The road to nirvana

My journey into Photography, Horology, and Audiophilia

Going solar - Balcony Solar System by EcoFlow

October 1, 2024

Continuation from previous page...

My experiment with the flexible solar panel gave me enough data and experience, so I ordered a set of roof mounting parts, i.e., two 2.4-meter rails, 6 pieces L-feet, 4 pieces end clamps, 2 pieces mid clamps, 1 piece grounding lug, and 10 meters of solid copper wire.

I did the install myself on the garage roof so that when the rigid solar panels arrive, only lifting and securing work needs to be done.

As to the solar panels, I looked high and low to get good quality that will not exceed the 55V/13A maximum inputs of the EcoFlow Powerstream. I also need something that's not so heavy, and 25kg seems to be the sweet spot.

In the end, I chose the 430W bi-facial solar panel from IAN Solar, because they have a professional website complete with specifications and staff that's delightful to deal with.

 

Finally, the solar panels have been lifted and installed in their rightful place on top of my garage roof.

I was operating the microinverter with a single panel at the moment as my order for another MC4 extension cable wasn't delivered until the next day. My decision in choosing this brand is fully justified as I'm seeing a peak of 390W.

 

I would be happy to achieve 80% performance at 344W, so being able to get 390W is a delightful discovery. 

Finally, the MC4 extension cables arrived.

With two 430W solar panels and good harvest, I was able to record nearly 700W and see the maximum 600W being fed to the Delta 2 Smart extra battery and the rest of the harvest to the household power demand resulting in ZERO grid utilization. I think the harvest is more but the Feed-in Control is on, so it was limiting what is fed to the grid.

After a few more days of observation, here are the post-installation data that I collected:

  1. The Delta 2 Smart extra battery rated at 1,024Wh is fully charged before 10am, so I regret not getting the Delta 2 Max extra battery with double the capacity.
  2. After the battery has been charged, solar input throttling happens and excess solar harvest is discarded. That is a lot of watt-hours wasted, too bad.
  3. The Delta 2 Smart extra battery will start contributing to the household power demand as early as 4pm and will last up to around 10pm, shutting down the Powerstream.
  4. I removed the "Sunrise" and "Sunset" automations and simply set the system to Power supply priority mode.
  5. On October 29 at around 8pm, the Smart Plug connected to the refrigerator magically started logging its data.

I am now looking forward to my October bill (24th of the month cut-off) to determine if I am really saving money, or this experiment is a failure. Should I be saving money, what will be the ROI, and what will be the next purchase as I'm getting an itch again to get the Delta 2 Max Powerstation.

The moment of truth, conclusion on the next page...