Part V - Enphase Envoy - the brains of the outfit
The Enphase Envoy, in my case, the Envoy-S Metered, keeps an eye on the IQ7+ micro-inverters. It also communicates back to base somewhere on the cloud. In addition, it can also measure the amount of power your solar array produces and the amount of power you consume. All in all, this is a piece of equipment that deserves its own blog post.
Part III - The installation is taking for ever! May be a good time to publish the financials behind the whole thing and look at and compare some tariff plans.
I already have my hourly consumption as mentioned in previous blogs. To keep it relatively simple I am looking at it across seasons. The analysis looks like this.
I am comparing my current plan with no solar array, with a 5KW solar array optimally placed and a 10.72KW array in a less than optimum aspect. The last is, of course, the one I am getting installed.
Part II - As quotes come in, the design of the Solar Array emerges.
Part I - Planning to add solar panels to my roof, I started with an initial analysis of my electricity consumption pattern.
The project outlined in the previous blogs seemed to work well. It was time to make a PCB and put some finishing touches on the software. The PCB is roughly the same size as the Doit ESP8266 board. To keep the size down, I have almost exclusively used SMD components. Over time, I have been slowly trying to switch over from through hole to SMD.
We have looked at IR signals sent out by IR remote controls in a previous blog. So what happens when you keep the button pressed for a longer time? It depends on the remote control. Each one is slightly different but they fall into a few broad categories. I have access to a handful of remote controls and I used the IR Receive program mentioned before to analyse the repeat patterns. They fell into to two main categories - except for the damn Foxtel remote.
With the IR Receive out of the way, the next step was to add the IR Send. I have used IR LEDs in the past and they were not very strong. But now that there are IR LEDs for purposes other than remote control, the choices open up. There are several very high power IR LEDs out there rated at 1W and 3W. They are primarily used for illumination for IR cameras. As my circuit is not battery powered, I couldn’t care less about efficiency. So I went for a no name 3W IR LED bought on ebay for AU$1.25. The only thing to look out for is the wavelength – it should be 940nm.
