photovoltaic
My house has 13 kw of solar panels, split between<br>1 kw on the roof<br>a 4kw solar fence,<br>and 8kw of ground mounted solar panels in two solar fields.
With solar panels pointing south, west, east (a few, a hill is in the way),<br>and many angles in between, several arrays are always getting peak sun.<br>And the vertical panels on the solar fence ensures there's a good amount<br>of power even with snow. I like to think that the arrays are<br>aiming at December.
The solar fence and some other ground and pole mount solar panels, seen through leaves.
The arrays feed into six MPPT charge controllers, each a<br>Tracer4215BN, and each capable of producing 1 kw. So the maximum total<br>power is 6kw. The system is overpaneled by a factor of two to ensure that<br>there is plenty of power even on cloudy days, and indeed even on mosty<br>rainy days it produces enough power to charge my car.
(Why did I pick the little old Tracer4215BN in 2024? Because I had one for<br>7 years previously and it was rock solid. And it's silent, no fan. And it<br>has minimal idle power draw. Also I have 6x redundancy and for cheap.)
Since batteries are the part of a PV system that wears out and has to be<br>replaced, I want to minimize the number I use as much as possible. I use 4<br>Battleborn lithium batteries, which were installed in 2020 and have not<br>degraded in any appreciable way yet.
But six kilowatts of power would could charge that small battery bank at<br>faster than 1/2 C. To avoid charging it too fast, my home automation will<br>turn off some of the charge controllers if too much power is being fed into<br>the battery. That's a last resort, usually the excess power is dumped into<br>my EV and hot water heater.
I have two inverters, a 3kw inverter for major loads and a 1.5kw inverter<br>for around the house loads. I picked Samlex which seems to have been a good<br>choice for a robust and reliable inverter, though pricy.<br>Lighting, fans, and most small electronics are on direct DC power.
Total cost of the PV system:
$3535 batteries<br>$3097 pallet of solar panels<br>$1017 solar charge controllers<br>$2960 wire<br>$1788 inverters<br>$1100 solar fence<br>$3000 ground mounts and ballast<br>$2079 other hardware<br>-$4817 tax rebates<br>$13759 TOTAL
That's on top of the original 1kw solar install, which cost $2500 in 2017.
There's also an old array of 4 64 watt solar panels, though it's over 25<br>years old and produces less than 128 watts now.<br>(It was used for pumping water until recently and still could, but is<br>not currently used.)
Graphs of my PV data are here.
Last edited Thursday afternoon, May 21st, 2026<br>Sunday afternoon, February 24th, 2019 -->