MidNite Solar Inc. Renewable Energy System Electrical Components and E-Panels

Educational/Training Videos

Posted 04/08/2013

How Lightning Protection Works

Well the 2013 storm season is here in the US and with storms comes lightning and lightning means potential damage to valued components. This is a good time to think about how well your system is protected, or not!

A good place to start is understanding how lightning works. Lightning comes into wiring common mode. What common mode means is that the PV positive and PV negative as well as AC positive and AC negative rise at the same level from the near lightning strike. Read more...

Robin Gudgel

TRAINING & WEBINARS
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TESTIMONIALS
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The MidNite Forums

Come check out Our MidNite Solar Forums. Talk about our new PowerTime videos. How about our Classic local app? Or any of our other popular products!

Discuss them here with other users and us, Including our very own Ryan Stankevitz, the moderator. Ryan is a professional Solar and wind installer from Maine with a dozen years of experience in alternative energy. Not only is Ryan moderating the forum but he’s also answers customer service calls! It is nice to be able to ask questions about products and actually get a person that knows the answers from personal experience.

Check out the MidNite forums here.

Story of Northwest Off-grid Inverter Companies
Read this interesting article about the beginning of NW Off-grid Inverter Companies

Robin Gudgel

Company Profile
MidNite Solar is an innovative manufacturing company that started by making high quality, cost effective AC and DC disconnect boxes for the alternative energy industry. Now, MidNite produces a wide range of alternative energy products.

MidNite’s Classic series of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) charge controllers are the most powerful, full featured controllers on the market as well as being the only ETL listed controllers designed to work with Solar, Wind, and Micro Hydro Electric systems.

MidNite offers a full line of pre-wired, battery based systems for standalone off grid, battery based grid tie, as well as AC coupled battery backup installations. MidNite features SMA, Schneider / Xantrex, Outback, and Magnum Energy Inverters in our pre-wired systems, providing a wide range of solutions for residential and commercial projects.

MidNite Solar is the largest manufacturer of combiner boxes in North America. The new line of Disconnecting Combiner boxes are another industry first, meeting all of the new NEC requirements for this class of equipment.

MidNite’s full range of Surge Protection Devices (SPD) offer the highest levels of protection from lightning and power line surges. They’re very competitively priced.

This is just a few of the MidNite Solar products that are designed and manufactured in the Arlington Washington facility and installed in alternative energy systems around the world!

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MidNite Solar
17722 - 67th Ave NE
Arlington, WA 98223
Phone: 360-403-7207
Fax: 360-691-6862

Ryan Stankevitz - Technical Support Manager
Office 360.403.7207 Ext. 151
Cell 207.416.2006

Tom Carpenter, Technical Sales
360.403.7207 Ext. 150

Kim Silva, Sales
360.403.7207 Ext. 153

For more support options click here.

SPRING TIME!

Spring time, that time of year when Alternative energy folks thoughts turn lightly to.............Upgrading the ’ole Power System!, of course. MidNite Solar’s Pre-Wired Systems have you covered! We offer complete, wired and tested systems featuring all of the best inverters on the market, so you will always find the "Just Right" system for your application.

We can build you a system using SMA, Sunny Island, Schneider/ Xantrex XW, Outback, and of course, Magnum Energy. These systems are complete and built around our industry leading, innovative E-Panel Chassis. For battery charging, MidNite features the industry’s finest Charge controllers, the Classics!

Plug and play design means all you need to do is hang them on the wall, connect the batteries, PV array, and AC out to your loads! Nothing else to buy, and more importantly, no missing parts to slow down your installation. This saves loads of time and Money! .....
Read the rest of the story.

MIDNITE SOLAR SPONSORS GO CARTS
SUPPORTING THE WOUNDED WARRIER PROJECT

Departing April 29, 2013 from Petaluma, CA and arriving May 26, 2013 in Yorktown, VA, off-duty members of the U.S. Coast Guard will drive an electrically powered cart across America. The drive will be completed to solicit the public’s support and raise awareness to help support the injured service members of the Wounded Warrior Project.Go Carts

NEW DISCONNECTING COMBINERS ARE SHIPPPING! Nov, 14, 2012 We here at MidNite Solar, America’s number one combiner manufacturer, are proud to announce our new line of Disconnecting Combiners are now shipping! These Combiners are all designed to meet and exceed the 2011 NEC Code 690.16 NEC requirements...... Read the rest of the story.

THE MIDNITE CLASSIC:
MOST POWERFUL MPPT CHARGE CONTROLLER IN NORTH AMERICA

The Classic MPPT Charge Controller substantially increases the flexibility, features and range currently found on MPPT controllers. The Classic is the only MPPT controller that has Arc Fault Detection, making this controller the safest controller available. With the Classic 150 ranging up to 96 amps, the Classic 200, 79 amps and the Classic 250, 63 amps, why would you need any other controller? .....
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FOLLOW ME

"Follow Me" will allow the Classics to share charge stages, as well as Battery temperature info and Ground Fault coordination. "Follow Me" also allows you to program a single Classic for Equalize charging and it will instruct all the others to Equalize as well. You will need one BTS only and it can be on any of the Classics.

The "Follow Me" function basically is just what it is called. The Classic will simply ask the Classic to its right "What do I do now?" and this propagates around the loop continually. Whoever goes to Float first for instance will simply tell everyone else it is time to go to float.

Download Production Firmware with Follow Me

CLASSIC LITE

Now you can demand superior performance for any Solar or Hydro system with the new Classic Lite MPPT Controller. The Classic Lite offers superb classic performance with outstanding affordability and a pulse pounding output up to 96 amps.

The Classic Lite’s HyperVOC Technology affords more voltage headroom than any other charge controller. In clear cold weather your panels may possibly output higher voltages which can exceed the voltage capacity of your controller......
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CLASSIC STRING SIZING TOOL This is a great tool to help configure the Classic with your system. Classic String Sizing Tool Embed the String Sizing Tool into your website

COMPARING THE CLASSIC TO THE FM-60, XW60 AND MORNINGSTAR

In the Alpha stages of testing the Classic, Robin and boB Gudgel wanted some real world data. They hired APRS World to build several data logging monitoring systems. MidNite’s testing location in Maine had 3 identical arrays of Solar World 165’s. Each array had 6 modules wired into 3 strings of 2 which run back to the power center. APRS worked to calibrate all 3 arrays. The arrays were routinely swapped to account for any differences in panels......
Read the rest of the story.

HalfCrazy

CLASSIC LOCAL APPLICATION

Feb, 28, 2012
Download the MidNite Solar Local Application. This application enables you to monitor your Classics over your local network or the Internet. It is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, and XP; Mac OS X; and Linux (Verified on KUbuntu and Ubuntu) Download the MidNite Solar Local App here. Download, Print or Read the Manual here.

To give us feedback on our new application go to the MidNite Solar forums here.

THE MIDNITE SURGE PROTECTOR Nov 15, 2012 The MidNite Solar lightning arrestor has passed testing at ETL. Listed to UL1449 rev3 in all 3 models. Making an arrestor such as the MidNite SPD is no simple task, nor is it cheap. We have had many surprises along the way on this project...... Read the rest of the story.

SPD COMPARISON Nov 15, 2012 Here at Midnite Solar, Mario has engineered a great SPD or Lightning Arrestor. Our SPD’s are a huge improvement over the little gray, less sophisticated arrestors that have been used in the Solar industry for many years...... Read the rest of the story.

WHAT IS HYPERVOC? MidNite’s Classic series of MPPT Charge Controllers features HyperVOC, a non-operative VOC safety zone over and above the maximum input voltage. Read about it here. Discuss HyperVOC on our forums here.

OUR BATTERY CAPACITY METER

This Battery capacity meter, or BCM, was designed for our distributor in Africa to aid in keeping batteries alive longer.
Features include:

Led’s that correspond in real time to battery voltage!

Amazing accuracy at only (+/- 1%)!

Auto detects 12, 24, 36, and 48 volt batteries!

Separate LED indicators show if batteries have received a full charge:
Recently, Longer than one week or Longer than two weeks!

Ideal for �At a glance� readings for golf carts, forklifts, etc.

Pricing and info on our price list here.

Read or print the Manual here.

Discuss our BCM and much more on our forums.