I have two Nature's Generator Lithium 1800 small solar Generators (12v). The company alleges (and I do not dispute) that each can take-up to 600watts of solar. However, the company only sells their 100watt 12v panels which means not only would I have to purchase 12 solar panels the amount of space it takes is also unnecessary. I notice that on Amazon, I can purchase a 600-watt or even a 400-watt solar panel (12v respectively). The purchase would drastically reduce space and is actually... Read more ..read more

New bee here. I'll be running 150 feet of PV wire out to my very first ground array. My Solar panels: https://signaturesolar.com/product_images/AdaniSolarASB-M10-144-535bifacial.pdf ( I'll have a bunch of these in series. up to around 400v) My Question: 1) I'm a little confused on what wire size to choose. I figure I could get 15 amps coming through the wires. According to this chart I should be using 6 awg wire... Read more ..read more

I have a burning question that I can't seem to find the explanation to. My sister-in-law is installing a solar system on her RV and when it comes to connecting the solar controller it needs to he connected to the batteries first. I understand the reasoning behind that. What I don't understand is why does the negative terminal of the solar charge controller get connected to the battery first, and then the positive? I apologize if I'm being dense, but that seems incorrect to me. Just looking... Read more ..read more

Greetings. At my residence; all my solar grid-tied generation fed into the grid gets 100% credit for the same electric rate consumed from the electric utility, and will be that good for 22 more years... they said... Now the law has changed to the generated energy to be credited at 75% of the rate for new installations. Am planning to put solar generation in a second residence. Does it mean 25% of what I will generate in the new installation will be pocketed by the electric utility or am... Read more ..read more

i have 4 windy nation 100ah agm batteries in series to 48v what should i set the charge/discharge rate at? for sol-ark 15k also notice this in the manual Max A Discharge: Sets the maximum discharge current (A) rate from the batteries → 275A max allowed. For Off-Grid systems, the battery bank will discharge 120% of this value for a 10 second surge before the inverter faults to prevent battery damage ..read more

I have finally powered up my battery bank (6 eg4 ll-s) batteries on my Victron system. I see the battery pack in my Cerbo GX, do I need to set the battery specifics (charging rate, float rate, etc) or does the BMS handle it via the Cerbo? If so, where do I go on the Cerbo interface? I dug around a bit and could not find it. Also, I want my system to prefer battery over grid. I am not able to do that so far. When I unplug the grid power, everything on my inverter shuts down and does not... Read more ..read more

I recently bought a small 15a auto transfer switch. The switch plugs into grid power and also my inverter. When grid power goes down it switches to use power from the batteries and inverter. Of course while grid power is up and inverter is in standby/idle mode the inverter is still drawing a small amount of juice from the batteries. Is there a solenoid switch or something I could install in between the batteries and inverter that would be disconnected until grid power went off? Hope that... Read more ..read more

Seems like there will be new tariffs on solar panels and batteries (and EVs, semiconductors and medical supplies) from China coming to the States. https://www.reuters.com/business/us-set-impose-tariffs-china-evs-certain-strategic-sectors-bloomberg-reports-2024-05-10/ Biden rumored to announce quadrupling of tariffs on Chinese EVs, up to 100% Chinese cars are currently taxed by 25% in the US, and President Biden reportedly wants to quadruple that to a 100% tax. electrek.co ..read more

Just read an article that the US administration announce a 4 fold increase in import tariffs on various Chinese goods, including EVs, Solar and Batteries. Have not verified this report yet, but if true will likely raise the price of much of what we do here ..read more

I'm on the island of Roatan; 16.348199, -86.467057 I just noticed that the sun is north of my position and having panels facing south at an angle of 16 degrees would be detrimental to solar collection right now. I went looking for a site that can show me the solar path over my position for the entire year so that I might compensate for it by welding up a manually adjusted tilting mechanism for better collection on about 8kW of panels. Does such a site exist ..read more