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You always look after family, there everything.

The Wagon went first , no surprise there !

I bet on the block , should have thrown an Ideal twister in for your American audience.

If only their prices were as low?

Also looking to do a similar thing for my shed which has a perfect south facing roof which would take a good handful of panels. Would it be enough to generate power for my hot tub.... not sure? Glad you confirmed what I thought about regulations - nothing about it from what I could find (not a spark but I do hold a part P certificate). Seems to be a lot of DIY kits out there, so will be following what you do here Nick!

Happy anniversary 👍

Ok so. I installed my own solar system and before I did, had to do a lot of research. Since having my system which is small 3.1 kwp i’ve learned a lot. 3 455w panels is the absolute minimum for a Growatt min3000 inverter which switches on at 100v but will run once it’s on to 80v i think. I ended up adding a 4th panel to get it to turn on earlier in the morning and run later in the evening. I got that used off ebay for about £250. The smaller the inverter the lower the switch on voltage is what i learned. I should have got a 2500w one really. If you series the panels to get the voltage you need then they will only perfom as well as the worst panel in the string so adding a broken one in there is a bad idea. You should put all the broken ones on a seperate mppt if you have one. The exception to this is if you use optimisers then you can put them all on one string. I have 7 x 455w panels in total with tigo optimisers on a growatt 3000w inverter. 4 are south facing and 3 are north facing. I started off with them on seperate mppt’s then got optimisers and combined them both into one string it’s normal in the uk to have more w in panels than the rating on the inverter, which seems strange, but what you loose when the inverter clips (maxes out)in summer and high sun you gain from the earlier start up and later finish. Hope that helps. Just an electrical engineer (not a house basher)

Are the spit guns worth the money or would a normal concrete nailer do the same?

The Zappi rule about needing to use their screws should have been the earlier warning of how much of a buck pass company they are.

Those the ties velocity sent in the OG NB200 bag

You should switch your supply over to single phase, your standing charges will be much less. You’re probably paying as much for standing charge as for consumed power!

I am no expert but would advise a little research before doing down the route of change over switches there is no need. Can’t believe some of what you have said. Simple measure the open circuit volts then measure the short circuit current on each panel in full sun. All the details are on the nameplate on the back of the panels. Can’t for the life of me see how you will use enough power to justify the expense unless you are going totally off grid and doing away with the incoming supply.

A manual changeover switch sounds like a recipe for disaster - what sort of a routine are you going to use for switching it? You'll have to constantly be aware of how charged the battery is and what the weather forecast is. If you're out on a job and the day isn't as sunny as you thought it was going to be you might end up losing power to your CCTV and alarm or have to travel back to the unit just to switch back to mains. Sounds like a right royal pain.

I have 3 phase at home which I want to keep to allow for faster charhing of electric cars in the future. When I wired my solar up, i did it so that when the changeover switch is used it effectively converts my system to single phase which is fed from the hybrid inverter/battery. The rest of the time, i have a grid tie inverter on a single phase. In France you can feed in up to 3kW on a single phase of a 3 phase syatem and the smart meter counts total power usage across all 3 phases, so as long as I'm producing more on one phase than is being used in total by all 3 phases then my net consumption is 0.

If I was doing what you're doing... I'd have bought my own LifePo4 cells from Alibaba (very cheap now !) and made my own battery. I would then have used Victron equipment to allow me to invert the power from the battery and charge them via the solar panels. Victron is superb quality and highly configurable. You'd then end up with a system that ran itself, without having to manually switch anything ! [I've already installed something very similar to that... but I actually charge the battery on cheap rate overnight... it just works !!]

The most important thing is to manage expectations. I just had a friend who was shocked that I charged him for a board change, so I went ahead and wrote a Mate's Rates document. I have sent it out to another friend already, and they find it very fair.

Give Stuart Cato a call. He’s the guru on solar

The easiest way is to ditch the 3 phase use one of the phases, and get a link for the main switch, that's if you don't have anything 3 phase.

Use Victron, it can run as UPS without any extra bits or get G98/G99 to grid tie. Victron inverters can be paralleled to make a 3PH system sharing the same battery bank if required further down the line.

Island mode. Wouldn’t it be easier to instal a single phase board and put the changeover switch before that?

Wanted to watch a good review on the van. Not you building it

Loving this solar side project 😁 no advice but looking forward to seeing more vids 😎😎

Great video! be nice to the cat or you'll get unsubscribed.

Can you not have a word with artisan electrics and see if they will offer some advice?

If you don't have any three phase equipment bin of the 3phase and link through l1. Then you'll need a battery charge controller and inverter for off grid side there are some fairly cheap charge controller/inveter combos oilut there worth a punt. Just make sure the charge controller can take the input power from the panels lots of more campervan level stuff cant take a lot in which case you can use multiple.

Your inverter needs AC and DC power to start up 👍

If its a grid tied inverter its going to need grid voltage at the output terminals before it starts. Not sure if you had that?

Sigenergy do a three phase stackable hybrid inverter and battery system with gateway that acts as a UPS - we’re installing one this week. Could be a good solution for you.

See itstechnologies for 1extra panel, it will give you the extra minimum voltage. Delivery of 10 panels cost me 50 quid, panels cost 70 each. Add grounding wire to the panels, it’s a must-have.

you could use that 1-0-2 switch to command the coils on 3 phase contactors (1 for grid, 1 for solar); not sure about the uk regs if it allows a manual switchover without a interlocking feature in the setup; since it’s a small install, you could have a bluetti inverter power the main board, all the time, pv and grid both connected to the inverter as inputs, set the bluetti in pv priority mode and it will handle everything automaticaly - with enough sun and baterry capacity it will almost never use power from the grid

Take what you want into a single phase board or remove the two phases and link out the main switch to make it single phase

Like youhave said to workers if not sure ask questions to gain the correct way to move forward Cory can assist you even if over the phone or video Link.

Disconnect 2 phases. Fit a link kit to make board single phase. Fit equipment and change over switch. Don't need to worry about the three phase then.

Hi Nick why bother with the change over switch . Buy a G98 certified hybrid inverter connect it to the mains . Notify dno with g98 form . Save you loads of hassle . What’s the azimuth at front of unit ?

Hi Nick, I was forced to install my solar system a few months ago. I purchased a hybrid inverter, 5kw battery, panels and mounting system and struggled to find anyone prepared to install it. Ended up fitting myself sort of off grid! It is all up and running and I am already looking to Improve. I would be happy to have a call to give you honest information on my journey so far. Have you considered the micro inverter route at all? Let’s just say I started looking at optimisers to get a handle on my crazy PV generation as one of my improvements and found this would have been a perfect plug and play over the single inverter and panel strings? FYI I am not an electrician but I am happy to share what I have discovered and where I why I am already looking to upgrade after such a short time of system ownership..

Would it not be possible to have all three phases on the single phase of the inverter/powerbank. If your not using any 3 phrase equipment i cant see it being an issue.

Don't run the broken panels at to higher voltage I would use them at 60-70volts max

An electrician that cannot measure the output voltage from a string of solar panels ? Whatever next I wonder ?

Personally you're trying to do too much in a single system (from from an off grid / hobbyiest system to a full 3 phase!), decide whether you want to go AC or DC coupled, and single phase or 3 phase. I started with a DC coupled off grid system, which got a G99 approval, in the future may do AC coupled as and when neccesary.

Haha, we all know who you're trying to not ask. But was also think Cory. But wonder if any of the other big YT sparks who've not done any/much solar work would be interested in doing a collaboration video with you, both leaning on the way kinda think, Adam, Chris CJR, pretty sure Davery Savery's answer would be a 'NO' (not his words). I'd hope when you do start doing this, it's not as bad as you expected and motivate you into exploring solar a bit more, it's an experience whichever way it goes.

Try asking Cory or Jordan, they are quiet good with that type of thing.

For the inverter, the Growatt MIC TL-X range have a very low minimum input voltage of 50V. I've just installed two of the 750W ones at home, each with a pair of 500W modules connected. They're the lowest input voltage I found easily. Most inverters are primarily powered from the DC side, so whilst they won't output anything without the AC connected they should start up and display something provided you've got above the startup voltage. On the island stuff, Voltimum did a webinar this week called "Battery Island mode, we are all at sea" which it might be worth you looking up.

Hi nick why don’t you put all the circuits on one phase as you don’t use that much then you can run it all on and off line

I saw someone with solar panels talk about how some will shut off with a small area of the panel is covered/obstructed I'd check to see if those panels do that before installing

That little bit of shade on the left of the panels will be dropping your voltage quite a lot, when I did the course they showed us the Volts produced in full sun then when he put just his hand over part of the panel it dropped by about a quarter, the full panel needs to be in full sun

Cory’s your man for off grid victron stuff. Realistically you’d want a ‘proper’ solar system with a gateway and 3 phase inverter to take you off grid. But how often does the power go out when you are there?

Hi Nick I have 2x second hand panels you are welcome to in my unit but am in northampton they are around 250w

If you are only using small number of panels per string. Please look down the Victron route as you can add and adapt over time.

Is that not a grid tied inverter? So it syncs to the mains it's not just gonna pump out 230v, you need panels, inverter and batteries to do something "off grid".

You also need to switch over the neutral. So you cant use L2 and L3 .. you will lose those lines