Anyone have any experience designing and installing a grid tied solar panel system?
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Only off grid here.
All the on grid stuff always had to go through stupid contracts and crap with the local utilities. 
Good luck with your project.
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I install systems regularly. What is your question?
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What do you need help with?
They are mostly plug and play nowadays. Let us know what your needs are.
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if i can avoid hijacking but also ask for parameters OP or other readers possibly may be looking for–
What type of mostly- plug and play solar and battery inv systems could power string lights and irrigation/fertigation pumps for 2x '14h x 40ft hoop houses
It comes down to your power usage, how many watts are needed to be stored and for how long.
Are panels the only way of charging or is generator a option?
I’m looking at installing panels this spring to offset my indoor.
I use around 22,000 watts plus (2) mr cool 5 tons which I don’t know how many watts they are consuming, a day.
I was looking at these panels:
Guessing I’d need around 30,000 watts in panels, I’m in Maine and would only be running indoors for 6 months out of the year.
How do you choose a grid tied inverter? How do you figure out how many panels you can string together to tie into an inverter?
For installation;
You wire the solar panels in a series so you add the voltage of each panel together, is it the open circuit voltage number or voltage at maximum power?
I’m guessing the max voltage of the inverter is how many panels you can string onto one inverter?
On the mfg label above theirs a line that says maximum system voltage, is that referring to how much voltage you could put in series with these panels?
Is this the best route to go or would microinverters on each panel be beat?
When I first bought my land and didn’t have power yet, I had one solar panel connected to charge controller connected to two car batteries to inverter to 24volt motor to run my light deps, that’s as much as I know about panels. This project seems a little more involved.
have a generator with our property running 10500W base with capacity up to 13000W
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Two 5 ton units is a LOT more than 8k watts.
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I was thinking of breaking the panels down into hubs. Something like 30 panels/hub, 1 inverter/hub, then tie the inverters together then to meter.
Would microinverters on each panel be easy/cheaper/more efficient? Is the benefit of going microinverters is if one panel goes down the whole series doesn’t go down?
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Your goal is to lower your bill by putting power back in the grid?
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That data would be really difficult to calculate unless you know the cycle time of each unit
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Yes, I don’t want to use batteries.
In Maine it’s net metering so whatever power you produce you get a credit for it and have to use it within one year from the day you generated it.
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(1) 5 ton for 8000watts in flower, not sure how long it runs in a 24 hour period.
What’s your water source?
Are you using string lights just to keep plants from flowering?
Your bills from last year will have your usage per month, find your average usage and we can tailor a system for your needs.
Using multiple inverters will sometimes be cheaper than one large.
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Peak use was 411kWh/day
That will take over 100- 300 amp panels to generate per day at 10 hrs a day.
You only use this much 1/2 of the year, what’s the usage for the other 1/2 of the year.
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0, don’t use any power rest of year
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