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A small plug and play grid tied solar setup.

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 7:16 am
by aristide1
http://ken-nect.blogspot.com/

Scroll down to see one man's efforts at offsetting his power usage. "Plug and Play" is defined here as:

1. No roof installation, no way it's going to cause water leaks into your home.
2. No changes to your AC home wiring.
3. There's no battery backup, and all the issues that go with it.

Now the grid tie inverter used in the article is not UL approved, and so he had to make some adjustments to his installation, but a unit called the XET XPX-A1000 is out there that does have UL approval.
http://shop.solarpowernrg.com/XET-Micro ... -A1000.htm


There are 2 important safety concerns in this project.
1. If the AC entering your home experiences a power outage you don't want the solar setup to put AC back on the lines while repair crews are working on them.
2. The system plugs into a normal wall outlet, so a male plug is feeding power, with exposed connections.

Neither is a real issue here, The unit will not output any power until it senses AC, which it needs to do to be a gridtie setup, otherwise how would it would it synch up its AC power to the grid?

Of course in this simplified setup when you don't use all the power created it goes to the utility companies, but it's a very small amount and they don't pay much for it anyway, so frankly the simplification may justify giving the extra to them.

Re: A small plug and play grid tied solar setup.

Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 4:17 am
by seomedors
An on-grid or grid-tie solar photovoltaic system is when your solar photovoltaic system is connected to a utility source or electrical service provider. You pay for the amount of electricity you consume to the utility provider. Grid-tie solar systems use inverters that meet the requirements of the utility and must not emit noise that can interfere with electrical devices such as reception for television and must retain acceptable levels of harmonic distortion for quality of voltage and current output waveforms. On-grid solar systems are advantageous as the electricity is utilized by the owner during the day and any surplus is supplied to the grid; some utilities pay for this surplus electricity at a higher rate known as a Feed In Tariff (FIT). During the evenings, when solar electricity is not generated, electricity is drawn from the grid avoiding the need for costly battery banks.

An off-grid or standalone photovoltaic system is when your solar photovoltaic system is not connected to the utility grid and you are producing your own electricity via solar, wind, microhydro, generator, etc. These systems will generally have a battery bank in order to store the electricity for use when needed.

Re: A small plug and play grid tied solar setup.

Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 9:26 am
by flyingsherpa
seomedors wrote:An on-grid or grid-tie solar photovoltaic system is when your solar photovoltaic system is connected to a utility source or electrical service provider. You pay for the amount of electricity you consume to the utility provider. Grid-tie solar systems use inverters that meet the requirements of the utility and must not emit noise that can interfere with electrical devices such as reception for television and must retain acceptable levels of harmonic distortion for quality of voltage and current output waveforms. On-grid solar systems are advantageous as the electricity is utilized by the owner during the day and any surplus is supplied to the grid; some utilities pay for this surplus electricity at a higher rate known as a Feed In Tariff (FIT). During the evenings, when solar electricity is not generated, electricity is drawn from the grid avoiding the need for costly battery banks.

An off-grid or standalone photovoltaic system is when your solar photovoltaic system is not connected to the utility grid and you are producing your own electricity via solar, wind, microhydro, generator, etc. These systems will generally have a battery bank in order to store the electricity for use when needed.
You replied to 3.5 year-old post, and didn't even comment on what the original post was about. :?: :?: :?: :?: :?:

Re: A small plug and play grid tied solar setup.

Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:24 pm
by Vicotnik
Come on, can't you see the man/woman/script is working. You create a profile at your forum of choice, then you find a topic, google a few chosen word from that topic and you get a page like this
http://www.solarpowernrg.com/index.php/ ... -mean.html

Then you just copy and paste, and with luck the moderators are asleep. The spam bot will be up and running in no time. ;)

Re: A small plug and play grid tied solar setup.

Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 2:41 pm
by CA_Steve
:) I deleted the vendor link when I approved the post. Wanted to see what would happen. I like to fish, too.