OutBack Power Technologies User Forum

Raysun, Calahoula dogs are so smart. 😆 Ours is smarter than me! assuming we're talking about Catahoula Leopard dogs, being smarter than their owners is par for the course. It's the state dog of Louisiana, where my brother used to live. He sent me a picture of a big event (some kind of hunt, I think...

It's been a wicked month. First snow of the season was the 2nd week of Dec. We've have 30+ inches since. Snow, rain, sleet, more snow and rain. We got our first solar inputs today for three weeks! So the panel cables haven't been ripped out! is this odd weather for you? You profile does say PNW, af...

JRHill wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 7:44 pm But with the richness in programming functions comes some complexity.

All the more reason to avoid unnecessary complications.
And at a minimum, warnings in the docs.

Hopefully documenting the issue in this thread will save someone some head-scratching one day.

I wouldn't call it a bug, as much a setting that requires operator understanding of the generator and its environment. While I would agree that all settings require an understanding of a generator and it's environment, I would disagree that the implementation is reasonable. The manual describes the...

With regard to the "old-school Mate," I can't speak to that directly as its been years and years for me. I upgraded from the Mate to a Mate3 to and then "s" over time. In both the Mate3 & s units, in the AGS setup is the Fault Parameter: Fault Time — the period the generator...

getting back to your original question about thermal expansion - My panels have been subjected to air temperatures ranging from -43°F to 100°F over the 15 years I've owned them. (Yes, actual temperature, not this sissy "wind chill" nonsense.) I've seen diurnal swings of over 60°F up and ba...

Is the time until the AGS declares a genstart fault a programmable parameter? If it's a fixed value, what is that value? I couldn't find a place to set it in the manual, but I could have missed it, or maybe be looking at an old manual.
I'm talking about an original old-school Mate.

I don't see anyone mentioning 2-way tilting? Sun following morning to night & tilting per season. I saw one that sat on a huge pole (around 3ft dia) concreted into bedrock that truly did sun following regardless of if an sun or not & was always back ready for sunrise. Very much like the big...

In general I would agree but do not discount the cost of that 20’ 6” or 8” pipe and 2-3 yards of concrete, especially when your goal is to get panels a minimum of 3’ off the ground. Reusing the existing pipe/poles would be a benefit, but a DPW or similar top-of-pole mount capable of handling 8 curr...

@drstrip, How many panels do you want to install and what is the size of your present poles. Your lowest cost option may be to replace the mount on the top of the present poles. in my limited research, top of pole mounts are substantially more expensive than ground-mount racks. Reusing the poles is...

I misread your earlier post, thinking you were suggesting that CED Greentech was a design resource, not just a wholesaler of gear. Hence the confusion.

As the PE - thanks for the offer, but we have no shortage of professional solar expertise in NM, with knowledge of local conditions.

There is a local resource for you in your town called CED Greentech. For the benefit of anyone following this thread - I called CED Greentech this morning. Turns out they are a stocking distributor for Unirac (and other products). When it comes to design, they pointed me back to the Unirac UBuild d...

JR, Seriously, a well decommissioned? You should see them remove your big sunken concrete septic tank. Disgusting. A big backhoe or a medium track hoe can lift a bunch of dead weight. But a well column 100'+ that's been there for years?? Just me but the static hold on that, just to 'pop' it loose, ...

Again, the ballast required depends on your wind loads and the anchoring to support against those winds determines the ground penetration. I am in So Cal. We plan for winds of 110 mph which is rather light considering many other parts of the country and our ground is loamy with clay and granite. 36...

I explored the Unirac design tool some more and found a different report that had dimensions, and most interestingly, the footing depths. The requirements for my 3 high x 6 wide (landscape) layout call for 7.5' depth with 12" concrete footings or 5.3' with 24" concrete footings. The design...

Thank you again for the wealth of detail. This resolves an important question I had after working through the Unirac design calculator. It provides a bill of materials and what are described as engineering drawings. These drawings left me baffled because they didn't match the configuration I had lai...

pss - If I understand your description correctly, you are building two rows of pipe frame, where each row has a pipe rail along the top. There are no diagonal braces between the rows or within the rows to prevent racking - you rely solely on the anchoring in the ground? (This is not a criticism, I'm...

I calculated once (using the NREL PVWatts site) that all the tilting buys me 5% increase in harvest over a year. I do it only because it’s fun :lol: . If I ever expand I’ll switch to a fixed ground mount something like this: I'm off-grid, so the relevant measure is not the annual harvest, but the d...

I'm rebuilding my 15+ year old off-grid system and need new ground mounts. I currently have DPW top-of-pole mounts that I adjust 4 times a year - 15° summer, 75° winter, 45° for the transitional dates. This has worked out well for me, providing much better performance than a single fixed angle. Howe...

140V(oc) x 48A is nonsense. At open circuit, the array by definition is producing 0A, therefore 0W. 140Voc × 48A is still a reasonable estimate of what such an array could produce under the right conditions. It may also reflect the design criteria they used in sizing the components. ie, it will wit...

I'm a little confused about pulling 46 amps and the 2 HP bandsaw pulling 48 amps. A 3 HP motor is 750 watts x 3 = 2250 watts divided by 240 volts = 9.37 amps when cruising. Are you saying that pulling means the induction load? And your 2 HP bandsaw motor has a higher induction load? if that's the c...

I have three ideas, one maybe good, the other bad, the third a possible. First: All of the table saws have 2 large capacitors, one is a starting capacitor and the other a running capacitor. Usually mounted on the motor housing. So it may be possible to help by enlarging the starting capacitor. What...

Good data, you have an ~17% drop in battery voltage. For your batteries, I do not know what a reasonable current drop is. Did you measure the 465A or calculate it? I would definitely disassemble and clean all connections related to the battery. I measured 48.6A @ 240V at the receptacle the bandsaw ...

You are using 4/0 battery cables, but it may be worthwhile measuring the battery cable voltage during startup of the band saw. If it drops significantly, there could be high resistance somewhere that is limiting the current supplied by the batteries. You can sometimes find a bad connection by feeli...

So again I ask, why not just run a 240vac extension cord for the high draw in the shop? A trench, why? Why can't you wind up an extension cord when not in use? Do you use this every day? I just measured it - the run from the generator to a point the saw cord could reach is 150' by the shortest rout...