We began early this morning, lifting the final panels onto the roof and plugging them in. The batteries were cleaned and wired in series and parallel, plus the temperature sensor for Blue on a negative terminal. We checked and re-checked everything, put in the remaining fuses and turned the system on. What a moment!
All that work comes down to this little setup we call the SCC - Solar Control Centre. (Not a very catchy name, and rather military, but it fits.) There is more to add to the system, but this is the basics of getting energy from solar panels into batteries. Everything flows from right to left - first a 2 way box with a couple of 50A fuses in there for the positive and negative cables coming from the solar panels, then Blue - a MPPT charge controller that is the brains of the system, over to the Bussmann fuse box which keeps the batteries and Blue separated if things go pear shaped (it has 80A fuses in it), and down to the batteries who enjoyed their first charge today thanks to this little setup.
So, how am I writing this if we've started the charging?? Well, silly us.. we realised that we can keep some of our power just by keeping one of the panels off the roof and using it to keep charging the old ute battery system. It's working just fine for now, and we're grateful for that. It gives us some breathing room to wire up the house and attach the other smaller components. We also want to make a door for the SCC to help keep out the dust.
We'll go to bed very tired, but happy with ourselves tonight.
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