Question to the group on whether or not this is something worth my time pursuing with Tesla to potentially fix.
Installed 16.0 kW of solar panels and 3 powerwalls (2x Powerwall+ and 1x Powerwall 2) back in mid July 2022 in the Northern Virginia area. The original plan was to have 28 panels on the southerly facing roof (210 degrees) and 12 panels on the northerly facing roof (030 degrees). During the install, they were forced to modify the design slightly from this depiction:
In the final install, 4 panels were moved to the northerly facing side, for an ultimate install of 24 panels on the southerly side and 16 panels on the northerly side.
Additionally, the 3 line diagram was going to be as follows:
Based on this original design and some rough math, the two 7.6 kW inverters in the Powerwall+ units would have been fairly evenly distributed for the panels, taking into account the decreased output from the northerly facing panels.
However, in the past month or so, I have been noticing some clipping on one of the two inverters (based on output into PyPowerwall). This got me to open up the two inverters to look at how they actually wired things up:
Without knowing for certain, I have to guess that all 24 panels on the southerly facing side are wired in 3x strings of 8 panels into one inverter, and all 16 panels on the northerly facing side are wired into a jumped configuration into the second inverter.
Thus drives my ultimate question: would it be worth it to ask Tesla to come back and pull one of those strings of 8 panels from the one inverter and wire it into the second inverter, and potentially eliminate any clipping I'm seeing?
Running some rough math, based on information from this post (How much less efficient are north-facing solar modules?), I'd potentially have 6.4kW into the first inverter, and 7680 W into the second inverter (using a 30% decrease in efficiency from the northerly panels).
Hope I included enough information to get some assistance from this group, but if not, standing by to answer any questions.
Thanks.
Installed 16.0 kW of solar panels and 3 powerwalls (2x Powerwall+ and 1x Powerwall 2) back in mid July 2022 in the Northern Virginia area. The original plan was to have 28 panels on the southerly facing roof (210 degrees) and 12 panels on the northerly facing roof (030 degrees). During the install, they were forced to modify the design slightly from this depiction:
In the final install, 4 panels were moved to the northerly facing side, for an ultimate install of 24 panels on the southerly side and 16 panels on the northerly side.
Additionally, the 3 line diagram was going to be as follows:
Based on this original design and some rough math, the two 7.6 kW inverters in the Powerwall+ units would have been fairly evenly distributed for the panels, taking into account the decreased output from the northerly facing panels.
However, in the past month or so, I have been noticing some clipping on one of the two inverters (based on output into PyPowerwall). This got me to open up the two inverters to look at how they actually wired things up:
Without knowing for certain, I have to guess that all 24 panels on the southerly facing side are wired in 3x strings of 8 panels into one inverter, and all 16 panels on the northerly facing side are wired into a jumped configuration into the second inverter.
Thus drives my ultimate question: would it be worth it to ask Tesla to come back and pull one of those strings of 8 panels from the one inverter and wire it into the second inverter, and potentially eliminate any clipping I'm seeing?
Running some rough math, based on information from this post (How much less efficient are north-facing solar modules?), I'd potentially have 6.4kW into the first inverter, and 7680 W into the second inverter (using a 30% decrease in efficiency from the northerly panels).
Hope I included enough information to get some assistance from this group, but if not, standing by to answer any questions.
Thanks.
