[RE-wrenches] Generator choice for Sunny Island

Mon Jul 24 13:26:21 PDT 2017

8 hours at least but 24 would be more accurate

Kind regards

Tom Duffy
Senior Solar Design Engineer
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From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Ray
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2017 3:24 PM
To: re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Generator choice for Sunny Island

My experience with Sunny Islands are that their SOC can be off by quite a bit. Unfortunately with sealed batteries, you can't check SG with a hydrometer to confirm, and tweak the settings.  Probably the best you could do, is shut the system down and let the batteries sit for long enough to take voltage readings to double check the SOC.

I found systems that the SI thought it was close to full, but the batteries were actually only at 60%.

R. Ray Walters

Chief Technical Officer, RemoteSolar.com

BS Mech Engineering, 1988

Former NABCEP Certified, 2004-2016

Licensed Master ELectrician, Colorado

303 505-8760
On 7/24/17 2:16 PM, August Goers wrote:
Hi Drake,

Good questions. Yes, the taper charge appears to be working well. I've been to the site a couple of times where loads were low, irradiance was high, and battery SOC was ~90% and the Sunny Boy was just covering the load and a little trickle charge.

I have noticed that the SOC seems to max out around 90 to 92% - that seems to be the case with Sunny Islands in general. I'm not enough of a battery expert to know if this is a good thing or not. I do know that I custom programmed in all the AGM battery parameters and set max voltages. I also disabled equalize mode since I couldn't find any literature from US battery on recommendations for their AGM.

August

August Goers

Luminalt Energy Corporation

o: 415.641.4000

m: 415.559.1525

www.luminalt.com<http://www.luminalt.com>

On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 5:36 AM, Drake <drake.chamberlin at redwoodalliance.org<mailto:drake.chamberlin at redwoodalliance.org>> wrote:
Are you getting a good taper charge with this system? Are the batteries reaching a decent state of charge from the AC coupled connection with the inverter?

Thanks,

Drake

At 11:08 AM 7/23/2017, you wrote:
August,

            Of course the genny itself has its own emission of noise but the environment its in certainly will affect its overall "annoyance level".  Backed up to metal container is a negative, I can't tell from the photo if the Kohler is on the side away from most of the public, probably don't have to go on, you must have thought of these things....it could have its own (partial?)enclosure with some sound deadening qualities.  Hondas are a little quieter but not that much, hopefully the darn thing doesn't have to come on, eh?

Nice set-up.

Bill

Feather River Solar Electric
Bill Battagin, Owner
4291 Nelson St.
Taylorsville, CA 95983
530.284.7849<tel:530.284.7849>
CA Lic 874049
www.frenergy.net<http://www.frenergy.net>

On 7/21/2017 11:39 AM, August Goers wrote:
All,

I thought I'd provide an update on our setup since we've completed the install and commissioning. More or less, the installation went well. We did have one of the US Battery AGM L16 batteries dead on arrival with a bad cell. That bad battery screwed up the state of charge (SOC) calculations in the Sunny Island and made the SOC reading jump from ~ 80% to 19% in just a couple of minutes. It was easy to find the bad battery - all the batteries were about 6.5 v with the bad battery reading about 4.5 v. We pulled that battery out of the string for warranty replacement and are currently running it with seven batteries at 42 v nominal. It's cool that the Sunny Island allows for this. Other than that, the frequency shift derate between the Sunny Island and Sunny Boy is working perfectly and the system has more than enough capacity to run the loads during the summer months. I'd say the Kohler generator is the nice unit although it is a little loud for this application. If I had to do this portable application again, I'd probably just go with the Honda 7000.

Thanks for your help! August

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