Digital MPPT thermal controller

[Jhon]

I just watched "Explaining the Digital MPPT thermal controller"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP6anRNMW3I

And I have to say, I am impressed by both the simplicity of the idea (even though it would not have occurred to me in a million years) and the amount of effort that went into building the entire system, not just the electronics.  Do you have an update as to how this system is performing, like do you need supplemental heat or is 10kWh sufficient?

Kind regards, Jhon.

[Dacian Todea]

John,

I only have about 8kW of PV installed of the total 10kW planed and no that seems not to be sufficient in years with below average solar like it was last year. The thing is that I wrongly assumed that there will not be more than a 15 to 20% variation for the solar energy in a certain month but I was fairly wrong as you can have years like it was my case last year where less than half of the average energy for my location was available in November.

So to no need any backup at all I will need to double my PV array to around 20kW and also double the thermal storage and I will do so as any sort of backup energy for heating will be more expensive than adding more PV and thermal storage.

Most problematic months are November and December but after mid of January even if much colder then it is much more sunny and I never have any problems. Heating season here is 5 to 6 months and even as it is with 8kW of PV I can heat the house with solar PV only except for November and December depending on year like this year is not to bad in fact December looks way sunnier than average until now and I needed to stop the heating as it got to hot up to +26C inside the house and also is warmer than average outside.

So the problem is huge year to year variation in amount of available solar especially November and December at my location.

[Jhon]

Thank you for the update Dacian.

I still think it is a brilliant idea and I am sure you can make it work.  Thank you for making everything open source.