New solar system
We made out first panels (2x75w) at the end of 2012, and then made another two 150w panels about a year later. These have served us very well, but we've finally decided to replace the whole set up with a completely new and more powerful system.
First I took all the old panels and structure down. The first pair of 75w panels were in pretty bad condition! one of them had stopped working completely, but amazingly the other was still putting out about 75% power even though all the wood was rotten and the cells were all broken! One of them disintegrated and fell when I was lowering it down with a rope, but luckily the glass didn't break. The second pair of 150w panels were still operating pretty well, but the glass in both of them was cracked, the first by super-hail and the second due to the roof and wood slowly bending out of shape.
The new set up involves 6x260w panels with a 1Kw charge-controller/inverter unit and two 240Ah batteries. I had installed the controller and batteries a few days before, and after spending the whole morning removing the old installation from the roof, I only had time in the afternoon to get one pair of the new panels installed. The next session a couple of days later I got the rest of the structure ready for the remaining four panels. I had to raise two of the bottom ends of the vertical metal bars up a bit to compensate for how bent our roof is! Unfortunately this will mean that two of the pairs won't be at exactly the same height, but it's better to ensure that the panels are sitting nice and flat than to have it looking nice.
The new system seems to have some problems though. First I couldn't figure out how to attach the panels to the structure properly using the parts supplied - our panels are 35mm thick, but the clamps seem to only support 40mm panels even though the manual says they somehow support both. I've had to temporarily raise the panels up with a stack of washers until the people at the shop can explain the situation.
The other problems are with the inverter, its web-page just shows zero for all the parameters, and the readings on the display of voltage and power don't match the readings we take directly from the panels with a multimeter. We're back in Caxias now and will be going to the shop soon to find some answers!
Update: Well we went to Caxias and got our answers... the problem with the power reading fro the panels is that the system limits the amount of power that can come in based on how charged the battery is and how much is needed to supply the load we're using. The issue with the web=page showing all zero is that we need to do some more configuration on the inverter to give the add-on card permission to access the necessary port. But the really strange thing is that they couldn't figure out the how to get the bracket to fit the 35mm panels either! They came to the conclusion that the only way to do it is as I've done by putting something under the panel to raise it up to 40mm! They said that nobody else had ever mentioned this problem so they didn't know about it!! So rather than use a stack of washers, I at least got some 5mm thick steel pieces of the right size :-/
