Solar power....our House!

[MJLorton]

Folks,

It's been a crazy week with a hard drive failure on my PC (thankfully recovered due to frequent and multiple backups!), tax to be completed...and the start of the solar power installation on our house. This has also meant a fair amount of time without power while the DB board is configured for the installation.

I've taken a few photographs of the installation thus far. There have been a few challenges in terms of earth leakage issues (a hidden problem in our electrics...) and placement of the kit. I'll cover these bits in detail when I start posting videos of the install.

Our DB board is old, cramped and difficult to work in which has slowed progress as well. The Eskom pre-paid meter of course poses the challenge that we need to ensure power is not fed back onto the grid as it might tamper trip (Eskom have to come around and reset it with a "secret code"....) or it will charge us for giving Eskom power 

Kit to be used:
* The solar array will be 2250 watts (9x 250 watt mono crystalline panels)
* The battery bank will be 8 x 150 Ah lead crystal batteries.
* A Victron Energy Quattro inverter
* A Victron Energy Grid tie inverter
* A Victron Energy battery monitor

I'll post more as it progresses.....

Cheers,
Martin.

[SeanB]

Do what I did, and place a surface mounted box over the old Hymag box, and a set of cover plates to hide the space left on the side. Join the old cables in the conduit to a pigtail ( crimp and sleeve, and label them there as to where they run, twist the Land N together and have a 50cm pigtail to use, excess you put back into the cavity) and cut a slot in the back of the new box ( use a flexiform grommet to prevent cutting on the sharp ends, I have a lot of this) to feed through to the bottom of the box. Then new breakers all round, and add a neutral bar on the one rail to provide your EL switched neutral. Cover plate over that position, and you will lose 2 panel positions. Toss that 40 year old thermal breaker, it most likely is either way out of calibration or is badly worn.

Of course having the box in a cupboard in not a recommended thing, you need to have an easily accessible mains disconnect , and a big label on the doors to say the board is inside.

[MJLorton]

Not a bad suggestion Sean. The electrical work continues today and tomorrow and depending on what happens I might make that suggestion. I'm not an electrician so I would not be doing that work but I like the idea of clearing up all the issues and having a new box...let's see what happens.

[warlock]

SeanB,

I have a similar DB and I have been looking into a way to change it to a new DB box as the old HIENNEMANN breakers are very expensive. unfortunately my DB is in my kitchen so I need to make sure if I did it it would still be aesthetically pleasing to the eye,
any suggestions ?

[SeanB]

First you can just get a length of the new rail and mount it to replace the old larger rail, using a spacer to get the right distance ( I used a strip of aluminium to get the right height ) so the breakers fit flush to the board. Then buy new breakers all round ( I can get you a whole lot of slightly used ones for you  to use if you want, from a remodel at another house) and install them correctly, and make them all match style wise.

Clean up the box with new labels ( cheap enough) and a fresh coat of white if needed on it. Looks a lot better, quite cheap and will improve things up a lot there.