Solar PV (See updates below)

9180 watts of PV is being installed. It will be in the form of 6 trackers with 6 - 255 watt panels mounted. The trackers are East/West tracking but are custom made by myself. They will not accomplish the East/West movement by rotation but by "tipping" from side to side much like polar sat tracking. The main grid tie inverter is a Sunnyboy 8000US with a Schneider Electric XW6048 Inverter/Charger for backup and off-grid operation. 16 Trojan T105's with 4 additional Power Battery gel/AGM added in parallel for a total of 32 KWH capacity. System is currently in development but expected to be completed by Spring.

System certified on 6/18/2014

As of 7/30/2014, last day we had a net use of power from the grid was 6/12/2014.

This is the graph for my PPL electric bill July 2014. A cool and cloudy Summer so far. Went up to August 11 from June 12th without a net daily elect pull from the grid. 8/12 was a dark cloudy rainy day. Only gened 5.01 KWH. Pulled 15KWH from the grid.... The 13th was back to "normal" production.

First three trackers active. Peak output so far, 4482W with a cloud edge. Best day was Sat at 36.5KWH. Now, three more to go...

Updated!!

All six trackers now active. Had a "cloud" pop that would have taken in 11 KW if the inverter could have handled it!! Best day at 50% production was 48KWH. Based on that, I would expect my best day going forward to be reaching for 100KWH. Will not occur in Summer, too warm. Probably will happen in MArch aor April on a cold clear PSD. WIll post updated monthly electric bill grapth soon.

New fronius Primo 11.4 PV string inverter. Installed with PV array upgrades from 9.18KW to 11.772KW. Active on 6/1/2019. It replaces the SMA 8KW string inverter.

9/1/2022!! This is the new Rolls Lead/Acid OPzV 46 KWH (C-100 rate) battery backup bank. 24 S2-690 2V batteries comprise the battery bank. It is fused at 300 amps. It is charged by the new Conext mppt 80 - 600 PV charge controller. This charge controller will be fed by a new 4.6KW East/West barn array consisting of 14 Sunpower Xseries 327W-335W panels. You can see the bottom of the controller has a tempoary black and red wire running into it from a ground test array of 8 panels. The OCV of the string is around 510. This is the main "power wall" and electrical work bench in the barn. It's a bit busy!!

The Xantrex 6048 inverter/charger has the ability to "sell" off excess power once the battery bank is a full charge. This is the 'Normal' state. The battery bank is only used in case of grid down situations and once a month 'top offs' for battery health. Used in this fashion, battery life is expected to last 20+ years. There is no maintenance like with FLA Lead/Acid batteries. Li technology was avoided due to cost at this time, though prices are falling. The battery cost was about $206 per KWH, plus the other equipment. The old batteries were 'scrap valued' at $.20 per lb., about 1700 lb.

This is the 8 panel ground test array facing South, but has morning and afternoon shade challenges. Such can be ground array siting issues.

Original 16 Trojan T-105 48VDC battery bank. 4 - 12V Power Battery brand gels are out of sight to the left in parallel with the Trojan's. Total bank power was about 32-34 KWH's when new. Expected life 7 years.

First 3 tracking poles of 6.

String of 9 on ground for testing. Enabled all equipment setup and operational testing. System is currently active at about 10% to 15% of total expected capacity.

Wireless weather station for wind and other parameters. Station is Vantage Vue. Height is 28 feet above ground.

Old 15KW transformer.

New 50KW transformer. The new designs are almost 1/2 the size of the 50's made back in the 80's.

Two boom trucks coorporating. It was an interesting experiance. My two neighbors are on the same secondary as I am, making them heavy solar users. My guess is that they don't know this fact, making them GREEN energy people!!

Last Updated 2/23/2025

2024 is another PV Record Buster !!

Its official! 2024 is also a PV production record buster. The main tracking array produced 18.503 MWH's. However, the gorund test array added another 4517 KWH's to that, totaling 22.847MWH's, an increase over last year of .173 MWH's total.

UPDATE 6/23: Kia Nero traded in for Kia EV6.

UPDATE 9/22: New 40+ KWH battery backup installed with coming 4.6KW direct feed array. See details under 'My Solar Home', Solar PV.

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BLOG site for "open" topic writings, by myself!

Where to Find Us:

www.WeAreSolar.com (Fitch Consulting)

1072 Fowlersville Rd
Berwick, PA 18603

Phone: 570-752-4827

Email: fcfcfc@pa.metrocast.net

Peak solar production for my house in one day is about 130KWH.

What's New

01/12/2021 My new GEO heat pump is finally installed. I have been "tweeking" it until today, 01/16/2021. It works GREAT!! Unlike it predecessor's, it actually performs up to its submittal sheet. LOVE IT!!

I finally finished my electric overhead to underground conversion along with the transformer upgrade (15KW to 50KW).

May Monthly Production Record Gets blown away in June at 2517KWH !!

Made changes to my PV tracking system. The main PV inverter was upgraded from an SMA SB-US-8000 to a Fronius Primo 11.4 (11,400 watts). Additionally, the PV arrays were upgraded with 20 SunPower 327 watt modules leaving 16 of the original Canadian Solar 255 watt modules, bringing the total output of the array from 9.18KW to 10.620KW. The combination of the inverter upgrade coupled with the array KW upgrade, should generate an additional 2 to 3 MWH a year. I hope this will compensate for the increased cloudiness being produced by Green House Gas Heating Climate change. It took a fair amount of work to do all this....

UPDATE: All 36 modules are being changed out which will result in an array output of 11,772 KW. On a very sunny year, 20 MWH should be within reach.

PV Yearly Production Numbers

2022-2024. Yearly numbers are running around 22 to 23MWH's a year with ground test array added.

2021 PV Production is 19.325 MWH which just misses the record breaker last year. Across the year, 2021 was much cloudier but crazy super sunny March made it almost even. Since the system has been running, we have produced over 129 MWH's total.

2020 PV Production is 19.375 MWH which is a new record buster.!! The only month that did not gen more than last year was October. Our usage was up due to more driving and general increases, which the increase in production was able to satisfy. That production defers about $2000.00 worth of power from the grid.

2019 PV Production is 16.787 MWH.

2018 PV Production is 12.463 MWH.

2017 PV production is 14.293 MWH.

2016 PV production is 15.629 MWH.

2015 PV production is 14.543 MWH.

2014 PV production is 7.711 MWH, first year partial production. 9.374 MWH were produced through the entire startup test phase of the system before certification.

2019 production was a record breaker, do to the upgrade being active for 1/2 the year along with being decently sunny. Most likely, if the array upgrade had been active for the whole year, 17 or 18 MWH's would have easily been had.

2018 production was the worst production ever, not only for PV but for all solar. The rain and cloud cover was unpresidented! WE blew right through the 13 Megawatt range and landed in the low 12's. An increase in array capacity might be necessary to adapt to the GH GH'ing realities causing climate change, to resore a slight electrical surplus.

2017 production down 1.34 MWH from last year. All months produced less except for December which is the cloudiest month of the year.... Ironic...

Electric car miles for the fifth year are 15863 saving 690 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $1932, bringing the five year total to $9172.00. Covid-19 reduced mileage, but a third car (Bolt) and a third driver beginning in August, over turned the shortfall.

Electric car miles for the forth year are 14037 saving 610 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $2014.00 bringing the four year total to $7239.00. Gas went up and down over the period.

Electric car miles for the third year are 13,220 saving 575 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $1955.00 bringing the three year total to $5225.00. Gas prices steadily climbed throughout the year. Total number of gallons not used stands at 1790.

Electric car miles for the second year are 14,830 saving 645 gallons of gas at an avoided cost of $1870.00 bringing the two year total to $3270.00. Not bad for only 2 years at fairly low gas prices...

Electric car miles for the first year ran about 13,000 miles of energy free driving. The gas saved which would have been burned by the car that the Leaf replaced equals about 570 gallons at an avoided gas cost of $1400.00.

Total mileage across the three years equals 41,050 miles. At a gross electric usage of 3 miles per KWH year round, this translates to 13.68 Megawatt hours of electricity, or 4.56 Megawatt hours per year. With the addition of the Ford C-Max plug-in Hybrid over the last year, the total transportation electric load is increased by about 2 megawatt hours more, bringing the household trans electric yearly load to about 6.6 megawatt hours.

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