[HN Gopher] DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
___________________________________________________________________
DIY Off-Grid Solar Power
Author : wglb
Score : 282 points
Date : 2021-12-26 01:42 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mobile-solarpower.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mobile-solarpower.com)
| thot_experiment wrote:
| NGL I think I have a pretty efficient setup and I'm in the
| process of installing a 4th panel (bringing my total to 1220W)
| because 915W isn't really cutting it for winter power now that
| I'm not spending time outside much. My quiescent draw/day is
| about 500Wh just doing nothing (fridge + internet) and on a
| cloudy day I'll make maybe 800Wh with the current setup. I don't
| think 800W of panels will let you power anything you want during
| winter.
|
| I'm also working on a way to bring power in from my alternator
| but unfortunately I think I'm going to have to invert in the
| engine bay and rectify feeding into my MPPT controller to avoid
| running some absurdly thicc wire to carry a few hundred watts at
| 12 volts.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| You could get a 12v to 48v DC converter on the car side of
| things. That already helps a lot in cable thickness.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| DIY solar power? I would have imagined a step by step instruction
| guide for a Gratzel-cell
| mkeespiet wrote:
| Together with my girlfriend I'm planning a trip. Driving from the
| Netherlands to South Africa and back with an EV. We want to
| charge the car with solar panels we bring with us. See our
| website for more details: www.4x4electric.com
|
| Challenge for now: how to charge the car with ~60m2 of flexible
| solar panels. We need a threephase offgrid solar system, but did
| not find a suitable solution yet.
|
| Any ideas?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Wow, that sounds like quite the adventure. Have a 'plan B' in
| place in case your gear gets damaged or stolen.
| roeles wrote:
| <dutch>Leuk idee!</dutch>
|
| Perhaps it makes sense to have a chat with Solar Team
| Eindhoven/Twente/Delft? Or have a chat with the people at
| Lightyear. They have a lot of former teammembers.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a great idea, it might even lead to contact with
| potential sponsors for a trip like that.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| How long are y'all planning to do the trip for?
| zoba wrote:
| I recently set up my own off grid solar system in a tiny cabin
| that I designed and had built.
|
| I used the Solar Controller+Inverter Combos recommended on this
| site (Growatt) but ultimately switched to ones by Renogy. The
| Growatt one I purchased has a wifi adapter and app - wifi
| requirement was a deal breaker when remote. The renogy one has a
| Bluetooth adapter and app, plus feels better designed (though
| actually I think the internals are all pretty similar).
|
| There are a couple surprise gotchas I didn't know:
|
| 1) These Controller+Inverter combo units require a battery to
| turn on. This means: if your battery runs completely out of
| charge, you have to get electricity from somewhere to charge your
| battery a bit before the Controller+Inverter will turn on and
| charge your battery again. I was pretty annoyed at how not "off
| grid" this felt.
|
| 2) Temperatures below freezing are bad for batteries. I purchased
| a Renogy 48v smart battery with self heating. Unfortunately less
| sun in winter means less energy, and heat production is energy
| intensive. I'm not at the cabin 100% of the time so I have to
| take the battery with me when I leave to avoid spoiling/freezing
| it. Still not sure how I'll ultimately get around this.
| driverdan wrote:
| LiFePO4 batteries can be stored and used below freezing, they
| just shouldn't be charged. All you have to do is turn the
| system off when you're not there.
| Retric wrote:
| In most areas keeping them underground can get around this,
| you can also use a backup heater and temperature probe before
| charging them.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Have you considered a small backup generator? If it exists I
| would go with one that is propane powered. Propane goes to
| -50deg before freezing so unless you live in Alaska, you have
| quite some margin here.
| irae wrote:
| You can dig a 2 meter deep hole and store the batteries there.
| It won't freeze during the winder if left turned off. If you
| plan to turn it on on the holes, you might need to plan for
| heat dissipation though.
| redtexture wrote:
| Insulated Root celler equivalent location for the battery.
| jf wrote:
| Could you dig a hole for your batteries and store them below
| the frost line?
| Syonyk wrote:
| The problem with holes in the ground for storage of things
| like batteries is that... they're holes in the ground. The
| ground, as a general guideline, actively dislikes holes in it
| and strives to fill them in whatever way possible. Liquid
| rolling in, soil creep, debris blowing past and building up,
| it doesn't matter - given a long enough time, a hole in the
| ground won't exist anymore.
|
| You can build a hole that will hold up to this sort of stuff
| for a while, but that tends to be expensive - underground
| concrete work is neither cheap nor easy, and given the number
| of people injured in trench collapses who do it for a living,
| a serious underground hole isn't a good DIY project either.
|
| That just leaves the maintenance, which also sucks for a hole
| in the ground. Anything you have to do on the batteries is
| easier with them on or above the ground, instead of
| underground in a hole. For lithium, it's fairly low
| maintenance but you may have to replace some BMS boards every
| now and then, manually check balance, etc, and for lead it's
| water every few months, unless you go with sealed, which are
| "maintenance free," but also "maintenance and status check
| impossible," so you really just set them and run them to
| failure - you can't monitor condition like you can with
| flooded.
|
| It's the sort of solution that, technically, would work - it
| just ends up being radically more expensive and a hassle than
| it's remotely worth. Think "Spending $5000 to save $20/yr"
| sort of thing.
|
| You see the same trend with things like the complex solar
| trackers that were common in the 80s and early 90s. With the
| cost of panels, optimizing every bit of power from them was
| critical, so spending an awful lot of money on support
| infrastructure to optimize $10/W panel production made quite
| a bit of practical and financial sense.
|
| Today, with panels at $0.50/W, very few people bother with
| trackers anymore (for off grid installs). Most things you
| could improve with a tracker, you can improve with less
| effort and less money by just hanging more panels. Bonus:
| With more panels, you get more production on cloudy days when
| panel orientation doesn't matter (because the sky is more or
| less evenly lit).
|
| I've got south facing, east facing, and west facing panels on
| my office, of two different brands, all fed into a single
| MPPT charge controller input (I do have some blocking diodes
| to prevent backfeeding a shaded string, though). It's not
| nearly as "efficient" as some other options, but it's a whole
| lot cheaper, and gives me more power on the low cloud days
| that are the rough ones. The rest of the year, I have so much
| power out there that I'm demand limited, not supply limited
| (actually, inverter limited - if I added some 48VDC loads, I
| could use another 5kWh/day easily).
| rebuilder wrote:
| I dug a hole in the ground to act as a makeshift cellar.
| About 1 meter cubed, dug it with a shovel, poured gravel as
| a floor with a French drain sunk in it, lined the walls
| with breezeblock, made a lid of plywood and foam insulation
| board. Erected a kind of tent on top to keep the rain out.
|
| No issues so far, two years in. It's not terribly cool in
| the hottest days of summer and does require a small heater
| if I want to keep it above freezing through winter, but in
| terms of being difficult or expensive to build, not at all.
| 35mm wrote:
| Agreed. It depends what you're optimising for: $ per kWp or
| sq M per kWp.
|
| Most people off grid have plenty of space but care about
| efficiency in terms of cost.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > actually, inverter limited - if I added some 48VDC loads
|
| I know it's _only lighting_ as a load, but I've heard
| standard LED light bulbs will happily run as low as 36VDC,
| as they chop the voltage down to that level anyway.
|
| It makes me wonder how many "120VAC" devices with switch
| mode power supplies could be plugged into 48VDC without any
| thought at all. And not just electronics like a laptop or
| non-plasma flatscreen, but everything is moving in this
| direction:
|
| Like... what's my Variable Frequency Drive "inverter"
| refrigerator motor voltage really running at? In theory it
| should happily run off 120VDC at least. Don't do that, but
| somewhere under 110VDC should work fine. And it's
| inherently soft start and easier on one's low voltage
| wiring than an on/off duty cycle fridge.
|
| Of course I recommend none of this officially.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Most modern switch mode power supplies will run on DC,
| but you really, really want to jack the input DC up high
| unless you're a fan of replacing bridge rectifier diodes
| and other input wiring.
|
| Active power factor correction circuitry will have a fit,
| but... eh, whatever. It's DC now, nobody cares!
|
| A 120VRMS AC signal peaks around 170V, and _most_ (not
| all, but _most_...) switch mode power supplies are auto
| ranging, so they 'll tolerate from about 100VRMS to about
| 250VRMS - which is near 400V peak. If you can get 300+VDC
| into them, they'll be quite happy, but the boost
| converters to do that are a pain to find, and by the time
| you build one, you may as well just get a 120VAC inverter
| and call it good.
|
| The main thing to be concerned about, and the reason to
| jack the input voltages about as high as you can, is that
| almost every switch mode power supply has a full bridge
| rectifier on the input side. From an AC input source,
| each diode has a 50% duty cycle. Put DC on it, now two
| diodes are at 100% duty cycle, two are at 0% duty cycle.
| How much overhead was there in the system? Well... you'll
| find out! However, a system capable of running and not
| overloading the diodes at 50% duty cycle at ~100VAC
| should be totally fine in terms of diode heating at
| 300VDC - just, perhaps not at 100VDC.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I never considered the diode duty cycles. If nameplate
| was 120-240VAC (my TV says 120 but the p/s PCB inside
| says 100-240...) I'd _like_ to think each would have the
| overhead to handle under 100VDC, but maybe I'm
| underestimating the impact of higher current. Edit:
| you're right that the "hot" ones will run twice as hot
| with their 0.6V or whatever drop.
|
| All I could think about was the (potential) improvements
| on capacitor lifespan since they won't have to smoothen,
| but wasn't sure if their electrolyte could still heat/dry
| if it was actually the connection to power that makes
| them hot.
|
| Thinking further, an internal fuse might blow with the
| (expectedly) larger current draw at 48V.
|
| And yeah on input wiring, you're pulling more current at
| 48V.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I think you are _way_ overselling the difficulty of digging
| a hole in the ground. Go to any grave yard- full of sealed
| coffins, all below the frost line.
|
| Get a plastic storage box, drill holes for cables and seal
| them with caulk. Put inside a treated lumber box for extra
| crushing resistance. Run cables through metal conduits to
| avoid mice and moles chewing on them.
|
| Rent a backhoe, and you are done in half an afternoon.
|
| All of that said, I dont know that I would actually go that
| far- you avoid the battery freezing, but then you get to
| worry about it cooking. For an off-grid cabin that isn't
| constantly heated in winter, it isn't the worst idea.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| What I did in Canada was to dig a bunker into the side of a
| hill near the house. That solved both the frost and any fluid
| issues in one go. It was a bit of work though to get that all
| done.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Still not sure how I'll ultimately get around this._
|
| If it's portable, your option works well.
|
| For year round off grid use, there's something to be said for
| sealed lead acid, or flooded lead acid - they don't care about
| being cycled while cold (capacity is down and the voltage sags
| a good bit), and as long as they don't get too deeply
| discharged, they don't freeze.
|
| A single panel, facing south, absolutely vertical, will shed
| snow and if you have no other loads, is usually enough to
| offset controller loads and self discharge over time to keep
| the batteries fully charged (and therefore not freezing) over
| winter.
|
| There's no way you'll generate enough heat on electricity to
| keep a battery bank (or cabin) warm in the winter most places.
| I've got 5kW of panel on my office, and still can't manage that
| for a small, well insulated shed.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Hypothetically, for the lithium batteries, what if you made a
| big stainless steel vacuum wall insulated enclosure? Or just
| a metal box with r-60 value of foam around it?
|
| The amount of heat needing to be generated can then be
| calculated based on the average temp over a longer period of
| time, and those batteries I don't imagine have to be "warm"
| exactly.
| diamondlovesyou wrote:
| What about summer? Those batteries also need to stay
| cool...
| Solar2 wrote:
| They do not need to stay that cool at all. When used for
| solar, the C rate for charging usually never exceeds .2C
| for overpaneled systems. And usually never goes beyond
| .5C for discharge. So the heat generated is very small.
| Now when I am pushing 30-100C rates with a lithium
| polymer, cooling is an issue. this is why nissan leaf
| cells were recalled. The battery size was too small for
| the application, and they overheated which caused
| significant degradation rates. This is not an issue for
| solar. Just keep them at room temperature and they are
| fine.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| You can just dig a big hole for them, the earth stays
| cool enough when you go a meter or two down.
|
| Unless you live in the desert, having the batteries too
| hot isn't as big of an issue as freezing them.
| londons_explore wrote:
| A $2 circulation pump and an outdoor radiator...
|
| It's good practice to snake a water pipe around every
| lithium cell anyway in big packs, because otherwise one
| bad cell can self-heat to the point of catching fire,
| even while other nearby cells are cold. The flowing water
| means the bad cell can't get to the point of fire.
| lazide wrote:
| Lithium batteries don't need to be warm for discharge
| (generally and with an asterisk), it's charging. Discharge
| while freezing causes slower chemical reactions (aka lower
| discharge current), but that is rarely a huge problem
| compared to the charging problem.
|
| Any charging around or below freezing causes pretty quick
| destruction of the cells as the chemistry switches to a
| more favorable destructive one way electroplating process
| instead of the desirable (and reversible) ion exchange
| process.
|
| A common engineering solution to this has started to be
| temperature dependent shunts that route charging energy to
| heating pads around the battery until the battery temp gets
| above a certain safe point.
|
| It adds complexity, cost, and adds several undesirable
| failure mode however, and Lithium battery cost is already a
| major factor in these systems, so if you're in a situation
| where you can't reliably temperature control your batteries
| (cold climate, non-conditioned battery space), lead acid is
| still a very viable and often desirable chemistry instead.
|
| Round trip efficiency isn't great with them, and you have
| to way over provision to get good cell lifespan, but it
| works.
| chana_masala wrote:
| Thanks for your post. I'm reading through some of your blog
| posts now - really great!
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Yep. Unless you've got running water or a high cliffside for
| wind, the best off-the-grid heat source for cold climates is
| an acre of woods and an axe.
|
| Insulation, too. A lot of sheds and cabins (and single-family
| homes) could do with more. Saves on cooling bills in the
| summer, too.
| Symmetry wrote:
| An acre of trees should be enough to give you an average of
| 4 kW of thermal power year round, way more than you
| probably need. Though at 1 W/m^2 how much industry an area
| of trees could support was the binding constraint on
| industry for a lot of recorded history. Especially there
| was always pressure to turn forests into farmland.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Could get by on much less than an acre if it were
| managed, but better to have more land and be able to keep
| it as unmanaged forest. That'll also produce fresh game
| and give some buffer on the lumber supply for lean years.
| How much rain falls is strictly out of my hands.
| bregma wrote:
| I live on 25 ha of forest, have an axe and saw, and heat
| with wood. Let me tell you: you want to use the saw for
| everything but splitting. Axes are fine for burly cavemen.
|
| Anyway, in a cold climates like mine an acre would not be
| enough to keep you warm because trees grow slow when it's
| winter six months out of twelve. It takes a lot of wood to
| keep you warm, and one tree gives surprisingly little wood.
| After a handful of years you'll have clearcut your measly
| acre and still have another couple of decades to go before
| it becomes harvestable again. I'd say you want at least 10
| acres if you manage it well and the soil and drainage are
| at least half decent.
| dudeofea wrote:
| You could try coppiced trees:
| https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/09/how-to-make-
| biomass-...
|
| They grow faster since they already have a root
| structure, the size is consistent and the wood is
| generally straigter (the japanese have a similar
| technique for extremely straight cedar logs)
| jacquesm wrote:
| By the time you get to 100 acres you can basically heat
| your house with the stuff that blows over in storms and
| the remainder can yield a nice cash crop every couple of
| years, giving space for the other trees to grow.
| Personally I'd prefer a chainsaw for anything but the
| most incidental cutting, and a hydraulic woodsplitter
| (rented) to get the job of preparing firewood for a while
| year done in a short time.
| Epa095 wrote:
| Is 5kW not enough to heat the cabin? I guess it must be
| really cold where you are. Modern heat pumps should
| unproblematic handle -25degC (air to air), and provide 4-5kWh
| of heat for each kWh of power used.
| adrianN wrote:
| Which heat pump reaches that kind of efficiency when the
| temperature differential is so high?
| Epa095 wrote:
| Good point, I did not think about the fact that the
| effeciency went down. But it seems to me (as a noob) that
| modern heat pumps specialising in low temperature
| conditions still can get around 2.5 at -25deg, which
| gives you more than 10kWh of heating at 5kW, which is
| quite a lot.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| None as far as I can tell. Some people I know here in
| Norway turn off the heat pump when the outside
| temperature is below -25degC, but those pumps were
| installed some years ago.
|
| New ones do have a significant gain at that temperature.
| For instance this Samsung Nordic Home:
| https://www.elkjop.no/product/hjem-og-
| husholdning/oppvarming...
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| 5kW of panels don't produce 5kW in winter, that's the issue
| I guess.
| Epa095 wrote:
| What does the 5kWh of energy turn in to, of not heat?
| jacquesm wrote:
| It says '5KW', not '5KWh'.
| Epa095 wrote:
| I just now realised that "panels" was solar panels, not
| the ovens (we call them "panel ovens" in my language). My
| fault!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Np, it is an easy mistake to make.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Correct, they will produce more.
|
| Solar panels produce the most power on cold winter days.
| The 'rated power' is for 20 degrees ambient at full (90
| degrees, no cloud) incidence at sea level.
| notahacker wrote:
| In practice it's kWh you care about, and you get
| significantly fewer hours of sun in winter. No cloud days
| are rare in some regions in winter too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Sure, but the time factor wasn't present in the above
| comment, it was just instantaneous power.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| It was about how that could heat (or not heat) a cabin,
| time is definitely a factor in that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| "5kW of panels don't produce 5kW in winter" -> there is
| no 'time' factor in there.
|
| What you could say is that solar panels in the winter do
| not produce the same amount of power in an average day as
| they do in the summer due to the shorter day and the
| bigger chance of occlusion as well as the longer path the
| suns rays have to travel through the atmosphere.
| angularbot77 wrote:
| Problem is, the sun doesen't necessarily rise above the
| horizon for weeks in northern countries
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, in locations like that you will have to use some
| other solution for those periods. Maybe wind power.
| Battery storage will not last long enough unless you have
| an absolutely massive setup that would not be cost
| effective the rest of the year.
|
| I had 48KWh worth of storage, 2500 W worth of wind and
| another 5000 W worth of solar. This was in Northern
| Ontario. Until we added the windmill we fairly regularly
| needed the generator, after we added the windmill the
| generator just sat there gathering dust.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| That really depends on how far north you live. Where I
| live a good winter day's production is ~10% of a good
| summer day's. (Also depends on the orientation, but it's
| never even close, let alone more)
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's total production over a day.
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| Seems to me that if you want to solar heat a cabin, a solar
| panel is going around the horn. Design the cabin to be a
| solar collector, like a greenhouse.
| lazide wrote:
| You'd still need backup heat production (heat pump, or wood
| burning, or fossil fuel, or electrical off batteries) for
| the inevitable month long 'gray and cold' stretches, or
| you're gonna freeze.
|
| Single purpose but not reliably there heat capture methods
| add cost and maintenance.
|
| It's often more cost effective to have a general purpose
| method that while not as efficient in one case is generally
| more overall (cost) efficient.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Passive solar heating should be very maintenance free.
| It's the point of it.
|
| Sure, a backup plan is a good idea. But it doesn't have
| to be very good or very efficient, as it will be rarely
| used.
| csours wrote:
| #2 reminds me of this:
| http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/04/cold-war-nuc...
| jandrese wrote:
| Could you insulate the batteries to reduce the heating demand?
| Instead of heating the entire cabin just heat the battery
| compartment, and only to the minimum necessary to keep them
| from being damaged (plus a margin for safety).
|
| Maybe even just toss them in an old discarded deep freeze? You
| could even have one battery in there that is disconnected from
| the rest of the system so it can be used to jump start the
| system if it ever gets fully discharged.
| rklaehn wrote:
| An old deep freeze is probably not sufficient, but packing
| them into a thick layer of insulation should be fine for the
| winter. The insulation would have to completely enclose them
| though, including the bottom.
|
| Maybe best to have them sit on a thick layer of insulation on
| the bottom, and a box that can be removed during the summer
| months so the batteries don't overheat.
|
| Another a bit weird idea would be to somehow put them next to
| a compost heap, which produces low temperature heat for a
| long time (years) including during the winter.
| Syonyk wrote:
| You can insulate them to reduce heating demand, and it will
| help to an extent (undo that before summer to avoid cooking
| them), but for an unattended system, it's never going to work
| out very well. If the system is a year round cabin, the
| solution is easy enough - keep them in the heated space
| (which you'll have propane/kerosene/biomass heaters for), and
| it's not a real problem. But unattended stuff... you really
| just need to plan for something that can tolerate bitter cold
| without damage. Or to _seriously_ overpanel the system, 10x+
| what you need for summer use, and hope they produce
| something.
|
| I think most people underestimate just how much delta in
| production there can be on solar. My house array is grid
| tied, 16kW, a bit weird looking (mostly east-west panels,
| designed for post net metering). On a really good, cool,
| clear, windy spring day, I can produce about 105kWh out of
| the system from sunup to sundown.
|
| On a really bad, low, grey, winter day, that same system
| produces about 2kWh. It's literally a factor of 50
| difference. And we can get several days of that in a row. I
| have a backup generator that I use for my office on weeks
| like that (separate, off-grid system).
|
| "Winter, electric heat on solar" is a fairly good filter for
| those who have read about solar or pondered it, and those who
| have a few years of it under their belt. The second group are
| the ones who've tried it, discovered just how horribly it
| doesn't work, and are trying to convince the first group
| that, no, really, _insert well worn idea here_ really doesn
| 't fix the problems with it.
|
| I guarantee if it were easy, people would be doing it. That
| you won't find any serious off grid system doing electric
| battery heating is because it doesn't work.
| mcot2 wrote:
| Adding on to this the energy usage of my multi-head heat
| pump system has been quite surprising when it drops below
| freezing. I have a Mitsubishi unit which is rated down to
| something like -15F however below 32F it uses enough energy
| to get pretty close with fossil fuels on price. It looks
| like I will have to add on to my 11.85kW solar system to be
| able to get the projected energy use throughout the year.
| Winter time will have a significant deficit and summer
| overproduction will make some of it back but not all. I am
| also investing in air sealing and additional insulation.
| rklaehn wrote:
| I agree that the difference between winter and summer is
| very large, like night and day.
|
| But, 2kWh or even less should be plenty to keep a well
| insulated battery compartment from freezing.
|
| On very cold and clear winter days you are going to get
| more than that, and on cloudy days it is usually not that
| cold.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > Temperatures below freezing are bad for batteries.
|
| bad for lithium batteries. even then, it is only bad if you
| charge or discharge them in freezing temps. lead-acid handle
| cold just fine.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> 1) These Controller+Inverter combo units require a battery
| to turn on
|
| Which is why you want to install disconnects between your
| battery bank and the electronics. In a worst-case scenario of
| total discharge you can then bypass the dead batteries, hook
| the control electronics up to car batteries if necessary (be
| careful about voltages) and perform some diagnostics or at
| least read the logs of what went wrong. But the
| controller+inverter should be running if supplied with voltage
| from solar/wind/generator regardless of how the batteries are
| doing.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _But the controller+inverter should be running if supplied
| with voltage from solar /wind/generator regardless of how the
| batteries are doing._
|
| Most of them don't operate that way. They need the battery
| bank connected first, and run off the battery bank side,
| while controlling the panel side.
|
| Some _may_ tolerate that sort of recovery from deep
| discharge, but it 's not a safe bet, and some controllers are
| pretty clear that if you connect the input side before the
| batteries, you'll damage the controller.
|
| A dumb PWM controller stands a better chance of doing this,
| but something like an MPPT controller, unless it's explicitly
| designed to fail into a PWM configuration at low battery
| voltage, won't - they need power to drive the buck converter
| circuitry (the controlling ICs and oscillators and such) in
| order to get power out of the panels.
| poleguy wrote:
| Have you considered Lithium Titanate batteries? They can
| discharge at a temperature of -40C.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Have you _priced_ LTO? They 're rather staggeringly expensive
| for their capacity. The cycle life is excellent, but they
| excel in very high C-rate applications (10C-20C), which is
| the opposite of what you need for off-grid systems. If an off
| grid system is getting anywhere near C/10 discharge rates,
| you're going to be in the dark awfully soon.
|
| It's old tech, it's boring, but it works fine... flooded lead
| acid. Don't fully discharge it in the winter, and they won't
| freeze. They'll cycle just fine in the cold. Well tested,
| proven, and unless you're full time living and heating an
| interior space that can be lithium-friendly, they're the
| right option. Disconnect all the loads and run them on float
| in the winter with a high, vertical, south facing panel
| (obviously swap that if you're in the southern hemisphere),
| and they'll do just fine.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Yeah, lead wins hands down. This is a few years out of date
| now, but when speccing out my system I did a bit of
| analysis of battery types. We went with OPzS, and so far,
| so good.
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w8vPBHkMyY5jvkxtK1Q
| h...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Recycled Lithium Ion is much cheaper still, but more
| risky (and less maintenance). You'll have to do some
| pretty fanatic inbound QA to determine whether all your
| cells are safe to use. but if you do that and fuse your
| cells individually you should be able to make that work.
| vincnetas wrote:
| but still main problem is subzero temperatures. recycled
| lipo batteries do not become immune to this problem.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That is very true, especially at charge time you want to
| make sure your batteries are not too cold.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yeah, some people had problems with all-in-one battery systems
| in their homes that were AC coupled to their solar here in
| Australia over some weather disasters where there were
| prolonged outages for that reason.
|
| I'd quite like a battery system, I think I'd DIY (well, design
| the system but here you need a licensed electrician to wire up
| the AC/grid connect side) using Victron equipment. I have a 5
| kW solar system already with a AC inverter which I can keep, so
| I would probably use a 5000KVA inverter-charger (Multiplus-II),
| but then I'd add another 1.5kW or so of solar that is directly
| DC coupled to the batteries and the DC side of the inverter-
| charger through a separate DC MPPT tracker.
|
| So the DC coupled solar would be enough to kick-start the
| system to get the AC side back on after a bit if the grid was
| out and the batteries were depleted overnight.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Victron is top of the line stuff and will serve you well. On
| marine installations it's not rare at all to see their
| inverters outlast the hull.
| [deleted]
| adabaed wrote:
| This is a spanish guy who built his own off-grid setup with solar
| panels and 18650 batteries. As a complete ignorant in electric
| stuff to me this is amazing. If you know some spanish you can
| find here a good channel IMO!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3LgbTsIO3A
| oldsecondhand wrote:
| Making an electric car with them:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQa5gn-7D74
|
| He also has setups with used laptop batteries.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Marketing. I would take everything on this website with a grain
| of salt. Take it from someone who has actually built an off-grid
| system, one that is relied upon for 24/7/365 living rather than
| mere vacation cottage.
|
| For example: OP re lead-acid battery options:
|
| "Heavy, cheap, easy to use and they work! Typically will last
| about 3-5 years. Slower charge rates than lithium, much heavier,
| and they cost way more in the long run."
|
| That is just plain incorrect. Lead-acid batteries regularly last
| a decade or more and are far cheaper than any lithium option at a
| given capacity. Look at nearly every 12v car or boat battery. You
| don't see those being replaced every 3-5 years. It is old
| reliable tech that just works. And, at a given price point, they
| can charge faster than lithium too.
|
| The downside of lead-acid? There is little profit to make in
| selling them. All the patents have expired. They don't need
| software to control them. They are mature, centuries-old
| technology. A thousand companies are making lead-acid batteries
| and you can get them cheap. They weigh more, but for residential
| installation that isn't an issue.
|
| The upside? Whereas lithium packs are a nightmare to recycle,
| lead-acid batteries hook into an established and profitable
| recycling system. They are the greener alternative to anything
| containing lithium.
| willprowseiv wrote:
| Will Prowse here. Are you kidding me? Those lead acids are kept
| at a high state of charge and not deeply discharged. Sure some
| expensive FLA can last much longer, but they are garbage. The
| coulombic efficiency is horrible. The internal resistance is
| awful. If I sold lead acid batteries, I would make way more
| money. You have no clue what you are talking about. And yes,
| when used for solar and deeply discharged, your lucky to get
| 3-5 years.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Tell that to my 12 year-old battery bank powering my family
| house (solar with diesel backup charge). It is a pack of deep
| cycle lead-acids that have served me very well. Of course
| they are watched and maintained regularly, and rarely ever
| dip below 75%.
|
| The only use case I've ever seen for lithium off-grid is for
| people who want to squeeze their entire rig into a closet or
| basement corner. And nobody ever talks about what to do with
| those batteries once they finally die. My packs will be
| easily recycled.
| Solar2 wrote:
| See, exactly proves my point. DOD is only 25%. If you do
| not cycle them much, you can make a lead acid last for
| years no problem. If you are doing 100% DOD, and do not
| with to deal with maintenance, and wish to have high
| coulombic efficiency, lithium is far better.
|
| Volumetric density is a side benefit of lithium. We use it
| for coulombic efficiency, low voltage sag, high cycle life
| (much higher than lead acid, regardless of cycling
| bandwidth), usable capacity at low temperatures (much
| higher than lead acid! People always get this wrong), and
| higher specific energy. And lead acid sulfation and shorted
| cells require recycling. You can safely use a lifepo4 pack
| for years after degradation occurs. Lead acid is easier to
| recycle, but lithium ion recycling companies are dominating
| the space now. It is not like it was 3 years ago. Times are
| changing and there is no way anyone wants to throw out
| cobalt from a pack. LFP is much easier to recycle than
| cobalt based chemistries as well.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Solar2 == willprowseiv? Brand new account responding as
| such, at least.
|
| Which production lithium ion recycling companies are
| "dominating the space" and actually recycling more than
| test quantities of cells? Apparently I've missed that in
| the past few years - links to them?
| Syonyk wrote:
| Over the years, I've generally made the observation that
| those who really slam lead acid for energy storage use seem
| to have been nowhere near a modern lead acid datasheet from
| the last 20 years, and that seems to be the case here as
| well. They also tend to make assorted arguments in the
| context of off-grid power that don't reflect the realities of
| off-grid power systems in annual use.
|
| The mid-range Trojan Solar Premium line (my office runs an
| older version of this, the T105-RE and I'm five years of
| daily cycling in with what seem to be entirely healthy
| batteries still) datasheet [0] shows a 3500 cycle life at 30%
| DoD, which is 10 years of daily cycling use. However,
| depending on loads, panels, and how you use the place, you'll
| typically see far shallower cycles in the spring/summer/fall,
| and then some deeper cycles in the winter months. So you can
| average it out - a single 80% discharge isn't going to have a
| huge impact on longevity, just don't do it all day, every
| day. If you've got enough panel area to recover a low battery
| bank in a good day or so of sun (generally recommended for
| off-grid), you'll have enough panel area to ride through
| daytime loads most of the year without really bothering the
| battery pack either.
|
| The Solar Industrial line [1] is rated 3500 cycles at 50% DoD
| daily cycling, and about 6250 at 30% DoD. Good luck finding
| them, though.
|
| They also, as has been discussed elsewhere here, don't need
| heating in the winter to be able to charge safely. I
| generally don't like charging lithium below about 45F, and
| even that would be a low C-rate. Not having to heat lead
| makes winter an awful lot easier.
|
| As far as the rest of your claims... they mostly don't matter
| for a typical off-grid power system, which is the general
| context of this thread.
|
| Coulombic efficiency for lead varies rather significantly
| depending on where in the state of charge, and it's not
| really reasonable to discuss "average" numbers for lead. Once
| you're full, up in absorb, the CE is quite poor, as it's
| gassing, but that's also required to mix the electrolyte and
| prevent stratification, so it's still doing something useful.
| However, the times when it _matters_ - cold, dark winter
| months, if you 're running partial state of charge cycling
| (which the modern carbon additives allow without the problems
| of hard sulfation), the CE during charging is quite good -
| near 100%, as long as you're below gassing. So when CE
| matters, when you're power limited, it's perfectly
| reasonable, and when it doesn't matter, when you have a
| surplus of power, it's poor. I don't particularly mind that.
|
| As far as internal resistance goes, it's certainly far worse
| than lithium, but at typical off-grid C/20, C/8 type rates,
| it just doesn't matter that much. Nobody is asking deep cycle
| off grid lead to deliver starting amps for a tractor, and it
| won't do it, because it's a substantially different internal
| design than a starting battery (which have far lower internal
| resistance - go measure one sometime, it's pretty impressive
| just how low IR on a warm car battery is).
|
| And my 48V/225Ah bank ran me $1400 about 5 years ago, and is
| about halfway through service life, or perhaps a bit less
| than half. To do that on a lithium chemistry would be quite a
| bit more expensive.
|
| Plus, flooded lead acid lacks the energy density to do
| anything terribly exciting, as long as you give hydrogen
| generated from charging an "up and out" path. I consider this
| a feature for stationary storage.
|
| And they're almost entirely recyclable (and actively
| recycled). It's a quite circular economy in the lead acid
| battery space.
|
| Different chemistries have their places. For a somewhat
| overpaneled off-grid system in daily use, lead acid is still
| an absolutely reasonable chemistry (as quite a few people
| here are still observing).
|
| [0]: https://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/datasheets/SPRE_06_415
| _DS.... [1]: https://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/datasheets/SIN
| D_06_610_DS....
| bkjelden wrote:
| > Look at nearly every 12v car or boat battery. You don't see
| those being replaced every 3-5 years. It is old reliable tech
| that just works.
|
| I actually do see this all of the time. In decades of owning
| multiple cars I've found the batteries tend to fail so
| regularly at about the 5 year mark that you could set a watch
| to it.
|
| They are easy to find and inexpensive to replace, but they
| absolutely do have a limited lifespan.
| varelse wrote:
| I would love to have found that magical car battery that
| doesn't die after 5 years or so. But the real comedy is that
| my EV is required to have one of them independent of all the
| lithium batteries, and if it discharges/fails, it's a whole
| fan dance to get into the car.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> it's a whole fan dance to get into the car.
|
| I've never jumped a full EV, but I have had to jump a
| couple hybrids after their 12v batteries ran flat. Can you
| not get to the 12v battery using a mechanical key? Any 12v
| jumpstart kit should provide enough voltage to activate the
| solenoid and get everything online.
| varelse wrote:
| The mechanical key on my EV, a Mustang Mach E, is a
| blank. but here's the fan dance to get into the car on a
| dead battery...
|
| https://youtu.be/AKK_Vt1m5TA
| mlac wrote:
| This is a really good point, but my car batteries last between
| 3-5 years. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| What actually happened to your car battery to cause you to
| replace it? Did you do anything to fix it? Did you ever
| maintain it? Did you replace the fluid? Or did you just drive
| your car every day and then replaced the battery when the
| mechanic told you it was broken? It is normally cheaper to
| replace a standard car battery than attempt to maintain and
| fix it (100-200$) but in an off-grid situation many thousands
| of dollars are at stake, which makes maintenance and repair
| more practical than replacement.
|
| https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-to-
| recondit...
|
| https://www.totalcardiagnostics.com/learn/recondition-car-
| ba...
| zbrozek wrote:
| Car batteries these days are sealed, so you don't really
| have much opportunity to replace their acid. A regularly-
| driven car isn't deep-cycling its battery, so I'm not sure
| what else you'd do to maintain it.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| You test it regularly and hook it up to a good
| desulfator/maintainer when needed. A sealed battery might
| be acceptable for a car, if the owner has the money to
| replace it regularly, but not in an off-grid/residential
| situation.
| mlac wrote:
| It wasn't about the mechanic telling me, it was about the
| car not starting anymore and the battery not taking any
| charge.
|
| And that's why I asked - I honestly don't know what steps
| are recommended to maintain a car battery (or if given the
| price it is worth the work).
|
| Thanks for the links - I'll look later
| mattr47 wrote:
| Car batteries are good for 4-5 years.
| hasbot wrote:
| "And, at a given price point, they can charge faster than
| lithium too."
|
| Please elaborate; I have no idea what you're talking about
| here.
|
| My deep-cycle RV batteries are nearly dead and I'm going to
| spend the $$$ to replace them w/ a lithium battery partially
| because of lithium's faster charging. At peak solar season, I
| only get about 3 to 4 hours of _good_ sunlight on my forested
| property so I need batteries that charge relatively quickly.
| gcp123 wrote:
| The OP, Will Prowse knows what he's talking about. He lives off
| the grid and meticulously documents all of his testing and
| research. When I was new to solar to battery power storage, I
| learned everything I needed to know from his website and videos
| to build my own off the grid system. Check out his YouTube
| channel.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I can believe that lead-acid batteries in a thermally-regulated
| and immobile location would have a longevity advantage. But
| what magic dance are you doing to get car batteries to last
| longer than 5 years? I - and my parents, and seemingly everyone
| else I know - absolutely do seem to have to replace them at
| just about exactly that interval.
|
| That's not to say they aren't filling their role in a totally
| reasonable way, I'm just really curious how you're getting more
| life out of them than the rest of us.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Invest in a good trickle charger/maintainer/desulfurer
| (100-150$) and use it occasionally, especially if the car is
| going to sit for more than a week.
| passerby1 wrote:
| That's interesting. Winters are cold where I'm originally from,
| and car batteries get replaced more frequently than once in 10
| years. Where are you from? Your experience is very different.
| quesera wrote:
| GP did not specify, but it's likely that they are referring
| to deep-cycle lead acid batteries, not standard car
| batteries.
|
| Deep-cycle batteries are commonly used as the house power for
| RVs, boats, solar storage, etc.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Northern Alberta. Currently -30c. The 8yo battery in my car
| started my engine just fine this morning, with the help of my
| block and battery heaters that ran all night. I think people
| in the north might have longer battery life because of the
| harsh conditions. We probably spend more time/money on
| maintenance of vehicles precisely because we need them to
| start when very cold. I have noticed a deeper voltage drop
| when starting my car this winter. The battery might well be
| on its last legs but so long as it is still working I'll hold
| off replacing it. (I do carry a jumpstart kit in my trunk,
| right beside the snow chains.)
| aliswe wrote:
| It would have helped to do a more benevolent
| analysis/interpretation here. For example, you mentioned
| yourself that lead batteries need checking, change of fluids,
| etc, most of which noone does.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Everybody whose house power depends on their batteries will
| do this religiously. It's a five minute job every month and a
| half our job every year.
| Solar2 wrote:
| neurobashing wrote:
| Just a (hopefully amusing) piece of anecdata: we have a
| squaredrop trailer, with a set of solar panels to power/charge
| the 12v marine battery and a pair of Jackery power banks. Most of
| our camping is done in the eastern woodlands: WV, PA, VA, etc.
|
| There is so much tree cover all the time. Some days, even though
| it's mostly or fully sunny, we're almost always at the end of
| some disused fire road on the wrong side of a mountain, and we're
| lucky to get a couple of % back from all-day charges. I'm
| considering one of those water-powered turbines, since it'll work
| all night long as well.
| Gys wrote:
| Why not use the engine of the trailer to (also) charge the
| batteries while driving? My campervan does that.
| hasbot wrote:
| Do eastern fire roads often feature fast moving creeks? I kid.
|
| Are you able to tilt your solar panels? If they are lying flat
| on your roof, you won't get much power from them.
|
| Speaking as someone that has spent the last three summers off-
| grid in a forest, in your situation, I'd add the ability to
| tilt the solar panels, reduce power consumption, and get a
| multi-fuel (propane and gas) inverter generator along with a
| propane tank. The inverter generator is a lot quieter, smaller,
| and lighter than generators. I don't need much power and mostly
| use the generator for the microwave and occasional topping off
| the batteries.
| cq493 wrote:
| Anyone know if the trailer/flatbed is legal in Los Angeles?
| Testing without going through an entire permit process would be
| fun.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Interesting: https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/all-in-
| one-122448v-package... programs are selectable by numbers.
| Reminds me of the Apollo DSKY computer.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| Love this dude, he's got good youtube videos too
| Solar2 wrote:
| Thank you!
| ctime wrote:
| Will Prose seems like a really great person. If you're interested
| in what you see on this site, check out his YouTube channel:
| https://youtube.com/c/WillProwse
| Syonyk wrote:
| The problem with him, and people like him on YouTube, is that
| about 90% of what they say is fine, and 10% ranges from "iffy"
| to "This is a good way to burn your house down - at some
| unknown point in the future." The average viewer of that sort
| of material can't tell the difference, and by the time you can,
| you're not in need of handwaving entry level information,
| because you can read the design documents, spec sheets, NEC,
| and do things yourself.
|
| YouTube is simply the wrong medium to try to teach detailed,
| "can kill you" things like electricity. It's _especially_ wrong
| when you try to make it about personality, humor, etc moreso
| than hard technical truths.
| nataz wrote:
| "It's especially wrong when you try to make it about
| personality, humor, etc moreso than hard technical truths."
|
| Have you spent any time watching Will's videos? Your quote
| doesn't match up at all with what I've seen at all. I found
| his videos dry, technical, and pretty good with regard to
| safety.
| post_break wrote:
| This is the dumbest take I've read in a long time. From him
| I've learned which lifepo4 batteries won't burn my house
| down, proper wiring for stuff, etc. I've got a 144ah battery
| pack sitting right next to me as I type this I built from
| learning from him. Are you sure your comment isn't about the
| youtuber Electricboom?
| Syonyk wrote:
| I rebuilt large (500Wh) lithium ebike batteries
| professionally and shipped them around North America for a
| couple years, and have torn down more than my fair share of
| ebike and tool batteries for analysis.
|
| I've yet to see a "YouTube Trained" pack build that I would
| be remotely comfortable leaving unattended in my house.
| Though LFP is an awful lot more forgiving than a mix of
| random recycled 18650s of unknown chemistry, service life,
| and internal damage history that makes up the bulk of that
| stuff.
|
| If you've got some good high res shots of the build
| process, I'd happily take a look and see what I think of
| it. My standards of comparison are the professionally built
| packs I've torn down for analysis and often enough rebuilt
| for people.
|
| As for who my comment is about, honestly, I apply it
| generally to that entire class of person on YouTube no
| matter who they are. I know solar, and off grid solar,
| fairly well (with a focus on flooded lead acid). I know
| lithium fairly well, having done quite extensive work on
| them. In areas I know well, most of the people showing
| stuff off or trying to teach other people hit the 90/10
| split, and as this is a topic of conversation in the quiet
| off grid backwaters circles I frequent, other people
| usually agree about which 10% is the problem.
|
| Therefore I'm happy to ignore that entire class of person
| and go do something useful. It's not that education can't
| be funny, it's that when "personality" and "laughs" and
| "BIG O FACE I NEARLY BLEW MYSELF UP" style thumbnails are
| what matters, the really deep (and often quite important)
| technical details get lost in all that.
| belval wrote:
| I was giving you the benefit of doubt, but this comment
| shows that you've never watched any of Will's video and
| you are just painting with a very broad brush.
|
| He's the kind of Youtuber that keeps repeating that you
| should place a low temp sensor on your cells, not the
| kind doing sketchy spot weld on old 18650s.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| sounds a bit gate-keepy to me. People tell me that I
| shouldn't repair my own car for similar reasons. Instead I
| should go to the OEM and have it serviced there for 1000,- a
| pop. This assures I'm getting genuine OEM branded parts with
| a 800% profit margin while also reducing the time spent on
| diagnosing the issue because now whole modules get replaced
| since cost of human labor is expensive. If I would heed that
| advise, I'd still have no clue about how a modern diesel
| engine worked, how to reverse and flash a new ECU firmware,
| how to find and fix any problem without a mechanic ripping me
| off, or generally engage in things that (in the eyes of the
| vendor) are "very dangerous" to myself, my family, or others.
|
| Yet I still make this choice because the alternative is a
| "John Deer no right to repair" future where we're ruled by
| chuckeducks and awful people who can't help but quote "rules
| and regulations" or can't wait to be up in everyone's shit.
| There is no way I could be convinced otherwise because this
| is the nature of those who fiddle and tinker in the first
| place. I'm sure many of the viewers on this channel think
| likewise because it's not about safety but about my own
| freedom to spend my weekends in the garage building something
| and being rewarded with self reliance. And also the freedom
| to make mistakes big enough to kill myself by accident
| without somebody going _" uhm well ack-shually"_.
| jacquesm wrote:
| He has a point, but there is a thing you can do to offset
| some of this: read all of the comments. Plenty of times
| there will be someone in the comments pointing out what's
| wrong in the videos.
|
| The problem with Lithium Ion installations of any size is
| that the batteries are inherently dangerous and mistakes
| can easily set you back more than you saved on the whole
| thing. Unlike say your car where as long as you stay away
| from suspension, brakes and steering the worst that could
| happen is that you end up stranded by the road side.
|
| Another issue is that when it goes wrong with Lithium Ion
| it can go wrong _fast_ and it isn 't easy, or sometimes
| even possible, to stop a thermal runaway once it gets
| going, especially with densely packed cells, besides the
| fact that you likely won't be watching your batteries 24x7.
|
| There are some people on youtube that advocate for
| extremely unsafe practices (Jehu Garcia, for instance) and
| that have a huge following, so Will Prowse is certainly not
| the worst that you could run into there. It would also be
| good if he indicated more clearly what his sponsorship
| relations are and how that relates to the advice that he is
| giving, quite a few of his videos feel like thinly
| disguised ads.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| very much with you and GP on this. the route I personally
| take is to learn with small trials and error of what
| comments and advise is good and what is silly or outright
| dangerous. Places I frequent for such advise though
| aren't YT videos but forums where it's easy for others to
| call out silly ideas (which isn't always the case on YT).
| YT is at best a gateway to deeper content such as
| explosion-charts, repair and maintenance manuals, etc. I
| think batteries here are not too different than breaks,
| steering or suspension (all components I've grown
| comfortable to touch although not on my very first DYI
| project but years into messing and learning about the
| same vehicle).
| jacquesm wrote:
| I would highly recommend battery university, they have
| excellent content:
|
| https://batteryuniversity.com/
| wglb wrote:
| Another very good resource is
| http://www.arrl.org/news/new-book-energy-choices-for-the-
| rad.... The author is more well known for inventing
| http://www.aprs.org/
| Syonyk wrote:
| I've zero objections with people learning about power
| systems and such.
|
| My objection is with people learning it from YouTube,
| because the ratio of "good, safe, correct information" to
| "absolute crap" is horrible, and until you're quite solid
| in the field, there are people very confidently spouting
| exceedingly wrong and dangerous information (tip: If you
| _ever_ see anyone soldering to an 18650, assume everything
| else they 're doing is wrong as well, because that's such a
| huge violation of every manufacturer datasheet - it dumps
| radically more thermal energy into the cell and plastic
| separator than they're designed for).
|
| There are plenty of better sources for information on how
| to do things energy related than YouTube.
| kyleee wrote:
| "YouTube is simply the wrong medium to try to teach detailed"
|
| YouTube is literally just humans talking, so you are
| basically saying you don't think humans can teach complicated
| subjects?
| Syonyk wrote:
| That's an absolutely absurd characterization of both
| YouTube and actual teaching.
|
| YouTube is dominantly entertainment/personality based
| "edutainment" at best, based on what seems to percolate to
| the top and be promoted. There's zero feedback outside
| comments (standard warnings about comment sections apply
| here).
|
| The right way to teach complex subjects is a more
| interactive process with hands on
| material/learning/actually solving the problems yourself.
| In the case of solar and energy systems, you can do this,
| but if you don't have some basic EE background, it would be
| wise to go get that first before listening to some slick
| talking huckster selling their wares. _WHY_ do we size
| wires the way we do (either for temperature limits or for
| voltage drop, depending on the application)? _What 's
| wrong_ with a 5000W 12V inverter (500A or so, and the I^2
| components of resistive losses, paired with the voltage
| drop from those)?
|
| I don't think a human lecturing blindly into the void
| optimizing for "engagement" (whatever metrics those are
| based on this week) can competently teach any real detailed
| material, no. That doesn't mean that people can't teach
| complex material. It just means YouTube is _not_ the place
| or medium for it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is true, but there are definitely positive
| exceptions to this rule.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| A lot of educational content on YouTube is made by people
| who have no idea (or interest in) how to optimize for
| engagement. I'd be willing to bet there is fairly
| competent basic EE instruction on YouTube that includes
| lab instructions, working with simulations, problems, and
| pulling in other exogenous resources to aid in
| understanding. Its not just a wasteland of pop science
| like Veritasium, et al.
| [deleted]
| woleium wrote:
| YouTube encourages generating content that rates well, i.e.
| is entertaining. I agree that learning should be fun, but I
| don't want to learn about life threating topics from videos
| that are designed foremost to be entertaining.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| There is plenty of non-entertaining yet informative and
| detailed educational content on YouTube. The
| "entertaining" videos are usually just a gateway to more
| dry and traditional lectures and courses that are
| provided by universities and other content generators
| that see YouTube as a general resource and not an income
| stream.
| jrootabega wrote:
| "YouTube" can mean at least two things:
|
| 1. A theoretical space for someone with good ideas and good
| intentions to share those with the world.
|
| 2. The actual experience that viewers will have on YouTube
| if they were to open it today.
|
| 1. and 2. would be almost diametrically opposed these days.
| If YouTube provided ways for viewers to honestly and fairly
| discover, rate, filter, and share videos and channels, then
| the people in case 2 would be able to reliably find the
| people in case 1. And if YouTube didn't force video makers
| to pervert their personality and format into algorithm-
| pleasing parodies, then people in case 1. could continue to
| produce the content they actually want to produce as long
| as they were able to. But it's not possible today.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Will Prose seems like a really great person._
|
| My opinion of him after his attempts to interact in this thread
| (turn "show dead" on - a bunch of his more arrogant/abrasive
| posts have been killed, and it looks like he's posting as
| Solar2 as well) is now far, _far_ lower than it was.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ditto. I had him pegged as well meaning but sometimes a bit
| less knowledgeable than he wanted to come across but that
| didn't stand the test of interaction.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I have seen enough of his videos to know that he can be
| spectacularly wrong (dangerously so) about some of his stuff
| and if you are not already very knowledgeable about this then
| you may well end up following some very bad advice.
|
| This guy has far more practical experience and seems to be less
| error prone, and also does not shy away from showing when he
| gets it wrong, which is often far more valuable than a polished
| and edited video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0pBauLp63yzf6sVdEOIUbA
|
| If you want to learn about DIY off grid power from youtube I'd
| start here.
| willprowseiv wrote:
| wglb wrote:
| The comment despite having some useful sentences, is too
| confrontational for this site and someone flagged it. I
| would love to see substantial comments from you here. Check
| the guidelines linked at the bottom of the page.
| knorker wrote:
| Interesting. Can you give examples about when he's been
| dangerously wrong?
| AYBABTME wrote:
| I can't recall particular instances but I've seen the same
| before. FWIW he's getting less stuff wrong over time.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > FWIW he's getting less stuff wrong over time.
|
| That's hopeful, with that kind of following he has some
| serious responsibility. At the same time, I cringe when I
| see people working with large packs on workbenches with
| loose metal laying around, totally irresponsible pack
| geometries where balance wires cross and recross each
| other with abandon, recycled cells that have visible
| external damage and so on. Youtube is a great way to pick
| up some 'worst practices' thinking that if these youtube
| stars are doing it it must be ok.
| willprowseiv wrote:
| Like what?! Can't any of you people backup your claims.
| It's just empty complaining on this site without
| evidence. It's driving me nuts. Show me what I said or
| have done that was wrong.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Mate, I've been following you for a while and have a
| generally positive opinion of you. I think you're not
| going to have a good experience coming here with your
| guns out. I watch all your videos, but wouldn't I be a
| fool if I just absorbed what you say as gospel? You don't
| do this yourself, don't you?
|
| I'm happy for you and your success and I'm very happy
| there are people out there like you changing their life
| outcome out of sheer will, while providing the community
| with unbiased product reviews and independent tests.
|
| Please don't take the criticism as a personal attack.
| Unfortunately, I just don't recall which information you
| said at some point that made me cringe. Like I said, I've
| watched a lot of your videos and haven't had any cringe
| moments like this for a while now.
|
| EDIT: also fyi, this website has an automated banning
| process if you're a new account with too many downvotes.
| Unfortunately, the few messages you've written have a
| confrontational tone that usually attracts a lot of
| downvotes. If you care at all, may I suggest that you
| avoid that tone/style. I'd love if you posted here in the
| future. Take that as you will.
| Solar2 wrote:
| No of course not, I just see people on this site stating
| to use recycled NMC cells that are capable of burning
| down their house with one wrong move, then saying my
| videos are dangerous. I cover safety all the time, more
| so than any other channel I know. I do not understand why
| people are saying these things. I work very hard to make
| my videos, and people here on this site who do not
| understand batteries are trying to criticize me. It
| really makes me mad.
|
| And thank you. Just figured out the automated banning
| process and am using a VPN now. I just want to respond to
| people, and I hope they can provide evidence of when I
| did something dangerous. Or said something wrong. And
| yes, I see what you mean about the downvotes. I am very
| upset right now because I could argue every point made
| against me here. I also allow people to criticize
| whatever they wish on my forum, so it makes it hard on
| this site where I am instantly censored if I get
| downvotes. It is very frustrating.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Instead of being 'seriously upset' you could ask yourself
| if posting this kind of stuff:
|
| https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/diy-beginner-friendly-
| sola...
|
| Is going to bolster your reputation as safety conscious
| or harm it, besides your general attitude in this thread.
| You are quite clearly advising people to copy this
| design, you make money of them doing so. Even a one-off
| should be better designed, let alone something intended
| for duplication.
|
| I had you down as well meaning but a bit out of your
| depth at times, let's just say that that didn't improve
| based on the interaction here and your various comments.
| knorker wrote:
| Just a tip that while HN looks like reddit, it's not
| reddit. And deliberately so.
|
| E.g. you can't downvotes responses to your own comment.
| This to steer into a different type of conversation.
|
| I can't say I've fully internalized it, but it does make
| for much less shitposting compared to reddit.
|
| The downvotes i don't think are due to disagreement or
| even anger.
|
| I understand your frustration (especially since the
| critique is so unspecific), but i believe the downvotes
| don't mean what you think they mean, and it's not
| personal.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Sure, but I will have to go through a couple of months
| worth of youtube history, I was binge watching anything
| about Lithium Ion when I was working on this:
|
| https://jacquesmattheij.com/long-range-ebike/
|
| As a result I have a very long article on Lithium Ion
| battery safety and pack construction in the works, but
| exactly for the reasons the GGP lists I'm pretty careful
| about releasing that, I want to triple check everything
| before putting it out there to ensure that the net result
| is a positive one.
|
| Also: I don't like the youtube format for stuff like this.
| It would be _far_ better to have these things as blog posts
| rather than as videos, that would make them much more
| searchable and easier to annotate.
|
| But just to give you two memorable items: at some point
| Will shows himself working with naked steel tools on a
| massive, fully charged, unfused battery pack. Just one
| wrong move or a dropped tool and the carnage would be
| substantial. That shows to me that he may have good
| theoretical knowledge but doesn't really know all that much
| about working with this stuff in practice and how to do so
| safely. In another video there is a whole slew of balance
| wires coming out of a pack, crossing and recrossing with
| abandon. Balance wires are usually not fused, the wires
| rubbing means that if that installation were for long term
| use that eventually the balance wires would short out and
| if you're lucky it would just result in a balance wire
| evaporating, if you're unlucky it would start a fire right
| next to a massive Li Ion battery, something that you really
| don't want to do because of their thermal sensitivity. The
| risk is that the whole pack would ignite and good luck
| putting that out.
|
| I went to the ETS in Amsterdam, a school for electrical
| technicians, mid level. The one thing that was drilled into
| us over and over again during the practical parts of that
| education is that in the electrical world there are young
| safe technicians and young sloppy technicians, but there
| are no old sloppy technicians.
|
| Will is still young.
| willprowseiv wrote:
| Just because I am young doesn't mean anything. I know
| what I'm talking about. I started coding and building
| robots when I was 13, and circuit design at 15. Solar
| power is dead simple.
|
| Yeah I can work with raw terminals because I don't make
| silly mistakes. I've been working with low voltage DC for
| decades. Most of the systems I throw together are for
| educational use. Those balance wires were probably a
| rapid prototype pack where I was testing something. I
| know what I'm doing and how it works. And wow you're so
| dramatic about the balance wires why don't you criticize
| the companies that offer their pack configurations in
| ways that you complain about? There are many companies
| that throw these packs together and sell them to
| unsuspecting people, and you are giving me a hard time
| when making a quick pack to educate or test something?
| Give me a break
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Yeah I can work with raw terminals because I don't make
| silly mistakes.
|
| This attitude will cost you dearly and is _exactly_ the
| difference between being a responsible educator and
| someone who probably should pause to ask themselves if
| they are on the right track.
|
| You are setting a bad example and many thousands of
| people will follow in your tracks adopting your very
| unsafe practices as though that's the way to do it. Some
| of them will end up hurt.
|
| It pretty much validates my earlier assessment but I'm
| actually a bit surprised that you would come out to make
| it so obvious.
|
| > Those balance wires were probably a rapid prototype
| pack where I was testing something.
|
| Yes, but that's not what matters here. What matters here
| is that people see you work and believe that's the way
| it's done. With authority comes responsibility.
|
| > And wow you're so dramatic about the balance wires why
| don't you criticize the companies that offer their pack
| configurations in ways that you complain about?
|
| That's whataboutism. We're discussing you, not some
| company. These tricks don't really work on HN.
|
| > There are many companies that throw these packs
| together and sell them to unsuspecting people, and you
| are giving me a hard time when making a quick pack to
| educate or test something?
|
| Yes, I'm giving you a hard time because you are at the
| same time claiming to be educating _and_ you are
| advocating unsafe practices while doing so.
|
| > Give me a break
|
| Unlikely, and after this comment _far_ less so.
|
| But thank you for clearing up any ambiguity about where
| your feeling about responsibility lies.
| Solar2 wrote:
| fpgaminer wrote:
| > I started coding and building robots when I was 13, and
| circuit design at 15. Solar power is dead simple.
|
| Similar, but I would _never_ play fast and loose around
| batteries of those sizes just because I felt like I won't
| make "silly mistakes". Everyone, even professionals who
| have been doing dangerous work for decades, make silly
| mistakes. That's why professionals don't fuck around. One
| wrong move with large lithium cells and you've got a
| massive jet of fire in your workshop that can't be put
| out.
|
| Similarly, I'm a woodworker and while I feel like I know
| what I'm doing around a table saw these days, I _always_
| make sure to have my adrenaline pumping when making cuts.
| I Point and Call my safety checklist every single time. I
| wear my safety glasses for even the simplest cuts off the
| table saw. And guess what? It has saved my bacon. It's
| the simple, mundane, "I don't make silly mistakes" days
| that cost you.
|
| > And wow you're so dramatic
|
| It's better etiquette to address the content of a comment
| rather than lob insults against the commenter. The former
| is less argumentative and can be more informative. Strive
| to enlighten and inform. Nobody learns anything useful
| from phrases like "you're so dramatic", "Give me a
| break", "you are giving me a hard time", "Are you kidding
| me?", "You have no clue what you are talking about", etc.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I had commented to this affect on his channel and my
| comment was removed. Same with other channels where
| people are drilling without hand and eye protection.
| willprowseiv wrote:
| I usually always wear eye protection. YouTube deletes
| comments constantly. And leaves the spam comments. Have
| you not used YouTube in the last ten years? I can't stand
| it
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I can't tell how Youtube decides what to keep and what to
| remove or if my comment was removed by a bot or by the
| channel owner. On a traditional forum a moderator would
| tell me if something was out of line.
|
| For what it's worth if you are the Will Prowse from
| Youtube I do appreciate the videos you make. Your channel
| has exposed me to companies I didn't know existed. The
| Hysolis tear-down was interesting and saves me from
| having to take things apart and risk warranty arguments
| with the vendor. There are some shady vendors making bold
| claims and it is nice to see which ones are the real
| deal.
| Solar2 wrote:
| I spent an hour yesterday deleting spam, and then I get
| emails from long time viewers stating that their comments
| have been removed. I cannot tell you how frustrating it
| is. I try to fix this every single day, and I get my long
| time viewers to report the spam. Youtubes system is
| awful.
|
| Thank you!! Hysolis is awesome, and with the LF inverter,
| you can easily work on it yourself. I am glad my videos
| help :) There are tons of scams online these days, and I
| love exposing them.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _There are tons of scams online these days, and I love
| exposing them._
|
| Please keep up the great work. That is a very worthy
| battle and will save people a lot of frustration and
| money.
|
| I plan to get 3 of the Hysolis portable units. Last I
| checked they didn't have the external battery available
| as an option yet so I've been holding out. I'm also
| hoping they have custom shipping options because Amazon
| uses UPS and they track snow into their trucks which
| isn't great for electronics. That inverter is heavy so it
| will be on the floor of the truck for sure.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's _really_ bad because your comment would at least
| give people a chance to calibrate the degree to which
| they should trust this stuff. Any video that aims to be
| instructional should at least spend some time on the
| safety aspects of what they are doing.
| wglb wrote:
| Would be very interested to see specifically he has wrong. I
| have ee background and don't see major issues
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've given a few examples in another comment. I will review
| his videos and make notes with timestamps but that will
| take some time.
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| I live in an off-grid house. Solar isn't perfect, but it's been
| pretty good all things considered 6 months in. Converting an
| airport shuttle bus into an RV now, so I'll have to look this
| over for that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Cool, I'd love to see the write-up on that if you have the
| time.
| kortilla wrote:
| Where did you buy the bus from?
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| Just from some local classifieds.
| rklaehn wrote:
| This is a nice resource.
|
| I am building an off grid / backup solar install for a house in
| rural Romania. I want it to be off grid capable, but also be able
| to use the grid when available.
|
| One thing I am curious about: do the all in one systems like
| Growatt or MPT also provide voltage stabilization? The grid here
| has really bad voltage stability.
|
| Sometimes the voltage drops down to 180V (should be 220V in
| Europe). Some devices like LED lightbulbs and washing machines
| don't like this at all.
|
| So if these devices provide voltage stabilization, that would be
| great. I would then buy one and a few batteries, and later add
| the PV panels. It is going to be about 12kW of roof integrated
| PV.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What you want to look for in an inverter is called brownout
| protection capability. This is usually the higher end of the
| inverter ranges but quality gear can sometimes be bought second
| hand from marine salvage companies.
| driverdan wrote:
| I can't speak to all equipment but Victron inverters can handle
| this situation. If the voltage is outside the desired range it
| will augment with batteries or switch over to batteries
| entirely.
| cfn wrote:
| Offgrid inverters either get the power from the
| batteries/charge controllers or they get the power from the
| grid (usually to charge the batteries - they are called
| charger-inverters, look at the Outback VFX series for an
| example). This means that either you get the unstable grid
| power or you get the stable solar/battery power. Maybe there
| are inverters that somehow compensate and correct the power but
| I doubt it since they would be fighting the rest of the grid.
|
| I would suggest that you add solar with a small battery bank
| and use the grid for overnight and for dark day charging. This
| way you have the best of both worlds as you only need a big
| battery bank if you need a lot of power when there is no sun.
|
| P.S. Start with a 48 system since you are going for so much
| solar power. It is safer and cheaper in the long run.
| rklaehn wrote:
| Maybe the all in one system is not good in that case. I was
| hoping that since they already have the AC-DC inverter built
| in they could also do voltage stabilization.
|
| Maybe charge the batteries from either the grid or the PV
| panels, and always run the house off the batteries via a
| separate inverter. That way, you got the inefficiency of
| AC->DC->AC but always have stable voltage.
|
| In the long run I want this to be mostly off grid anyway,
| with the grid as just an emergency option...
| cfn wrote:
| Yes, that is a good idea. Get a separate charger and always
| run the house from the isolated side. This will be more
| expensive as a good inverter/charger runs in the 1k-2k
| Euros area and you would need two (unless you find a
| suitable battery charger which is not very easy). I lived
| offgrid for nearly a decade and built myself three
| different solar systems. I started with a small all in one
| and found out that they are limiting when you want to
| expand since you usually cannot add more charge controllers
| and/or panels (which are the easiest way to expand a
| system). I ended up giving it away and building the others
| from separate systems. My biggest mistake was starting with
| 24 volts instead of 48 volts. It is cheaper but it gets a
| bit dangerous as you step up the power usage and there
| aren't many options for breakers and such.
| recursinging wrote:
| For folks interested in a more basic, low level, open source
| approach to this topic, check out Electrodacus [1]. I built a
| small system using the SBMS0 in my camper van and have been
| pretty pleased with the results. If having access to schematics
| and source code is important to you, have a look.
|
| [1] https://electrodacus.com/
| mym1990 wrote:
| This is super awesome! I do some overlanding/longer roadtrips in
| backcountry but have yet to gather the courage to install a solar
| system. Certainly bookmarking this for future reference :D
| chrissnell wrote:
| I've driven something like 60,000 off-road miles since I bought
| my first truck in 2005. For overlanding, all you really need is
| a one big, high quality battery. The Odyssey PC2150 series are
| great batteries. Not cheap, but fantastic. It's very difficult
| to kill one.
|
| Also, you'd be surprised how little energy you actually use out
| there. A quality fridge-freezer like an Engel or ARB can be run
| for days before it will discharge the battery in a parked truck
| enough to not turn the starter. This scenario pretty much never
| happens, so get a good battery, a good fridge, and you'll be
| fine.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Out of curiosity how far off grid do you go in your truck.
| That is, how far by distance and time are you away from the
| grid and stores? I know little about this stuff but am
| interested and would appreciate any helpful resources or
| videos you know of for a newbie. I'm interested from an
| overlanding / camping perspective but also a bug out vehicle
| perspective.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This guy has a pretty awesome channel and you can probably
| rabbit hole from there:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50wQBUX-Lbs
|
| It is an interesting feeling when you are truly bugging out
| or off the grid, almost a primal kind of thing, because
| instances where self reliance is the only thing left is
| becoming less and less of an occurrence. If you ever go
| camping in the wilderness by yourself and set in for the
| night alone, you probably know the feeling!
| Syonyk wrote:
| If you're going to do solar on an RV, you really should read
| Handy Bob Solar too [0]. The site formatting sucks, it's very
| much wall-o-text, and he's _absolutely_ right in everything he
| says and rants about regarding RV solar.
|
| Far too many solar installers just treat a system as the entry
| to people coming back for more, when the problem is that they
| don't know enough to adjust it properly for the stuff that was
| installed in the first place.
|
| [0]: https://handybobsolar.wordpress.com/
|
| //EDIT: So, apparently, a site that's been static since 2011
| and I've linked quite a lot over the years was updated again in
| 2020 with some ranting about Covid. You can safely ignore that,
| and read his older writings on solar installs, because just
| about everything he says about that is correct, at a "Spend
| five years hands on with solar and you'll eventually come to
| agree with him, no matter how loony he sounds about some of it
| when you start in."
| cfn wrote:
| Nice, someone with a non standard/officially approved opinion
| is a loony and is served with such epithets as "f*ck is with
| the antivax covid-hoax propaganda".
| pengaru wrote:
| What the ever living fuck is with the antivax covid-hoax
| propaganda? Did you seriously just link that here?
| Syonyk wrote:
| Read the rest about solar, I actually just grabbed it from
| my bookmarks and didn't realize he'd posted anything new
| since 2011. Ignore the first few posts and carry on reading
| his rants about solar, batteries, wire gauge, charge
| controller location, charging voltage, panel placement,
| shading, etc.
| pengaru wrote:
| Syonyk wrote:
| I've been dealing with an off grid solar office for 5+
| years now. Year round power, heating (propane at times,
| candles/kerosene at others, electricity most of the time
| if I have the light), and have spent the bulk of this
| time in some esoteric backwaters communities on IRC with
| other people who do the same sort of thing.
|
| It's really, _really_ hard to find people who have
| written accurately about solar on the internet. What he
| said about solar, RV installs, battery charging, etc, is
| all 100% accurate. He deals with the broken installs by
| the places that advertise that they know what they 're
| doing.
|
| If you're willing to toss all that out based on more
| recent writings, it's your choice, but I try to judge
| writings based on their accuracy, not what I think about
| the person. You're entitled to judge writings however you
| want, but if you're considering off grid solar and write
| the guy's writings off, your loss.
| pengaru wrote:
| How intelligent can the guy be when he's flagrantly
| demonstrating such flawed thinking? It calls into
| question everything he writes, full stop. Better things
| to do with my time and why give him more audience.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Greater intelligence & creativity just means you can tell
| yourself increasingly clever and convincing lies.
|
| Conspiracy-theory-ism is an "emotions" problem, not an
| "intelligence" problem.
| anamax wrote:
| I take it you discount everything associated with Isaac
| Newton as well.
| csours wrote:
| Intelligence has almost nothing to do with it. The whole
| 'rona thing has been very very stressful and many people
| have not reacted well to it. Scam artists have exploited
| this stress (as they always have and always will). Some
| people have been led astray and some are leading people
| astray, and some are both.
|
| At any rate, it is an impairment of gathering and
| processing information correctly, not intelligence. It's
| a filter problem. I had a really hard time with this too,
| after seeing how people I previously respected dealt with
| this whole thing.
|
| ---
|
| For what it's worth - I'm strongly in favor of people
| choosing to get vaccinated and masking up in public. I
| despise the people who made this a wedge issue for their
| own benefit.
|
| I also think that being self-righteous about it is very
| tempting but also very bad and destructive to discourse.
| pengaru wrote:
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Either way it's a non-negotiable indicator for a high
| probability of noise in the signal emitting from his
| general direction.
|
| Well yeah, the noise is the most recent posts.
|
| Easy to filter out, too.
|
| And what, do you not think someone can change in ten
| years either?
| kortilla wrote:
| People who disregard everything someone has to say based
| on one belief are generally pretty stupid themselves.
| What an impressive way to discourage critical thinking.
| kortilla wrote:
| There are many intelligent people who purport to be
| Christian/Muslim/etc, which all require severely flawed
| thinking to seriously believe.
|
| What you're doing is conducting an ad hominem attack,
| assuming that this dude's views on one topic have any
| relevance to the accuracy of a completely different topic
| (with a nearly decade gap nonetheless).
| Syonyk wrote:
| I should judge the accuracy of what someone wrote nearly
| a decade ago by what I think of what I think they believe
| today?
|
| It's a popular enough viewpoint today, certainly, but it
| leads to throwing out huge swaths of perfectly good work
| that could be useful. Obviously, I reject it. I don't
| know the guy, I don't know what's happened to him or not
| in the past decade since he was writing on the deep
| truths of RV solar. I _do_ know that the more I learn
| about solar from hands on operation, the more his
| writings reflected what I 'd found through
| experimentation/analysis/etc. You could apply plenty of
| his rantings to some of the off-grid battery destroying
| systems presented on YouTube as Grade A Amazing builds
| and improve a lot on those systems.
|
| But, if you're only willing to consider the viewpoints of
| those you would consider show clear thinking, which
| largely translates to "agrees with what I already think,"
| you're welcome to go through life that way. I tend to
| find that dreadfully boring and a good way to miss an
| awful lot of really solid knowledge. I'm happy to learn
| about lead acid battery quirks from people who've lived
| with lead acid for half as long as I've been alive, even
| if I think they make some pretty dumb decisions in life.
| I know they question some of my decisions back.
|
| Anyway, your mind is clearly settled and the issue is
| closed on this particular bit of writings. You might go
| find some of SunKing's rants about "max smoke charging"
| useful as well, if you're dealing with off grid lead, but
| I guarantee you won't like him much as a person either.
| Diederich wrote:
| Do you ensure that every bit of material that you read
| isn't written by someone who also has some really stupid
| and harmful beliefs about some other topic?
| pengaru wrote:
| > Do you ensure that every bit of material that you read
| isn't written by someone who also has some really stupid
| and harmful beliefs about some other topic?
|
| Everyone makes mistakes, and I've been known to rescind
| my references and recommendations upon making such
| discoveries.
|
| In this case all it takes is simply loading the
| referenced page, the hogwash is front and center. Give me
| a break.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _... and I 've been known to rescind my references and
| recommendations upon making such discoveries._
|
| Why?
|
| If person A makes some claim about subject X at some
| point in time, and you find it true and worth sharing,
| what then makes their claims invalid if you discover
| later that person A believes something you find
| distasteful? If their statement about X was true at the
| point in time it was made, is it any less true if you
| discover you can't stand the person?
|
| What if you read a book by someone who makes well written
| arguments and an enjoyable read, and then attend a book
| signing years later and realize that they have rancid BO
| or something, and are oddly vocal about [insert some
| fetish you find exceedingly disgusting here]? Does the
| character of the author you discover later impact the
| arguments in the previous book?
|
| It's a really odd and, IMO, exceedingly broken filter for
| what sources of information you're willing to consider.
| It makes it really easy to never go outside your own
| head, because anyone who believes all the same things you
| do can't have anything terribly interesting to teach you,
| and anyone who believes different things can be spun as
| somehow abominable.
|
| I'm not nearly so arrogant as to think I know everything.
| I'm certain there are things I'm wrong about, though I've
| no idea what they are at the moment. I'm equally certain
| that I have rather different opinions about subjects than
| many of the people I interact with, either in person or
| online. Some of them make for interesting conversations
| (I prefer a fire pit, pipe or cigars, and a bit of
| whiskey to make things civil), some of them we simply
| agree not to discuss, and that's fine.
| Diederich wrote:
| > I've been known to rescind my references and
| recommendations upon making such discoveries
|
| You understand that most everybody who was born in the
| first part of the 20th century or earlier believed quite
| a few things that we now consider pretty abhorrent.
| kortilla wrote:
| Calm down, this isn't Reddit/Facebook.
| varelse wrote:
| Why no love for victron HW? My RV is wired up along with 7.2 KWh
| worth of battleborn lithium.
| wglb wrote:
| He does cover them in some of his videos.
| Cannabat wrote:
| The website's author hosts an excellent forum [0] focused on DIY
| solar power, for anybody who wants to get a bit deeper in to this
| and has questions or needs help sourcing parts (like LiFePO4
| cells and BMSes) from China.
|
| I recently built a LiFePO4 battery and upgraded our caravan
| (trailer) electrical system following these guides and with help
| from the forum. Couldn't have done it without those resources.
|
| [0]: https://diysolarforum.com/
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| As I wrote a few weeks ago, I have been successfully running an
| on-grid 5Kw solar system that has immensely helped me.
|
| The on grid part helps with credit banking during summer and
| using in winters. For that, I changed my on grid inverter with a
| "phocos solar inverter" that does the same thing but also, when
| there is a grid power outage, it still supplies power to home
| without having batteries.
|
| I haven't bought batteries because of the cost but this has been
| a good experience.
|
| My panels are 16*325W and I produce around 30Kwh during the day
| in summers and during the current winter, I get enough to run
| appliances, rice cooker and lighting.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Any costing data?
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Buy this, buy that and oh! don't DIY because my stuff is more
| awesome and everything. Since when we get ads at top of HN?. I
| flagged this crap.
| wglb wrote:
| Not an ad. His YouTube reviews are all about diy and cover many
| brands of batteries and f at liar systems.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Something awesome about boats and RVs is you can experiment with
| that stuff without permits and learn a lot.
| melenaos wrote:
| I want to add some panels at my home to lower the monthly power
| bill but as I understand I have to direct the energy to
| something, such as fridge or AC, and when there is not enought
| energy from the sun either automatically switch to grid or
| manually.
|
| Where can I find such information to build a hybrid energy
| solution?
| Faaak wrote:
| All grid-tied solar panels (i.e. what you get when you install
| solar panels at your home) will do that automatically. Don't
| don't have to do anything.
|
| Solar will be consumed in priority. If there's too much it will
| be sold and if there's some missing il will be automatically
| (by the laws of physics) imported from the grid.
| mastax wrote:
| An interesting teardown of one of the Ecoflow Delta plug-and-play
| inverter-batteries by Matthias Wandel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aFj4l3EDa8
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