Generators?

[markw]

so you'd also be powering all the houses on your phase too? Won't that kill your generator? What about when the power comes back, won't there be an almighty big bang?

Yes, yes and yes.

[Bailes1992]

I think it's because the inverter copies the sine wave of the power coming in.
If that drops out then there's nothing to 'copy' as such.

[Bailes1992]

so you'd also be powering all the houses on your phase too? Won't that kill your generator? What about when the power comes back, won't there be an almighty big bang?

Yes, yes and yes.

Unless you managed to get it perfectly in phase?

[markw]

I've had to sync a few MVA gennys on to the mains in my time.......sure does concentrate the mind.......

[steve_earwig]

Shhh, don't wake the baby...

[benczuk]

Need to add a gutter to the bottom of the panels now, since the one on your roof is now mostly redundant!

[steve_earwig]

I'll have to see what happens when it rains...

I was actually more concerned about the amount of bird's/wasp's/hornet's nests we'll get up there.

[highlander]

wasp's/hornet's nests

[Welly]

Wow you can has electricity

If you've got any left over please send it to me.

[steve_earwig]

That's just the outside, I think we're waiting on the inverters now. Or something

Hey, I'll be sending it to everyone. In this village anyway...

[Welly]

Why not buy an electric car and charge it up for free, WCPGW?

[steve_earwig]

Electric cars R sh*t...

[steve_earwig]

Swift photovoltaic update - Solar power slideshow - http://s222.photobucket.com/user/steve_ ... 2014/Solar I will be adding to it...

They had the power off yesterday, hooking up into the meter cupboard. They actually managed to get a whole load more cables into the cupboard using the existing tube so there'll be no need to destroy the façade running it all in there (which was a worry). They left long tails for the electrickery co to put a feed-in meter in there (what, you mean we'll actually get something for the grand we had to pay them? I wouldn't be surprised if the bastards will charge for it on top )

I've spotted a couple of downsides so far -
the back-up house feed will be single phase. Something to do with the house not being balanced enough for the 3-phase inverter. Goddamnit, I knew I'd end up rewiring some of the house
There has to be a brief pause between the power going off and the inverter cutting in (to make sure it is indeed isolated from the mains) so this does mean it won't be one huge UPS as I was hoping, it'll still kill the pc. Unless I get a real UPS...

Oh, I almost forgot - it's been raining rather a lot lately but there's not been a cascade of water pouring off the panels, just a dribble off the last row. This may of course change when the gaps between the panels are filled up with wasp/hornet/bird's nests/leaves/twigs etc.

[Welly]

I'm not sure I understand fully but it sounds ok although a tiny bit of not quite what were expecting.

I bet it's been a bit stressful really, it's a big commitment.

[steve_earwig]

I'm not sure I understand it either but I have the gist of it, it's basically a combination of your standard feed-in solar jobbie with a stand-alone "off grid" system along side it. Normally it'll feed power into the grid whilst maintaining the batteries but once the power goes off it'll isolate us and then we'll be running off the panels and batteries. I'm a tad peeved about the 3 second interruption but that's just the way it is, I'd still be doing it even if I'd known sooner. Hey, if I'm that bothered I can still get an UPS, it'll only ever need to work for 3 seconds so it wouldn't need to be that powerful.

Ok there's a fair bit of extra cost with the battery system but I'm sure if we had another 12 hours-odd power cut with all those panels on the roof doing doodley squat I would go stark raving mad. It's still better than the money sitting in the bank(s) and at least there will be money back eventually.

Not much stress at all tbh, I really didn't understand it all and the paperwork was looking insane, so we got a guy in to sort it all out. It'll obviously cost more doing it this way but I could well imagine giving up in despair if I tried to figure it out myself.

At the moment the only worry is Scooter who wants to eat them so we have to shut him in a bedroom when the guys are down here. mostly they're upstairs though, doing the spaghetti thing. They're almost done now too, all they've left is to get some cable for the batteries, run a cable down here to pick up the modem and mount the control panel... erm... somewhere. And then all we have to do is wait for the electrickery co to get their fingers out