Charge a Battery with Solar Power and feed Electricity into the Grid

Once your battery is fully charged, very little current is needed to keep it topped up. Most of the available power from your solar panels is wasted as the charge controller is mostly switched off. Enter the 12 volt grid tie inverter which can export all that solar power to your mains electricity grid, saving you money.

But how do you keep your battery topped up and send surplus power to the grid at the same time? The PWM5 Solar Charge Controler from www.256.co.uk is the only charge controller with 12 volt grid tie inverter compatibility built-in.

Make your solar panels really work for you.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• solar
• solar panel
• PWM
• charge controller
• 12v grid tie inverter
• 12v battery

[snooter28]

after installing these panels about how much money do you save a month? Im looking to start making my own solar panel array and was wanting to start off small buying a 10w panel at first and then buying another when i had enough money or saving and going for 30s 45s so on and so forth, just wondering how much money you save running your panels? and what size are they?

[julius256]

@snooter28 I've got about 120 watts of panels, although I've never seen more than 80 watts on the grid tie inverter's power monitor. I've saved £2.76 over 53 days. Financially it's insignificant, but I feel better doing something useful with the surplus electricity.

[dukeminster]

I like this, this rocks. I'd like to know how you know that its going back into the grid...also who is your energy supplier? did you have to notify them first?

[julius256]

@dukeminster I'm not likely to be exporting power to the national grid. There's enough stuff in my house on standby to use all the solar power and more, so the meter will still be turning forwards, only a bit more slowly.

My energy supplier isn't really involved. I'm not asking for the feed-in-tarrif payment, I'm just using a little less electricity than I normally would.

[doctorfuse007]

Why can't you use any controller as you are? Seems to me any cheapo charge controller would function similarly, i.e., only draw the current necessary to charge the battery, with the rest of the current going to the GTI.

[strikee]

Nice one exactly what I needed to know. I have both grid tie inverter / charge controller and battery. Was manually switching between battery and tie inverter but see I can now do it this way.

[subrotoc]

Nice one, can you please show connection that goes to your home? Also if you produce more power than consumed what will happen to the meter?

[BigBearHuskyMusher]

@hippyraverocker

I'm using a CM3024 controller. If I want to float charge my batteries and have most of my watts going to my grid tie would I connect the solar array to the grid tie AND the controller's inputs in parallel? Or panel power souly to the controller's input and then from the controller's "battery" output(to the batteries) and the controller's "DC Load" output to the grid tie's input?

[domidbz90]

so you use normal electricity on your home when is night? or the solar power keeps working

[snooter28]

@julius256 Yeah, I've actually decided in making a wind generator instead, they produce more watts than solar for a lot less money. I'm also working on a hydro generator to put under a spring overflow out from my house. If i can get it working it will be 24 hour water flow powering the generator, and so far ive estimated i will get roughly 350 watts per hour at the speed ive measured and the motor im using. So 350 x 24 = 8.4 kwh a day is pretty great. My house used about 13 kwh a day on average.

[VWRabbitdiesel]

Nice, I will have to try that.