Add bifacial panels on adjustable rack or use them vertical as a fence. Cheap and lots of energy at low sun angles.

What a beautiful building you have there and a great off grid system. I enjoy your uploads. Thanks for sharing

Your cerbo probably shipped with a temperature sensor. You can set this up to graph ambient plant room temp in the VRM. You can also set logic events to happen based on temperature parameters. My system is a very similar scale to yours and my plant room was also running a bit warm. I added ducted extraction to take the heat straight from the sources and blow it directly outside and it made a big difference for only a few watts of fans rather than hundreds of watts of AC. It would be pretty easy to model the solar output of your other roof elevation using a tool like open solar. You may be surprised by how much extra it would generate. I would guess it might be as much as 70% of what the main array manages panel for panel. Your isolators look a bit undersized for a 15kva quatro. It would be worth running a max output test to see how hot they get. As standard I now do a max output test on all the Victrons I put in and I look at all connections with a thermal camera. It is amazing how it can show up a bad crimp, dirty connection, under torqued connection etc.

What about ground mounting some panels in the field just out the back of the house, along the line of bushes where the electricity pole is? You could bring the cables through into the back of the plant room. An almost vertical array in that position would be west facing and help with production later in the day, the bushes would offer some protection from the wind and it would be close enough to the house to be a bit more secure. Obviously you'd need to consider whether it would be affecting the view or light levels at the back of the house but it might be worth considering.

Panels facing north might just be annoying for you because you can't sell the extra summer power. In the winter, you'll get something out of them even if they don't see any direct sun, just not very close to the panel rating. If you get snow, it lingers on north panels for quite a while. If good panels are super-cheap, it might be worth it.

There are split air conditioners that heats water in addition to the cooling and heating of the room. Best regards from Egypt.

Sarah, have you considered integrating vertical solar panels into your perimeter boundary or fence? Although they come at a higher initial cost, vertical solar panels offer distinct advantages. They remain cooler compared to traditional horizontally/diagonally mounted panels, thus mitigating performance drops caused by overheating. Additionally, vertical panels can be a space-efficient and aesthetically pleasing solution for generating solar energy.

You can definitely extend the daytime period where the solar is providing useful power by adding panel groups pointing in different directions. That can extend your overnight battery run-time a few more hours. Given how quickly the batteries fill up, it also sounds like you might want to add more battery storage. And that would also reduce constraints on vehicle charging. But for the most part, the system is working extremely well. I am quite envious at all the space you have arrange the panels and equipment! -Matt

I am also fitting out a Victron EV charging station, looks amazing I can't wait to get it working

We do the same thing. Adjusting use by our harvesting of power. I hope to automate it more too so that I don't have to pay so much attention to use. I have 6 kw of South panels, 3 kw of East panels and have planned for 3 kw of West panels. When I added the East panels that was a big change. Those put out more power out than the South panels till about 10 AM. We do pretty well with this setup and 30 kw of battery. I believe that the West facing panels and another 10 kw of battery will make us pretty close to being able to disconnect from the utility power.

it was funny to watch how you were bending that optic cable..haha. a bit more bending and that glass would brake.. that cable is very very delicate

In winter the sun is low and the days are short. Then you'll be happy for every sunshine that generates electricity for you. Make sure the batteries stay frost-free in winter.

I dont know if you have a heat pump water heater already installed, if not, you can install one, especially the stiebel eltron one as it is very efficient. It can work like an air conditioner

PICEA is your solution for the surplus energy stored in summer to be reused in winter . It generates Hydrogen in summer, stores that in bottles and powers in the winter your home by 1/3 using a fuel cell and by 2/3 to generate warm for the heating. But that is an expensive solution from Berlin, germany. A few of these have been installed in older houses and have gotten subsidies (big times) but they are quite expensive but do a full circle to become grid independent. The company is called HPS or home power system. They also have released some videos, a few of them in english.

Put the roof full with solar panels and then you have power enough ;-)

I suggest an east/west facing fence with bifacial panels. leave .3 of a meter clearance on bottom. This will catch all morning and evening sun.

16:44 - If you want to get rid off the heat then consider buying a french Atlantic Explorer Warm water Heatpump to generate warm water and cool the Victron Hall of fame. A split AC is about 1000€ at least and the Atlantic Explorer is a monoblock warm water system which comes with 2 ducts and one goes out side while the other sucks in the heat of the room to heat the water. More efficient to reuse the heat inside this room then to use energy to cool it down. We got one from the netherlands last year cause they had been a lot cheaper there than in germany. Not sure about french prices now cause we had only purchased the Wifi Kit from a french shop. This Atlantic Explorer is a SG ready device which means it can be triggered if you have excess energy from the roof - but again you would need a power management to prioritize how to use the excess energy: first the battery, then the car or rather the heat pump or the warm water heatpump ... Split AC are great, but bad and ugly if the device does not match the demand and gets into cycling cause the whole COP efficiency will be gone at least our experience with 2 big 5 kW Mitsubishi heatpumps each able to run at COP 5 or 6 from 7°C and above but not in reality . Takes a lot of effort to measure the output of such Split AC while the input is easy to measure. Unfrotunatelly the big mitsubishi can easily tend to cycle which will kill the COP and efficiency by a factor of 1 or 2 from 5 to just 3 in our situation. THerefore we tend to avoid the Split AC and use the warm water heatpump with a heat exchanger to heat the heating circle inside our diesel heater. This will generate warm water within 3 or 4 houts of sunshine and then heats the 280 L up to 62°C. We then use the 62° C water to heat the diesel heater kettle and pumpt the heat into the radiators cause the warm water heatpump is running fully without cycling while the big heatpump starts to cycle above 5°C as the split AC do too. It is easy to throw a Split AC into such room but it can be a waste of energy and investment once you realize that you could get warm water for cheap this way too instead of heating the environment. Atlantic Explorer is a french thing and Atlantic is a big company - as many employees as german Viessman now owned buy an american company.

@totty100 0 seconds ago Hi, cudos for building your batteries from a kit, a few months back. But....... Can I recommend that you invest in more or bigger batteries. I recently commissioned my Fogstar 15KWh battery and it's excellent with my Victron components. It's top quality and very cheap at £2,500 direct from Fogstar. You can connect up to 15 of these units together and they have auto internal heaters for winter. Bimble Solar now stock these batteries. Just a suggestion Keep making the videos please - love'em

I’ve not come across much positive feedback on the Victron EV charger. Sounds like it needs a separate device for pen fault protection. I would investigate this before buying. Other option would be to look at a Zappi with CT, assuming you export? Do you export to the grid? Could you get credit for excess solar. No idea what tariffs are available in France. In the UK on Octopus Inelegant GO, you can export and get 15p credit for every KWh. The DNO in the UK do set an export limit thou, based on the local electrical infrastructure.

I was pretty disappointed in the victron when I opened it up , jack all heatsink inside of them not even fins they are relying on fast air speed to cool them , I was expecting full resin covering circuits and large heatsinks that redirected heat into a cooling chamber so the electronics could be kept sealed and dirt free , but nope , not even a baffle inside to help with air flow ...

Nice video. When you talk about render.do you mean like cement spraying onto the wall ..is it this kind of things..or it will be more traditional top coat with cement glue sand and such ??

What azimuth is the barn roof where you've installed the first lot of panels? I've heard you mention that it's south facing but looking at the shadows in a number of your videos it looks a bit more like south/south-east - about 160ish azimuth? What is the exact time of day of your peak output?

No need to put panels on winter side..it is a bit waste..trust me.. i would suggest increase amount of battery banks..that is much better investment....even if you will buy some cheaper China battery banks it is much better option ..if you don't want to bother yourself with cells itselfs and such..

Another reason to have an AirCon in that room is your server rack. That absolutely should not run at over 30 all the time.

Do you export to the grid when you have excess solar? Something like Octopus Flux?

Please share your VRM statistics .

Sorry for 3rd comment.. Portable AC is rubbish.. like in emergency it is OK...nothing special just OK..but if you want to be sure your equipment is cool i really suggest to go for AC that has split units.. ofc if possible and isn't too expensive use that one with inverter inside.. and you can be sure almost for 99% you can be sure during winter you will not need it....there is plenty of equipment that will do like 10 -15 degree all the time even if there will be -5 outside..no need to worry at all..

bending the fibre cable over 90 degrees between your fingers made me cringe.

Before you buy an expensive new charger, you might want to check the software "evcc". It works with Victron PV systems and a multitude of car chargers. It will automatically adjust the current for the car depending on the pv system.