yeah
hello everyone and welcome to this
series we're going to talk about how to
power your home or house from solar
power
now first of all i have to say thanks
very much to xodar who are sponsoring
this series as you have known if you
followed any other of my videos
David of X earlier and his company
kindly donated all his time to install
solar power of my house and what I like
about XLR and and the companies that for
one that have a great choice and variety
in terms of products and brands
David himself like me enjoys tinkering
and finding solutions to problems so he
enjoys very much getting involved in the
technology and making it work
well so I certainly appreciate the input
now today what I'm going to do this
whole series is going to cover off from
deciding whether you want an onboard
system and off-grid system the types of
solar panels where to have a charge
controller or a grid tie inverter or
micro inverters battery bank the solar
panels that cost involved isn't worth
that the complications of doing this in
south africa vs somewhere like Europe or
the states so they're going to be quite
a few few videos covering that off and
what I ask you is that as I start these
videos start posting your comments and
questions as we go along and armor
training corporate there's into the
videos as they go along
by all means if the video series has
been completed or something has been cut
off and you slap a question
post a comment and I'll do my best to
answer for you and it's worth posting a
video on it
I will do what we're going to start
today though it is getting understanding
all on grid
this is off grid but before I walk you
through this little picture and and
discuss on grid vs off grid and what the
grid is and let me just show you some of
the equipment so that you are familiar
with what I'm talking about when I shade
this diagram
and then we'll get down and explain it
ok so let's start off by looking at
these solar panels we are going to talk
about these in detail later on a narwhal
might even refer you to some other
videos that up maybe I talk about the
performance of the different types of
solar panels under different conditions
so the one thing to note that today you
can get cheaper panels from china and
what have you but you want to be aware
that if you do want to use your panels
with high voltage systems which is
something we'll talk about you have to
consider the quality the build quality
and how they put together and that's
something we'll talk about in terms of
the gaps with the connectors
we're also going to talk about
monocrystalline this is poly crystalline
and amorphous and which seemed to
perform better under what conditions
this is an MPPT charge controller so
it's a maximum power point tracking
charge controller and this device is
something our point out which is
especially useful in off-grid systems as
it takes the power from the solar panels
it converts it does a dcd to DC
conversion service at the right voltage
for your battery bank to charge a set of
batteries
this can't supply power directly to your
house and that's why this particular
unit is more unit is more useful in
off-grid systems but we'll have a look
that when we come to the actual diagram
itself right so here we have the grid
tie inverter this inverter takes the
solar power directly from the solar
panels and converts it to your mains
electricity to feed your house directly
or even to feed back onto the grid
so this this unit here is the grid tie
inverter and this is a normal inverter
so this doesn't take power directly from
the solar panels per se it can be fit
from this we can pick up energy from the
grid tie and it can use it but this is
used to take power from a battery bank
and convert that to a sea parte y or how
so it can also charge the actual battery
bank itself and I just show you down
here
I've got a large Bank of lead crystal
batteries
I've been doing research into different
battery technology to find what is best
and our decides to go they Bank of lead
crystal batteries but these are the
components again they'll be talking
about in that diagram to that
so we get an understanding of how that
all worked together right here we have
an energy monitor now the one reason i
bring up the energy monitor is that one
of the important things to understand
when you are going to or considering
adding solar power to our house
you need to understand you need to scope
and size the requirement of your energy
source and to do that you need to
understand how much energy using you can
of course have a look to a monthly bowl
but ultimately what we want to do in the
series as well as have a look at the
different monitoring equipment to either
measure your household plat power all
the individual power requirements for
each of your appliances are we going
through the ways that you can do that
with the different types of modern
monitors and measuring equipment
now the other thing that will also be
talking about in the system particularly
when it comes to understanding the solar
energy in South African context is the
prepaid meter the different type of
energy meters at your power company can
provide you with and the potential
challenges that they can pose
so this is off see the power company
energy meter
this is a battery monitor and a lot of
this equipment what i will do for the
more advanced people as i'm going to go
into individual tutorials on how on how
these work and how you can configure
them because these have lots of
configuration parameters to make them
work properly so that you can monitor
your your installation correctly right
one of the other things we will be
talking about is how to make your house
run more efficiently because the more
efficient you make your house run the
less power you need from your solar
system which is going to
tends to be expensive so here what I've
done in our house
this is that kitchen we used to have a
set of big fluorescent tubes which threw
up a lot of energy and these are LED
tubes
now that these only use a third of the
power that an all set of fluorescent
tubes use but there are some downsides
that need to be considered with LED
lighting of this kind i have a LED
lighting and in my house and i'm sure
i'll walk you through that and try and
show you when LED lighting is
appropriate or not and also cfl lighting
as well
we also then have a look at different
monitoring software to understand how
were your solar rays actually performing
I monitor my cell array just because I'm
entry to understand what daily power I'm
getting from my solar array out of
interest i've got a 82 2250 what array
on the roof and at the moment at the
beginning of spring
if I have a a full day of sun i'll get
about 12.8 kilowatt hours out of that
array on a bad day yesterday we had a
day when it was overcast and raining
I still managed to get about 6.8
kilowatt hours out of it
so this is something which to understand
to understand how well your system is
going to perform at different times of
the year
so again at this assist you with sizing
your rate cater for whether you want to
actually generate money from your system
or just power your house and to
understand can you power your house and
they're cloudy conditions and how will
perform under winter
ok so let's get down and have a look at
the the first set of basic things to
understand and that is an onboard system
versus off-grid system
so let's have a look at a typical on
grid system and the components and
potentially have it all hang together so
first of all when we talk about on grid
we're talking the grid would be your
electrical power company or in the case
of south africa with say is calm because
we have a national power company there
is no competition
it's just one supplier
but the grid feed basically the
electricity feed which comes into your
house as AC power and that can be in the
states will be a hundred and ten volts
or inside baskets
- 20 or in in the UK is 240
so that is your main grid feed into your
house now to get solar power on to all
grid-connected house
you could then have a solar panel which
is installed on your roof or on your
property somewhere
it can then feed a grid tie inverter now
remember i pointed out that grid tie
inverter what they're great time voted
does it takes the direct current DC
power that comes from your solar panel
and it directly converts it to AC power
which can directly power your house
now this is probably one of the cheapest
and most efficient ways of having a
system power you're using solar power to
power your house
the other option is to use as i pointed
out that MPPT charge controller
you could have that these dotted lines
I've got going to a that what I've noted
use a flex max which is that the model
of the charge controller i have so it
could feed a charge controller which
then charges a banker batteries that
bank of batteries would then have to go
through a separate big inverter which if
you remember I also pointed that and
that would then convert that to AC power
to power your house now what's the
problem with this system for one you
gave every time you go through a device
like a and an inverter or through a set
of batteries you're going to have losses
which are going to make your your system
or inefficient
so in this case if you didn't have the
good time vert and you went went through
your your charge charge controller you
began through there you would have
losses over here
you then putting power into battery
which has resistance and losses when you
put it in at then has to come out of
that battery their losses through
another inverter their losses before it
go
into an feed your house now these
systems in terms of using batteries for
the most part if you don't need you
don't want to use batteries because they
cost a lot of money you can after
replace them every couple of every three
to five years and issued by really
expensive bank of batteries which can
last 15 to 20 years
you want batteries if you you want to
cater for a power outage from the grid
so if the grid fails then you have a
backup source to power house when
there's no grid now in South Africa we
have an aging grid Network which hasn't
been maintained so that's one reason why
i installed the a bank of batteries to
cover for outages also because at this
point in time because i cannot feed back
onto the grid
I want to make the most use out of the
solar power which is coming which is
installed on my house
our household during the day
probably uses takes too long on average
at about 800 2000 watts but I've got
2,200 what's installed on our roof so
that can be hand because on a cloudy day
even if there's a drop in the power of
the roof
I can still run my house but I'm then
losing honest bright sunny day I'm
losing the potential of all that power
because i cannot feed it back to the
Griffin and gain credit for it
so what I do is I charge I go through a
grid tie inverter which is far more
efficient than going through a charge
controllers that directly goes through
the grid tie inverter and feeds my house
any excess power is in pulled through
the bigger inverter and charge the bank
of batteries
that means at night time I can then use
that excess power charge stored up in
the batteries and feed that back into
the house at night so i'm not using the
grid and again when the morning comes I
then use that excess power to recharge
the battery bank that as I said that's
expensive
you can get away and reduce the cost
cost of your system by literally just
having a big bank of solar panels and a
great time vertor and for the most part
in the States and Europe
those are the types of systems that they
use and I'm her foot refer you to a link
of one of my viewers called Matt he's
just installed a five point two kilowatt
around his house and it's a wonderful
production he does some aerial
photography and I if you're interested
do go and have a look because it really
is a nice installation but what I want
to point out is Matt makes use of
another technology which is quite
interesting
you can see I've got a note about micro
inverters now what you can do I have one
grid tie inverter for a whole Bank of
nine solar panels those solar panels
have to be our connect had to be
carefully connected so that they they
they push the path through to the good
verte inverter in the most efficient way
so that you maximize the power coming
off them they are connected in series so
it means if any one of those panels is
shaded or is not ultimately pointed to
the Sun it can draw down the power of
the whole Bank of solar panels
now that is something I you you have to
be careful with with installation and
something after live with because for
one we don't we don't here in South
Africa have a big market of micro
inverters
but on Matt's installation you can have
he has one small inverter / solar panel
and that means you get the maximum
efficiency from each and every solar
panel and if you have a problem with
either one solar panel or in fact if you
have a failure on my system of the
single grid tie everything goes down if
you have a micro inverter on each and
every solar panel you can still have a
failure and have the whole the rest of
your rate up and working but just the
one side panel or inverter will be down
so let's just talk about feeding back
onto the grid in our deal situation what
you want to do with your excess power as
opposed to trying to pump it into a
battery bank you want to feed it back to
the grid so that you can great gain
credit or even and money back from your
power company for doing that and for the
most part in Australia in Europe and the
US you can do that here in South Africa
unfortunately we're a bit behind the
times we are playing catch-up it's about
to happen their battle bringing this
thing called net metering which is what
their you do is the meter is a meter to
understand what you use and what you
feedback in some cases no money
exchanges hands you just gain credit for
to push back and then at night for
instance you use that could you pull
back off the grid and use that credit
that you had the best way to look at
that is to try and understand how that
will work over a year because obviously
you have to account for winter and you
may generate a lot more power and summer
and then be pulling back more during the
winter months and so you need to try and
size your array appropriately if that's
what you want to do in South Africa we
have these prepaid meters so at the
moment we have to have an intelligence
system that disconnects the grid when I
have access pass that doesn't feedback
and that i use it internally in the
house
there are we what we can go into a
discussion on how to intelligent to use
that power whether it's pushing into the
back to bank or intelligent load
diversion by low diversion
I mean switching your low to either heat
up your geezer with the excess power or
switch on your pool pump when you've got
the excess power so that you don't waste
any of your excess energy from your
solar panel right so let's now look have
a look at it off the grid system now
certainly in South Africa this is
probably at this point in time one of
the areas where people are willing to
spend money on fault photovoltaic power
generally speaking if you have if you
have a farm or a holiday cottage which
is off the beaten track in the mountains
and it's going to cost a lot of money to
bring the grid to your house
it's far more cost-efficient - then
bring in a system a a solar power system
which can solar power your house
independently now in the on the grid
system one does want to be careful and
calculate if you really want to power
your house as much as you can you need
to carefully calculate what your power
requirement is but sometimes it's not
that critical if you get to have the
grid connected because you can always
get power for grid
you can always increase your power
requirement over time as you have money
but in off the grid system you need to
have enough power to power the house
entirely because there is no grid
so that's what you need to understand
calculate the power requirement of your
lighting any heating cooking
entertainment systems and try and make
them run as efficiently as possible
the infinite the potential efficiencies
that you gain in the house will say it
will save you money three times over and
the reason for that is that any extra
power you need needs to be k -
cated for potentially in more solar
panels potentially in a bigger inverter
or charge controller and then a larger
battery bank
so that's why it's far cheaper to make
your house run more efficiently that
have to spend the extra money in three
extra places to provide the extra power
for your house now in off the grid
system one can potentially operate far
more efficiently foremost grid connected
systems you have to cater for appliances
that are running at 220 volts or mains
and as I said each time you start going
through a charge controller or batteries
or an inverter you start losing
efficiency and off the grid system in an
ideal world what you want to do is have
your solar panel bringing your your your
power you go through your charge
controller which you need to do because
you need
to control the amount of charge which
goes into your battery bank an MPPT
charge controller makes the collection
of power of your solar panel far more
efficient
i have a video which explains in ppt
which I'll link to over here but once
you've got the power coming into your
battery you potentially have the option
in and off the grid system to try and
run as match of the household off let's
say at 12 or 24 volt 40 volts or 48 volt
system for instance if you have a
12-volt system you could potentially
power you're down lighters and lighting
directly from that 12 volt that means is
no inverting it means it's a far more
efficient use of the power coming from
your your power source of the battery
bank of course you may have to introduce
an inverter as I've got here so that you
might be able to partially round some
things of 12 volt
but then you also might have some
appliances or entertainment systems
which need mains voltage either 110 or
220 and then you'll take those through
an inverter and into your house
so that's an off-the-grid system where
you don't have the grid feeding your
house right side
I do hope that kind of gives a good
start or introduction into solar power
and in terms of showing the different
some of the different components and
off-grid vs on grid
there's lots more to discuss and a lot
of the questions which have imposed to
me so far
and particularly in for the south
african market is is it financially
viable going this route at the moment
and what I plan to do is I'm really
trying to do some calculations to show
what systems could potentially be fired
viable at the moment in South Africa
the one thing for me that is quite
important is at the moment
people need to realize it over the last
four years since 2008 our electricity
prices are probably doubled they're
going to double again with them
the next three to five years we also
have the issue that's not enough money
has been invested on on our pirate and I
think potentially the same might be from
what I hear the state's might even
suffer from the same problem they have
an aging good as well
now if you do have those issues that
potentially you're going to have more
power outages and then the the financial
viability might seriously by be that way
nikon inconvenience if you don't have
electricity in South Africa we've got a
tiered system for what you pay for
electricity
so if you use less electricity the
number of kilowatt-hours you use per
month become cheaper as you step up and
start using about more than a hundred
and 50 kilowatt hours which of course
most families wouldn't would be using
more like six hundred two thousand
kilowatt hours plus once you start
bringing your your keyboard usage below
those certain thresholds you stop paying
a lot less per kilowatt hour so my goal
for my system was to get below 600
kilowatt hours I was easily using a
thousand kilowatt hours eight hundred
thousand kilowatt hours and I bring mind
below 600 Lord hours
I suddenly save a lot more money so
we're going to go to a discussion about
that
we also potentially where it becomes
more viable particular folks in Europe
and the states is that you get rebates
for your systems in South Africa we
don't
so as I said please do post your
questions
they were going to cover of things like
power factor someone raised a very
interesting point about power factor
normally power factor is something you
don't have to worry about in a private
residence because path factor isn't
measured by your metering system and the
if you have a bad path back to your
house
it is the electricity company that takes
a knock
that's different for big industry
however if you're generating you
our own power does power factor play a
part and potentially it does and that's
something we'll investigate
so it's they stop posting comments about
the questions that you might have would
like to see answered and i'll certainly
be going too far more detail all the
individual components to show what part
that play and the different options and
pros and cons of each each of them
anywhere
thank you very much for following the
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thanks very much for watching
yeah
