The Louisiana Solar
Energy Society is an
educational organization formed to promote the
use of solar energy and to share information
on the subject between its members and the
public.
The photos below show my current
homepower system. It will run about 4 rooms in the house.
This photo shows the 4 Solerex
MSX-120 solar panels on a Uni-Rack pole mount. At full sun they
put out 480 watts, or about 28 amps at 12V DC. The pictures don't
do the color of the panels justice, they look like the background of this
web page. The panels are wired to a combiner box just inside the
greenhouse (photo left).
The photo below shows the panels
close-up. The panels are just behind the greenhouse and are mounted
on a 13' tall x 4" diameter piece of pipe. I have the angle set at
40 degrees and facing south. They are each about the size of a card table.
This photo shows the equipment
layout. It is located in the greenhouse behind the house. Everything
is mounted on the plywood. The fused wires from the solar panel array first come to the panel
disconnect (small gray box) shown at the upper left of the mounting board.
A Solar Boost 50 charge controller (small white box) accepts the current
from the roof panels. The controller sends the DC electricity through
a Trace DC175 breaker panel (large white box) to protect everything.
From there the charge controller monitors the 16 Trojan T105 batteries
(in the boxes at the bottom of the photo) and adjusts the amount of current
charging them optimally. If the batteries do not need all of the
power being generated by the panels, the charge is stepped back.
The Heart Interface 2kw power inverter (directly above the battery box)
converts the battery current (at 12 vdc) to 120vac and then to the house.
The next photos show the batteries.
The large wires shown are 2/0 size and connect to the master breaker above.
They are wired "parallel series" to provide 12 volts.
The
system performance is monitored with a Trimetric power monitor. It
monitors charging as well as consumption. In the photo it is showing the
panel array output of 24.6 amps at 12 volts DC. I have it mounted outside
near my office window. It can be seen from inside and out. If you
leave it in this mode you can monitor the amps charging in the day and amps
consuming during the evening.
