Update: I got my meter swapped out mid-week. Today is the first day I've been at home while the sun is out and the inverter is running. I've always had some bkgd noise on my UPB network (plasma tv and other electronics, no filters), but I can't see any problems today. Comm tests don't show an excessive amount of noise and links seem to work OK, so far anyway. So far so good..
Solar Panel with inverter - will it interfere?
- Thread starter SteveQ
- Start date
Update: I got my meter swapped out mid-week. Today is the first day I've been at home while the sun is out and the inverter is running. I've always had some bkgd noise on my UPB network (plasma tv and other electronics, no filters), but I can't see any problems today. Comm tests don't show an excessive amount of noise and links seem to work OK, so far anyway. So far so good..
opie
Active Member
I don't have any data to add, but I will soon:
I have ~30 UPB switches (Gen2, mostly HAI w/ some PCS) with a PCS and I now have a 4.7kW (DC) solar system w/ a SMA SunnyBoy 4000 inverter. Unfortunately I'm waiting on PG&E to replace my meter and give the final go-ahead to allow me to turn the system on. That should happen in the next 2 weeks or so.
At that point I should know whether I've got any significant noise issues or not. This was not on my radar at all, so I'll be annoyed if I have to replace all my switches, and my rain8upb.. but I guess it would be a good excuse to look into Centralite JetStream or something..
Good to hear! Later this month we are having solar installed and the inverter is a SunPower SPR-6000M but I believe it's made by SMA (same as a Sunny Boy 6000 I think).
damage
Senior Member
who did your install? i'm in the bay area too and we're in the process of picking an installer. thanks
oops sorry I didn't see this earlier.
I work for a large company and my employer arranged employee discounts with Sunpower and REC Solar, so I got quotes from them. I also got a quote from a company based in Berkeley called Sungevity--they're a solar startup that a coworker referred. Ultimately I went with REC Solar.
The Sunpower quote (actually a quote from a local Sunpower premier dealer called Cobalt Systems) ended up being very high relative to the other two. The Sunpower panels are somewhat more efficient and look sexier (all black monocrystalline silicon instead of the cheaper and multicolor polycrystalline silicon panels the others use), but because my panels aren't really visible from the front of my house and because i had enough prime roof space for the size system I wanted i really couldn't justify the (~30%) greater cost i was quoted. I found out later that my boss had a much larger (7kW) system installed by Cobalt and found they were the lowest quote he received. So.. YMMV w.r.t. price but FWIW my boss said he was very happy with their work.
REC is a large company and have done many installs, including my brother's down in San Jose. They have an electrician present at every install, and they were willing to be flexible (installed a RS-485 card in my inverter and ran some conduit so I could run a serial cable for monitoring purposes--the monitoring option they offered seemed kind of pricey, ~$1500 vs ~$750 or so for me to do the same thing). With the employee discount, REC Solar came in the lowest, but not by much.
Sungevity was willing to meet (actually slightly beat) the REC price, they were very responsive throughout the whole process, and they were willing to squeeze me into an earlier installation window at my request (time to install was an important criterion for me). They were an outstanding company during the pre-sale process and I very nearly went with them.
In the end the REC guys committed to the same timeframe as Sungevity, and they were both ~same price, so I went with the larger company, but I gave serious thought to going with Sungevity. As it turns out the REC guys ended up having to push my date back a couple of weeks (right after I signed my contract :huh
, so it's hard to say whether I made the best choice but the actual install went smoothly and I haven't had any problems.If you're looking for an add'l company to give you a quote and you haven't spoken to Sungevity yet, I'd suggest giving them a call and seeing what they can do for you.
One caveat: I had all three companies provide me initial quotes before doing an on-site evaluation. It turns out after doing the onsite eval, REC had to revise (downward) their estimate of the generating capacity of the system (some shade due to the neighbor's tree that wasn't evident looking at the satellite photos i guess). If you want a more accurate estimate and don't mind some add'l delay for scheduling, that's probably your best bet. In my case, the difference in the CA solar rebate (which is based upon how much electricity your system will generate under real world conditions) ended up being pretty small so the system will only end up costing me a few hundred dollars more than the estimate.
HTH
-js
damage
Senior Member
thanks for the reply! i just spoke to rec solar & they'll be coming out next week. regrid and grosolar (via 1bog.org) have already done surveys. i also got quotes from solar city & sungevity, which happened to be the most expensive using only 175W panels. regrid & grosolar offered 230-240W panels and came in a bit lower. we'll decide next week after we hear from rec solar.
bpwwer
Member
Just as another data point. We had REC install a ~7KW system in December of last year. Overall, we're very happy with the system and with the service.
damage
Senior Member
our system was switched on yesterday. it's a modest 3.68k system with a sunny boy inverter. it's really cool watching the meter spin backwards. i've got it connected to our brultech and @9:30AM it's currently producing 1.38kW. i was surprised to see it start producing around 6:30AM this morning. all X10 & UPB work fine. i went with regrid aka real goods solar. they use homeplug to get data from their monitoring hardware to my router.
update: have worked on graphing the solar generation based on brultech data http://bit.ly/bYdc83
update: have worked on graphing the solar generation based on brultech data http://bit.ly/bYdc83
opie
Active Member
I now realized I never reported back with my results. Our system was turned on last December (6.2kW SunPower 6000M Inverter) and I have not seen any powerline interference with Insteon or UPB. It is currently only being monitored by the little SunPower display that came with the system but I would like to hook it up to a Brultech as well.
For those interested in going the solar route, most are likely to get many more times the payback by starting with solar thermal. While not as sexy as photovoltaics, solar thermal panels are generally about 4x more efficient. and the payback can be under 5 years. Lots of good DIY info here (not affiliated, just like the site): www.builditsolar.com
SteveQ
Active Member
As a Follow up to this thread I started, in July I installed a small solar panel with battery and I am using it to power my 12V electronics. Things like security cameras, Wireless router, and Cable Modem. I don't have an inverter so at this point I have no problems with x10 interference. I plan to experiment with my computer UPS to see how much I can extend its battery back-up time if I use the solar Battery in parallel with its onboard battery. I will also add a few LED/CFL lights for emergency use. I'm hoping the end result will be a system that will reduce my power company energy usage and also provide about 4 hours of emergency backup power for my computer system.
Steve Q
Steve Q
I can comment on a couple of installations of UPB with solar. We saw one several years ago with an early generation inverter where the output of the inverter was absolutely horrible. It looked like a step approximation of a sine wave with a small number of steps. In that installation (which had early generation UPB devices), we could not control UPB when running on solar. However, over the last year or so, we tried a trick of installing several 10A UPB wired in filters on the output of the inverter wired in parallel with pretty good success. You have to determine how much current you need to handle and make sure you size the paralleled filters properly.
Within the last couple of years, we had another solar installation where UPB worked beautifully without any filtering at all. In this case, when you looked at the output of the inverter, it was a beautiful sine wave, and at least, with the naked eye looking at the oscilloscope, it was hard to tell it was an approximated sine wave. So, our belief is that the inverters have come a long way since the early versions.
Another comment. We also found that some appliances really had trouble running from the solar inverters. In the first case above, there were other appliances that had problems. Even in the second case, with the great sine wave, we found that the dishwasher for some reason didn't like the solar power provided. We wired in a standard 10A UPB wired in filter in series with the dishwasher and now it runs fine.
Within the last couple of years, we had another solar installation where UPB worked beautifully without any filtering at all. In this case, when you looked at the output of the inverter, it was a beautiful sine wave, and at least, with the naked eye looking at the oscilloscope, it was hard to tell it was an approximated sine wave. So, our belief is that the inverters have come a long way since the early versions.
Another comment. We also found that some appliances really had trouble running from the solar inverters. In the first case above, there were other appliances that had problems. Even in the second case, with the great sine wave, we found that the dishwasher for some reason didn't like the solar power provided. We wired in a standard 10A UPB wired in filter in series with the dishwasher and now it runs fine.
priorityelectric
Member
I have solved this dozens of times to filter out the inverters.
Have an electrician filter your inverters
after your inverters and before your electric panel.
use fuseable links with xpf filters.
xpf filters are rated at 20 amps.
I wired in 15 amp in line fuses and then a filter on each power leg and put it all in a 12x12x6 nema 3r can.
Solving x-10 problems and making old systems work is easy.
hult
Active Member
Yes, but the OP's application is >> 20 amps, so Smarthome's xrp 20-amp filters do not serve the purpose.
Also, last time I took one apart, it was a notch filter, centered on X-10 frequencies and not a low-pass filter. So frequencies _higher_ than that of X-10 may be in adequately attenuated for some purposes.
I purchased an isolation transformer from eBay. The inductance of the transformer intrinsically forms a low-pass filter. The major disadvantage is loss in efficeincy of overall system. With careful shopping, cost of transformer is very tolerable in the context of a large photovoltaic system IMO.
Most/many transformers on eBay are 3-phase, but there also 1-phase 120/240 if you look.
Here's a new 5KW 120/240 1-phase, outside rated transformer that will handle up to four 20-amp circuits.
eBay search string: (sola, hevi, egs) HS* will get you going.
HTH ... Marc
damage
Senior Member
my 3kw inverter requires only a 20A breaker, as does the 4kw version (peaks at 17A)
