Wiring your Energy Equipment and Accessories

How to get an Independent Power Grid working:

To be TOTALY energy independent all you need is Solar and Energy Storage matched to your consumption, then this small 38kg, 3.5kW Generator would obviously provide 24/7 black-out security, and any other other forms of Generation like Wind & Aqua will assist.

The correct Wiring of a system is the most important step in getting the system operating and correctly generating the required power, if you are handy, you can do most of this work yourself, if unsure, you should ask a qualified electrician to inspect & approve the system before going live !

Once your Solar & Energy storage installation is complete you will instantly start saving, by not having to pay the 300% Retailer mark-up for importing power back from the State Grid.

Investing in an oversize Energy Storage (battery bank), reduces the reliance on a  fuel generator as back-up, especially if your Solar array & Battery bank is sufficient to cover all your energy consumption.

However, being able to use the state grid as your go-to for Back-up power, means you have to pay $20 per month ($80 quarter) for the connection fee, and if you happen to receive a feed-in tariff, you will have to Gift the first 800kWh of energy to just cover that annoying & deceptive connection expense, all while the Retailers sell that 800kW to your Neighbours @30c kWh, making 300% profit on your energy, as well as any other energy exported into State grid.

Remember: It's simple to calculate totally power independent, when using correctly sized Solar array & Battery storage!

Solar Array Wiring: (going to Inverter(s) with or without battery's) 

First Stage of every Micro Grid is the convergence of PV array string(s) by optimising your solar system wiring, this will improve the PV power efficiency.  

The DC voltage is commonly between Wiring running from the Solar Array less than 100mt, is commonly 1x Red & 1x Black 4mm2 DC Solar Cabling is used, if you are concerned with energy loss or running the wiring over 100mt, you can simply use 6mm2 Solar Cabling.

Hybrid Inverters comes with all the system management tools you may ever need, and Pre-Installed/wired Lightning/Surge Protection & pre-tested Module.

Battery Bank Wiring:

Wiring batteries is very simple, as long as you use DC isolator switches, using AC isolator switched on DC voltage is NOT safe, especially high DC voltage can arch across an AC switch terminals causing a short, with a high possibility of the AC switch gear catching on fire!

Once you have decided on your battery bank DC voltage and kWh capacity that should largely depends your power usage after sunset to the next sunrise.

Remember: Commonly the higher the DC voltage the better, for either charging/discharging for any system.

It is more common that newer 'Hybrid Inverter', have multiple inbuilt MPPT software, this controls PV shadowing or low light conditions, thus keeping your power more stable.

Fuel/Diesel Generator Wiring:

This subject is covered in more detail on the Diesel Generator page, basically a Hybrid Inverter with Automatic Generator Start (AGS) feature is standard on many newer Hybrid inverters.  Recently, using Bio-Gas for generation is becoming a serous player in the renewable energy market.