Trevor,
Most of the info I have from the tilt angle is taken from a number of different articles I've read in Home Power Magazine. That said, if I were roof mounting my panels, I personally would use 44 degrees, or rather, as close to 44 degrees tilt angle as I could get. Mine are all ground mounted on adjustable racks for several reasons: First and most important, my wife was okay with me buying all the solar equipment I wanted as long as I did not touch the roof of our house. :p Second, our roof doesn't face true south. Third, I wanted to be able to clean them without danger of falling off my roof as the drop would be about 14'. Finally, we have plenty of room in the back yard so the amount of room they take up isn't an issue. The small array's footprint is about 7' square. Add a foot and a half gap to the bigger array. The bigger array is about 42' long by 12' wide. |
Did you decide on a system?
One thing I like about micro inverters is one fails you only loose one panel not the whole system. It is very easy to know if one panel is bad or going bad. You get good level of data provided at a panel level. |
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Thanks for posting your system it really helped me along the way. It also shows that micro inverters are a little simpler for a home owner to do a self-install. |
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In Florida, my biggest challenge in permitting and home-owner self-installing a roof mounted PV array was the structural engineering necessary to keep the array on the roof in a 3 second gust of 170mph. 4400W is just the beginning for me... There will be more. |
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Micro-inverters are better in shadowing situations - you lose the output from individual panels that are too shaded, but the rest keep on going. With one main inverter, with too much shadow the whole array stops any output. I believe micro-inverters are less lossy, since the longer wires are AC?
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Although the voltage is all over the place, most string inverters have inputs between 250Vdc and 550Vdc bit it is really up the the inverter architecture as to how may series panels they can handle. The cost of the micro inverters is more and there is more custom equipment with the trunk cabling but it may be easier for the layman to install. It is all the same to me.
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I recent had one panel underperforming I clearly showed up in the web monitoring. I went out to the array and this huge feather was on one panel I removed it and I was back in business. only one day of reduced power on one panel very cool. |
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I decided to go with the micro-inverter (Enphase). I am installing qty 40 ET 250w panels on a new garage. Hopefully it will stop raining here in Vermont long enough for me to install them. Rails are up, but I am not getting on a metal roof with a 8x12 roof until it is dry. My costs are right around where I budgeted which was $22k, even though I may need to hire someone to assist with carrying them up the roof. I mounted the inverters for the top row this weekend in hopes that I could get someone to help me this week to install the first 10 panels.
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