Solar Install 2/3 - SMA Sunny Boy and Wiring

SMA Sunny Boy Grid Tie Inverter is now installed :-)

Today, after Roland Garros tournament - no parking available nearby and non stop bad weather, my contractor came to finish - almost - the Solar installation started in october 2012

First, we had to make some room in the kitchen cabinets for the inverter and the solar junction box/sub panel 

Here they come, in the morning sunshine, start unloading and bringing up their stuff 

Recently changed utility meter and old - but very sturdy - main AC breaker

Solar junction box / sub panel before install: Some lightning fuses on the floor will be added later in a larger panel which will accomodate them along with my outlet for the ESS 

A lot of stuff on the dining room floor: DC, AC cables, connectors, tools, etc

Access is clear now after unscrewing the groceries racks

A close look at the SMA Sunny Boy 3000 waiting in the corridor, apparently a used unit from the few scratches on the enclosure, but in mint condition inside (again this inverter should be there only for a little while waiting for their "home made" special inverter

Beautiful German quality unit 

Holding bracket screwed in the cabinet
Some 20mm holes for the hot air exhaust on top of the inverter, which is naturally air cooled - no fan - 

4mm2 Solar Cables: Red for Positive, Black for Negative ...

Solar DC cables are pushed from the appartment, up to the attic, to end up on the roof

32kg SunnyBoy is now mounted on its heavy duty thick metal bracket

Junction box / Sub panel is mounted right underneath, accessible at human height

Close up: they added a 220V outlet I provided to plug in my ESS directly: from left to right: Differential AC circuit breaker, outlet, DC circuit breaker - for solar DC cables - 

So it all fits nicely in this rather narrow cabinet, where the consumer panel is, next to the fridge

Damaged MC4 connectors: At my request they replaced all the MC3 connectors on the Uni-Solar PVL panels with MC4, the new standard, this is a lot of crimping on the roof, and my contractor could not finish everything in one long morning
But he promises to come back to finish very soon ... 

:

Inverter cover and cables

They left the Solar DC cable rolls here

LiFePO4 ESS - Enclosure found

Last night, after a long shopping, I think I found a good technical enclosure at Muji's; It is a drawer, made of sturdy transparent  plastic - this way I can see all the components inside lighting up -, and I will use it to cover the board by screwing it from the sides into the wooden board

Not too high

This wooden board in not wide enough now, I will have to get another one, and anyways it would have too packed and not scalable for more grid tie inverters/ chargers and maybe a bigger Arduino board like the Mega

Also found some real AC breakers

Now I just came back from a Leroy Merlin - our French Home Depot - with a 1cm thick wooden board cut at the exact dimensions of the plastic cover ...

Blue Sea Systems - Bussmann Series 187 - 150A Marine Rated DC Circuit Breaker

Another cool item came in the mail yesterday, a High Current DC Circuit Breaker from Blue Sea Systems

It is of Thermal type, rated for 150A, and will replace the cheap 100A (not real, does 60A I think) circuit breaker I have right now on my LiFePO4 ESS

It is nice and heavy

and when I close it to switch it ON, it feels solid (not at all like the other one I had, see below)

I got it on eBay from somebody working in boat maintenance in La Ciota, a Southern French harbor close to Marseille, for a good price of 55 EUR plus 5,70 EUR for shipping

Stay tuned for a test this week end: I will then be able to plug all my Grid Tie Inverters back in, without having a disconnect ...



PS:

This cheap one I got from China two years ago will be removed ...