The average older gent in England has a shed as a build place and tinkering takes place in this hallowed place. The lead powering this is at best ropey and the power limited and may trip the house now and then. or we have the garage, a cold space with fairly poor lighting a work bench and a few tools.
if you need to upgrade, then head over to our building and construction here:
We Home Services | Basingstoke | Facebook but lets look at adding solar with the possibility of feeding the house some power. lets face it, when you install in the out building and have excess power, you will want to put this back to the house to lower your bills right?
Depending on the roof type, you will want to have hooks, hangers or mini rails. that’s tiles, corrugated or felt type roofs and you may want Z brackets for direct fixing.
A tiled roof would have hooks fairly simple to install, however the weight and fixing to the roof joists under the tiles is a big factor. panels weight comes in around 20KG and your roof has to support the extra weight. the hangers are like a bolt that you can fix to, a stud if you like. drill and bolt. very simple however hitting the joists may be a skill to learn. usually you will have bolts there already to follow.
mini rails are just that, they are an extrusion with a channel on the top and flat plate on the bottom to fix down to the surface, its a close fitting mount.
Solar Mount systems — RenewSolar
Z brackets are simple to fit they bolt to the panel and have two fixing points on the other end to bolt on to a surface. this can be the roof or the caravan, just clean the area, and put sealant under the bracket.
You can Frame over the roof, this is fairly popular to avoid roof damage as most are old and you forgot to ask to have roof mount points fitted before the roof was laid..
panels, you will want to fill some space if you can but depending on what you can fit, being as they are around 1.8meters by 1.1 meters.. they can be bigger…
Most small string inverters will start around 65v, thats about 3 panels .
Micro inverters will start at panel voltage and usually have fitting for two panels.
For single panels you may want to run DC output or an inverter from the battery, and use a charge controller.
4+ panels you have a staring voltage of around 150v
Grid Tied inverters— RenewSolar
hybrid inverter — RenewSolar
When you have put the panels on the roof, put an isolator on the other end. Ensure you have a decent isolator and go for more than the panel current by far for most series arrays, a 30 amp. for parallel 40+.
The reason is that they are left not serviced and are a big cause of fires.
Most cables on new solar panels come with a MC4- EVO2, while MC4 fit, the evo comes in a range of power handling. MC4 will take 25amps, Evo2 up to 45amps. this makes a difference to parallel panel configurations.
That should be both ends covered and we go onto the inverter (AIO), Grid tied, or charge controller.
Micro inverters plug into the panels directly so you have only a AC cable running down. you will want a AC isolator which matches the string current x 1.46.
for example our 800w micro, is 3.4 amps per unit. fused at 5.07 amps which would be a 6 amp breaker.
A charge controller should be suitable for the input and output power and voltages. PWM are cheap but don’t boost, but the drag down. this can be ineffective check out this link for information on MPPT charge controllers MPPT Charge controllers. — RenewSolar
AIO – All in One inverter, charge controller and battery systems.
Quick and easy to install as a off grid installation as you have a “out put” which you wire to a small consumer unit and run out sockets and lights as you would in a normal house installation. don’t forget to install a earth bond.
AIO come in a range of types both on and off grid. you can have grid attached, which means that they can pass though or use the grid to charge the battery, what they don’t do is feed back to the grid and they may need difference earthing arrangements.
What you use it for may dictate the type, a HF inverter wont fair well for high resistive loads like motors where as a LF inverter will. the price varies and while a HF is fast and efficient, the LF will lift more.
AIO would be the better option as these are simple and have everything in one box, there is no extra cables and matching to do.
The inverter –
a stand alone inverter will likely have batteries which you will fuse and have a big cable. remember that the lower the voltage the higher the current, the higher the current the bigger the cable and the bigger the current the shorter the life. phew that was a mouthful.
Picking a higher voltage system will lower the stress on the hardware and reduce the costs.
We would recommend 12v systems to 500W, 24v systems to 3000W and 48v systems to 10KW.
Batteries should be fused and have a breaker or disconnect.
you should also fuse the charge controller.
did you know that if your solar panel makes the power needed you wont take any power from the battery it will just run from the solar. the battery will act like a buffer.
Grid tied.
A small grid tied systems are fairly simple to install.
you can connect with a RCBO back to the system with protection. they should have the correct cables and you can view our BS7671 guide and information in respect of wiring and commissioning solar.
Most installations (DIY) tend to run late and the inverter doesn’t start, but there is light… Solar doesn’t work off light but the intensity. a small string grid tied inverter like the Growatt requires 65v and 0.2 amps to start up. they switch on from the DC ( solar) power going into them not the mains power.
Whats cheap?
Buying what works for you and wont kill you is the best option, string inverters and micro inverters which are grid tied require a mains cable. The ROI is about a year, but it depends on the solar and sun to take this down to around 200 days.
There is a difference between cheap and simple so keep it simple. a AIO is going to be easy and has a cost around £300-500. but you can grow with these. the micro is a “package” as you want an inverter and panel in combination.
Highbred off grid is going to cost less by a lot than on which is parallel with the grid and there is paperwork and limits., off grid not so much, but you cant feed this back to the house or grid.
if you expand then you can ATS the house to run from your solar, but did you size it correctly and do you need to buy again? it is the upgrade path that you need to look into and it will be how you want it to work now to next year that really is going to make a big difference.
Check out the forum and other areas on this site for inspiration and ideas, there are many ways to achieve this… just drop a comment
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