DC Appliance Success!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're havin' a heat wave, and it's testing out our new DC appliances!!!
So far so good!!!!

The Sundanzer 5.8 CU Foot Fridge, and 5.8 Freezer are cooling and freezing our food nicely.
The heat wave is the ultimate test for these new major appliances that run off the battery bank.  As the ambient temps rise in the house, the fridge and freezer have to work harder.   At midnight the Flexmax 60 resets logs and ends it's logging for the day.  By 6am during the height of our heatwave we drain about 15 amp hours from the bank, (from midnight) as the freezer and fridge keep cooling our food as we sleep.  We have NOT installed our air conditioner in the house since the temps have not exceeded 80 degrees downstairs, however today may be the day we'll be installing them, we do like our comfort, we are not militant about conserving every Kw.

Here are some stats on what we've used so far and what it's powered, again, the more heat in the house the more drain on the amp hours to power the appliances.   In addition to running the freezer and fridge we've been charging our three laptops, charging the Scooba, Roomba, and cell phones off the Samlix inverter and also recharging the portable Xantrax. 

July 6    99 amp hours   1.3Kw
July 5    72 amp hours   .9 Kw
July 4    74 amp hours   1.0Kw
July 3    63 amp hours   .8 Kw
July 2    53 amp hours   .7 Kw
July 1    55 amp hours   .7 Kw
June 30 60 amp hours   .8 Kw
June 29 61 amp hours   .8 Kw
June 28 49 amp hours   .6 Kw

As you can see as the temps rise the appliances will require more juice to keep things cool, no different than an ac freezer or fridge, the good thing is the sun is free and we are not using fossil fuels to power these major appliances.   Within about an hour or so of full sun our battery bank is recharged.  We have not dipped below a 96% charge so we are doing great!!!!!!!   Rich Doucette, from Freedom Renewable Energy, our SDE, (Solar Designer Extraordinaire) initially suggested we double our battery bank and he was right..it was a good move and when he talks we listen.  In case of no sun for a few days we should be just fine!!!!!

The parallel connectors should arrive on Thurs so I'm hoping to have the fourth panel connected back up by either Friday or Saturday at the latest.   With the addition of two more panels to our off grid array it pegged out the FlexMaxx Controller which can handle a max of 145 Volts.   After hooking up all the wires and trying to fire up that bad boy I walked away without joy...luckily Rich was nearby and knew within minutes what was going on!!!!!!!  So after some thinking we came up with the plan to run three panels as a temporary fix and those three panels (175 Sharp 24 V) have been doing a fine job of keeping our battery bank charged!!!!

When the parallel connectors arrive my plan is to wire two panels together in series to form two 48 V panels then wire the those in parallel...that will keep our maximum open circuit voltage to about 120 Volts.