point for me and it was why I decided never to have anything to do with chinese inverters, ever again!

bigrovar,
saipro,

very true talk. rainy season has its up and downs especially for those in the south.
one sunny day followed by a partially cloudy one or outright torrential rainfall the very
next day. its the more reason i decided to oversize my system and i can say i'm reaping
the benefits big time.

Refa:
The 20hr or 10hr just means that it is discharged to 1.75V per cell over a period of 20 hours or 10 hours while the total amp hour supplied is measured. But this does not mean a 20hour rated battery is necessarily better than a 10hour rated battery.

Example; Rolls Surrette S-605 L16 Battery is rated at 100hr for 605AH, 20 hr at 468AH and at 10hr for 398AH. Note that this the same battery, the only thing that changed here is the load that was used to discharge the battery.

So the numbers can be may look better if a 100 hr rating is given for a particular battery.

Because of the Peukert effect, batteries turn to deliver more AH if they are discharged slowly (low amperage draw) and lower AH if discharged fast (High average draw). So a 200AH at 10hr, may be better than a 200AH at 20hr.

refa,
you're very much on point. and that has been my beef with the trojan ind-17 6v battery being sold by solarshop:

http://www.solarshopnigeria.com/homepage/trojan-ind17-6-industrial-line-flooded-lead-acid-battery-1202ah.html

on the surface, it looks robust with a high amp-hour rating of 1202ah but on careful examination, this rating is
based on 100 hours. the question then is: why this deliberate deception? and for a price tag of 535k?

Juokorow:


I am currently decking part of my duplex that is under construction so as to create a roof terrace. I'd like to situate a 300 liter heater like yours there and may engage your assistance when finishing. What are the installed dimensions of your system, stands included?
Thanks for showing us this much preferred central water-heater option.

hello juokorow
the most important dimensions you should worry about is that of the frame which carries the tank.
i will climb to the top of the water tower and take actual measurements by weekend and revert.
cheers!

pranil:


The plumbing and piping is the main deterrent for going solar on water heating not the technology . I am also dabbling the thought but have not taken the plunge .

hello pranil,
the beauty of solar water heating is that it can be retrofitted to existing house plumbing - and that's what i did
in my case.
when you do the maths, the energy savings over 15 or more years of its lifespan far outweighs whatever
extra cost of plumbing that may be incurred in the short term during installation.

Ferdiwar:
Good morning house

Please I need your assistance, someone want to change his inverter and want to import it from USA and needs it to power;


5x water heater (3 hours at most a day)


Can 15kva power them all or should he go for 20kva. As he was previously using 10kva/48v inverter with it (with 24x 2v/1500Ah GasTon VRLA batteries) but got burnt.

Thanks.

hello ferdiwar,
in addition to the above post by pranil, your friend could further reduce his total load by installing a solar water heater.
for almost the same cost, he could replace those 5 electric water heaters with a 300 litre solar water heater which
would take care of his entire household hot water needs even in the rainy season.
you didn't state the model of water heater he intends to power with the inverter but if it is ariston 50l, that could be a
whopping 7500w (1500w for each water heater multiplied by 5) eliminated from his load calculation. that is a
lot of power savings, if you ask me.

davodyguy:


Too many greedy Nigerians

Bought two 215/70/16 tyres today at same rate of 460 naira to a dollar.

I'm just upset about this

my brother, it's just so disheartening. from solar products to tyres and even commodities the story is the same: artificially high prices totally at variance with realities on the ground.
unless they start re-adjusting these absurd prices downwards they stand to lose customers big time.

zeestone99:


Yeah as d dollar keep falling we can only hope price gets better, to allow many of us upgrade our system

zeestone,
well done. keep up the good works. i only wish other sellers like solar depot, et al will toe this line.
i observed that most die-hard retailers are still hanging on to their old high price which they adjusted for
when dollar was selling for 450/500. now that dollar is trading below 370 their price adjustment mechanism
seem to have gone on sabbatical leave. which way nigeria?

bigrovar:


There is no way an home theater or sound surrounds can consume 850w and 1000w respectively. You are confusing sound watts with electricity watts. Get a watt meter for proper testing

exactly my thoughts. you have too many power guzzling appliances.
kindly re-check the nameplate power specs or best still use a watt meter.
pay particular attention to the home theater, surround system and cpu.
if they really consume that much power, it may be better to just replace
them and get more recent and energy efficient models.

your present load outlook is 3575w going by your list above. unless you
do a proper load audit and confirm the actual power requirements of the
items already identified above, you may need up to 5kva inverter to carry
your house. however, i'm sure this figure will come down after you
re-adjust the high load items downwards.

babaegun:


@GeorgeD1 - Now you have enough "evidence" to upgrade your CC.

So what are you thinking of in terms of charge controller - MorningStar, Victron, Fangpusun/Outback......?

babaegun,
you're right.i knew the array size was greater than the capacity of the cc right from time
but I wanted to get a practical field test and the monitoring reports have confirmed this.

i'll most likely be getting a midnite classic 150.

the need for change is established...

the current limit challenge...
solar array output clearly exceeds the tristar mppt 60 capacity...

18kwh, north-facing panels...

all,
one day harvest, saturday...

purplekayc:
Bros I need solar inverter for some of my appliances can u give advice?


Home theatre
Plasma TV
LCD TV
Strong decoder
Dstv decoder
7 energy bulbs
2 desktop computers
Mini sound system (surround)

*******

purplekayc,
could you resend this post with wattage attached to the equipments?
i can only give you proper recommendation if i know the total power demand of your house load.

life707:
@George_D

We need to talk. Can't reach you.

brother, we have discussed.thanks for quickly clearing up the mix up at your end.let me know when you're ready to install.cheers!

life707:


You got mail

we have discussed. thanks for the patronage.

lastly, i'm giving away my tristar 45a pwm charge controller.
even though its a pwm cc, it delivers superb charging amps and
did a good job sustaining my battery bank for over two years
during the building up process of my system. i have to let it go now
because obviously the capacity is no longer enough to match my
battery bank.

spec/details:

12v/24v/48v morningstar 45amps pwm charge controller
country of origin: usa
reason for sale: system upgrade
asking price: 35k

sold! sold!! sold!!!

also up for sale is my rugged 5kva cyberpower inverter.
i have kept this inverter as spare for a very long time and no longer feel
it necessary to continue tying it down. my magnum is obviously doing a
wonderful job providing me with all the power i need.

specs/details:

cyberpower inverter, eu model
capacity: 5kva
asking price: 170k

sold! sold!! sold!!!

all,
here is announcing the sale of limited quantity of original suntech panels to
the lucky buyer or buyers. this set was kept apart for personal use and are of
higher grade and newer than the first set sold off recently.

specs/details:
suntech 200w mono
origin: made in japan
quantity available: 9pcs
asking price: 45k each

reason for sale: after the successful upgrade carried out on my system,
panels are no longer required for the purpose they were kept.

as usual, sale will be on first come, first serve basis.

sold! sold!! sold!!!

samnaija,
thanks for the compliments. when it comes to battery banks setup, there are lots of advantages to be gained
by connecting your batteries in series as opposed to parallel. however, with large battery banks, you just cannot
avoid paralleling your batteries. the key challenge then becomes how to mitigate the main disadvantage of
parallel battery connections, which is that all the batteries may not receive equal amount of charging current at
the same time, leading to premature battery failure.

in my own case, i have 3 strings of 260ah batteries. Each string consists of 4 batteries connected in series. for
each of those strings, there is an equal length of positive and negative cables that connect to the inverter. so i
have a total of 6 cables (three positive, three negative). in a nutshell, the three strings act as independent
battery banks only connected to the inverter through the individual cables of equal length. in this way,
all the batteries in a string get the same amount of charging current and they also give out equal amount of load
current to the inverter when discharging. no single battery gets cheated out. also, i do carry out regular battery
rotation (within a string) like once in a calendar year. over time, this practice has helped ensure that my
batteries remain in top shape and after almost five years, they are still performing as new.

the two charge controllers are feeding the same bank.

mcci:


Do you not risk damaging your CCs on very cold mornings? It may exceed the recommended 150Voc

mcci,

before settling for the 3 x 4 configuration, i ran the module data through various
string sizing tools (morningstar, midnite solar, etc) and got assurance that everything
was alright.
as for cold mornings, it is heartwarming to note that we are living in the tropics where
temperatures hardly fall below 25⁰, so no worries at all.

Chuckdee:



WOW!... Congratulations on that massive upgrade GeorgeD!! You keep on amazing us by your trailblazing endeavors, Solar truly works and highly ADDICTIVE i most say too.


Quick one, I understand you choose to mount your combiner box inside your ceiling to be away from prying eyes but wouldn't it be much of a hassle to get inside your ceiling, then crawling to where its mounted just to turn off the breakers when you need to service your setup or in cases of emergency?? Or maybe you have another breaker between the box and CC?..

chuckdee,
the challenge of how to access the combiner box especially during emergencies formed part of my
thought process during the planning stage. however, i reasoned that by design, the cb is not something
you go and open up everyday to check except when you're trouble-shooting a fault in your system and this
would be most probably once in a blue moon. if you have your system properly set up from the beginning
you really don't have any business going to peek inside your cb every other day.

and, yes. there is another set of breakers installed between the cb and cc which makes climbing up to the
ceiling unnecessary.