Nice work there.... the machined sockets are an improvement for sure.
The 10 pin idc is the same as the power star inverters.... should be good, it is in most pc's.
The 18v setting is a good idea, no point in driving the transformer more than necessary.
Yes replace the totems poles if you can. They are almost free those surface mount transistors, and will set your mind at ease.
As you have no charring yet from those, it can be useful to use to92 versions, to stay away from the board surface.
The biggest problem with blowing these up while experimenting, is the burning under the totems.
If your not expecting to experiment, or push them beyond their boundaries, then this is moot. They should not fail under normal operating conditions... but your did...
somehow.
The fan and it's settings are weird... and I don't like them... at all.
I used a small fan from ebay with 3 pin plug to satisfy the tacho needs of the control card.. put i where you wish.....you can see it hanging near the transformer at the top of the pic.
The chip needs to see it or it will shut down the unit.
Then used the 12v output that normally drives the main screen as a power supply for a small comparator and fet to drive the two main 5" fans independent of the board.
The assembler was in error... must have been a Friday thing. On the ones I have, they got it right.... same with pressing in the chip.
Quality control is not their strong point as yet from the looks of it, but it is truly a useful little control card, and you can make a very very very robust unit out of it.... and mostly easy to fix if you kill them from abuse.
Here is a shot I should not share... it was meant to be tidy, but I keep adding bits to it, and it became a scene of total chaos..... I will build a second one with all the additions planned for.. rather than tossed in
It is only 8.30 in the am at the moment, here is the front panel shot... ( really 7.30am without daylight savings)
The advantage of tons of solar panel.... cheap, and even before the sun actually gets to hit them at a decent angle, the batteries are getting a fair shake and are 94% charged... the rest of the day is wasted yes, but even on 8/8 cloud cover days, it still fully recovers by 4pm... including 4kwh of hot water each day ( or thereabouts)
Life is just too easy with big solar and big inverter.... just like on the grid, set and forget..... water the batteries once each second month ( not much at all)
We can see near 1kw of grid tie coming in, so it is running the house, and providing another 500 watts of power into the battery ( apprrox10 amps ) the rest of the 49amps is coming from the48v arrays.... some of which have no real sun as yet... sun is south of east west line, it won't be until 10am or there abouts before it comes north of an E-W line and hits the panels at a decent angle.
A shot of the pv control cabinet made from a aerosharp grid tie box. It controls up to 100 amps or more @ 60v. Simple knob at the bottom left for voltage control.
It is supplying the remaining 40 amps.... yes a new meter and shunt are on the way since the upgrade.
The top temp is the transformer, the lower one is the heat sinks on the low side fets.
The only problem I see with this current system, is the batteries are too big now. Ideally I could get rid of 16 of the t105's, and just run 8 of them, and put the 16 into dry charged storage without electrolyte.... but because I can and do use very high loads, I don't want to sag the voltage, or distort the plates from excessive current.
I believe that with lead acid, it is a case of use it or lose it, so you are best to drive them hard, and fully charge each day, rather than lightly discharge them and recharge fully each day. I don't seem to need three days storage, as with this much solar, every day is a good day... maybe one or two days per year are dark enough to cause concern for a smaller battery system... but the rest of the time, 250ah would be enough to do it.
The super cheap solar changes the paradigm that solar engineers use... but they have not woken up to it yet. Now days 10kw of solar is $5000, and $5000 for batteries and modified power jack, and you have the best system I have seen. Not tracking array, no solar hot water gas fridge or any other RE stuff need be tolerated.
In fact a 15kw inverter built from PJ boards from ebay etc and grid tie transformers is less than $500 all up..... leaving $4500 for trojan t105re's
It is a different world now for sure.... on a sunny day, I probably shed more than 75kwh... total waste... but it costs nothing to do. I design for worst days... not best.
Or I can run a few kw of lawn sprinklers all day....if I had that much water available... power to burn.
...............oztules