Hi,
I have been following Martin for a while now and finally took the plunge and had some PV installed.
I hope to post a youtube video soon, I am however confused and wonder if someone can help explain.
I am based in the South of the UK and have two strings of PV located on two different parts of the property as the main property roof is too small.
7 x 240Watt Panasonic VBHN240SE10 HIT panels on the roof of my house (South Facing)
7 x 240Watt Panasonic VBHN240SE10 HIT panels on the roof of my garage (East Facing)
Due to the fact that the panels were located in different areas and rather than have to dig up the drive and run long DC cables the installers put in two Solarmax 2000S inverters
One in the roof space and one in the garage, each Inverter has a very short DC run and each Inverter has its own Board trips Isolation and Generation meters for the Feed In Tariff.
The Main house Inverter AC output is fed into the main Consumer Unit's Main Switch together with the main grid connection.
The Garage Inverter AC output is fed into a trip in the main board that feeds the garage Consumer unit.
So here's the question..
Using a bit of php code I pull the stats of the inverters as :
Main House Panel Status
AC Power now.........[Watt].: 1390
Load now................[%].: 60
AC Current now.......[Amps].: 5.65
Time 14:33
Garage Roof Panel Status
AC Power now.........[Watt].: 1159
Load now................[%].: 50
AC Current now.......[Amps].: 4.73
Time 14:33
I note the Grid Electricity Meter is stationary at this point
The washing machine is on and a few devices are in standby tv,dvd etc, computer is on..
I fire up a portable AC unit in the house which according to the wall plugin meter is pulling 1059Watts
So if we guess that everything is using 2kw why does the meter start ticking on the Grid ?
Is it possible that wiring it up this way means we will pull from the grid and not the garage panels.
To me I cant understand how the garage panels will be pulled from if we go over the house roof panels output
Is there a better way to wire it up, how on earth do we use the garage PV power in the house or are we anyway ?
If both arrays are totalling 2549 then surely the grid wont be called on for a load of less than that?
I have attached a picture of the diagram on the wall by the CU.
I still don't understand why the house pulls from the inverter and not the grid in the first instance!
Thanks for any ideas, comments
Dave