Lesley & Erich on the road again.

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Wow what a lovely day for a picnic on the river bank

[Dot]

Wow what a lovely day for a picnic on the river bank

It was just wonderful.

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Next time I hope we will be able to come over still playing silly buggers with these batteries

[homeless]

Good to see you were practising social distancing LOL. I thought it was Friday yesterday anyhow. Well it does end in a "Y". We are doing our quarantining out here on the river. Very relaxing except for those mentally challenged people who ride those water scooters at top speed and insist on demonstrating their lack of brains at the back of our boats. They have the whole river but insist on coming up to where we are camped and showing us their little tricks etc.

[T1 Terry]

So how many panels ...??? looks like 12, ...???

vik...

14 x 60w and 1 x 160w we had to move to the left hand side to fit that front panel sideways. 1,000w all together, the 14 x 60w connected in 2S7P (2 panels in series x 7 sets) to an MPPT controller in an attempt to get around the Vmp drop in the very hot sun over summer. It wasn't a problem in the past, but last summer was so hot the panels were dropping their output voltage below battery voltage and that really effects the solar output. the existing 160w panel will be wired through the Enerdrive DC to DC charger so it doesn't upset the MPPT controller. The one we use has separate voltage sensing so we can manipulate the voltage it senses to get it to charge properly.
Did Neil & Lynn Fyffe's set up (21 x 60w 7S3P) and in the cold wind the open circuit voltage went over the 145vdc controller limit and the thing shut down .... pain in the ....... So now we are rewiring it to3S7P to drop the open circuit upper voltage to 63vdc and see how that goes. Not too many combinations add up to 21 unfortunately

[BernieQ2]

Great photo's .
Terry what's the best way to wash solar panels...on the house roof...just water or detergent ?
Bernie .

[Kappy]

What a great Morning.
Nice to meet all you nice people, made to feel welcome and the location is superb.
Whats ya name again.

[T1 Terry]

Great photo's .
Terry what's the best way to wash solar panels...on the house roof...just water or detergent ?
Bernie .

Truck Wash and a soft house broom, rinse and then if you are feeling energetic, a polish with No2 Cut & Polish. This should provide a coating on the panels that will cause the dirt and pollution scum to simply slide off and rinse off with a hose or if it ever rains properly again. It's the dust and evening dew that does the damage, crap in the air comes down with the dew and creates a film on top of the panel cutting the amount of light that can get in. With most panels, blue is the colour the modules can't use, but some reflect a near black appearance when clean. Unless you can see that blue or black clearly, there is film on the panel glass stopping some of the light coming through. The build up around the frame edges, more common on flat mounted panels, will actually cause the panel to fail early in life because it creates a hot area under the dirt because the light that got in carried a lot of heat and it could get back out under the dirst but was rather reflected back into the modules. This causes them to burn the fine busbars in the module edges, eventually killing them.

T1 Terry

[BernieQ2]

Great photo's .
Terry what's the best way to wash solar panels...on the house roof...just water or detergent ?
Bernie .

Truck Wash and a soft house broom, rinse and then if you are feeling energetic, a polish with No2 Cut & Polish. This should provide a coating on the panels that will cause the dirt and pollution scum to simply slide off and rinse off with a hose or if it ever rains properly again. It's the dust and evening dew that does the damage, crap in the air comes down with the dew and creates a film on top of the panel cutting the amount of light that can get in. With most panels, blue is the colour the modules can't use, but some reflect a near black appearance when clean. Unless you can see that blue or black clearly, there is film on the panel glass stopping some of the light coming through. The build up around the frame edges, more common on flat mounted panels, will actually cause the panel to fail early in life because it creates a hot area under the dirt because the light that got in carried a lot of heat and it could get back out under the dirst but was rather reflected back into the modules. This causes them to burn the fine busbars in the module edges, eventually killing them.

T1 Terry

Thanks Terry , cut and polish is out its our 3kw house panels , no way to get to the top/ bottom of the panels . I could reach the end one's only .
Bernie .

[Dot]

Need another progress report please Lesley.