Nords - as a mechanical engineer I've been following your photovoltaic project with interest. I appreciated your approach and would also have avoided the battery system. It looks like you have made an excellent, professional, system with good expansion potential. Congratulations!
I did hydrothermal in my house 25 years ago after looking into photovoltaic; photovoltaic just doesn't work well in Ohio. Hydrothermal has its own challenges - you must pump many, many gallons of water through a heat pump - basically lots of water flow and little BTUs. I abandoned it after the first winter.
PV has some basic advantages as well as challenges; the sun produces just about 1 watt per square inch maximum when straight overhead; any off angles, atmospheric attenuation, and conversion efficiencies reduces the power you can realize from the system, thus one has big panels that produce power, in your case, 55 watts.
Take care with the wiring and keep your pinkies away; 400VAC will give you a burn and toss you across the room to live another day but 400VDC is a lot less forgiving.
As far as expansion is concerned, I had a friend who had relatively good luck by mounting his solar array on a judiciously aimed A-frame outbuilding. This had the added advantage of keeping the equipment and mountings out of the house. Thus, any leaks, etc did not happen inside his main living space.
Great Job
JohnP
I did hydrothermal in my house 25 years ago after looking into photovoltaic; photovoltaic just doesn't work well in Ohio. Hydrothermal has its own challenges - you must pump many, many gallons of water through a heat pump - basically lots of water flow and little BTUs. I abandoned it after the first winter.
PV has some basic advantages as well as challenges; the sun produces just about 1 watt per square inch maximum when straight overhead; any off angles, atmospheric attenuation, and conversion efficiencies reduces the power you can realize from the system, thus one has big panels that produce power, in your case, 55 watts.
Take care with the wiring and keep your pinkies away; 400VAC will give you a burn and toss you across the room to live another day but 400VDC is a lot less forgiving.
As far as expansion is concerned, I had a friend who had relatively good luck by mounting his solar array on a judiciously aimed A-frame outbuilding. This had the added advantage of keeping the equipment and mountings out of the house. Thus, any leaks, etc did not happen inside his main living space.
Great Job
JohnP