120v heating element and thermostat?

[John Taves]

Can I simply hook the wires up to my 120v 1440watt 10ohm heating element? (disconnecting the 120 of course)

jt

[Dacian Todea]

John,

You mean using this 10Ohm element connected to the DSSR20 diversion where you probably will have a 60 or 72 cell PV panel  ? Yes you can but since is just 10Ohm at around 30 to 36V you will only have 100 to 130W of heating so not much.

[John Taves]

Yea, I have 16 panels, nominally 1600w, so I assume I could theoretically get close to 1600watts, right?

So, the existing thermostat that is used for the 120v will just work with the 24v (nominal) PV?

Oh, crap, I bought the normal DSSR20. Does the diversion thingy just plop onto a normal DSSR20?

jt

[Dacian Todea]

It is irrelevant how many panels do you have as voltage will always be around 30 to 36V so with 10Ohm you are limited to 100 to 130W going to the heating element.

Yes you got the non diversion model of DSSR20 and yes you can solder all the components needed and convert it to diversion but it will not be fun to solder all those parts.

There are 36V heating elements available those have two parallel heating elements each 600W and around 2Ohm so once DSSR20 with say two 300W 60 cell PV panels can connect to one of the two heating elements and work at max power point using most of the PV panel energy in a sunny day at noon.

 

[Dave Festing]

Be careful that you don't have any mechanical thermostats switching with DC on them.  Also, be aware of local regulations regarding removal of thermostats from from hot water tanks.

[John Taves]

Sorry, I am a complete idiot. I totally forgot what ohms meant.

O=V/A , thus at 36v 3.6A, thus max 130w. Duh!

jt