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Years ago as a young'un I built my own bicycle trainer for winter use. I had my tire ride in the groove of a regular car alternator. I found the perfect load to be one plain old sealed beam headlamp. So, about 50 or 60 watts of useful power from that setup. These days I ride a fancy exercise...

Wire is expensive, and 24V inverters are usually slightly more efficient. Those are the main reasons to recommend going up in voltage. That is fine advice when the inverter is the only DC load. Since you have other DC loads that are 12V, it makes little sense to choose anything but 12V...

In the 1970s, we used the AM radio in a Chevy pickup to find arc trouble in the electric fence. (also useful for detecting thunderstorms)

You're not trying hard enough.

Did you impulse buy that pallet of 31 panels in the 360-400 Watt range? Was it too many but you couldn't refuse? Do you live in the middle part of CA? I may be willing to drive over and give you green cash money (or paypal) for 6 of them. I'm aware of FB marketplace and other local...

Yep these things are all possible. In the case of my Cyberpower 1500, it's a pure sine wave model. I saw it had a temp sensor on the output transformer and a fan that ran when inverting. Then I tested the bigger battery while keeping a close eye on it. At a mere 10% load it didn't generate...

I'm sure he meant it's so inexpensive to replace that you can try to move it and fail, and you haven't lost much. (except $600)

Ooh I saw this when Andy got these in his off-grid garage. P is power. So the 314Ah cell at 3.2V is 1005 Watts at 1C. .5P is 500W. Not sure why they changed this or how helpful it is. 🤷‍♂️

Lead acid batteries are the most recycled item in the US from what I've read - 99%. https://batterycouncil.org/lead-battery-recycling-success-story-on-america-recycles-day/ Busting open a battery on my own is just about the last thing I would like to do.

Zanydroid was right. Renvu was very helpful and made me a good deal on 6 for local pickup.

In my Seplos BMS specification, it calls out the temp sensor type: "Cell temperature sensor NTC value is 10K and B-value at 3435." This is a super common thermistor and you can find them for pennies per piece on Amazon - search "thermistor 10k ntc 3435" But first check the physical wire from...

So there are more things in email and phone than are dreamt of in my philosophy, eh?

If you buy R-410A from a site like ability refrigerants, you can check the box that states that you will be re-selling the refrigerant to someone who is EPA certified. That way you can purchase the refrigerant for the EPA 608 certified guy you found to do the actual work. 😉 Or you can get your...

I guess I was only thinking about my small house... Last time we spent a couple days in the dark I just hooked aux power to fridge, gas furnace, and TV. Very small bare minimum load.

The main issue I see is that UPSs often flog these little batteries like rented mules. My Cyberpower 1500VA UPS uses a pair of these small form factor batteries that are very commonly used. 1500VA at 24V is 62.5 Amps. For a 7Ah battery that's a 9C discharge rate. The cute little LiTime 6Ah...

It may be possible - according to this post Aims will share the protocol information. You may have some coding to do! https://secondlifestorage.com/index.php?threads/aims-lf-inverter-rj45-protocol-information.10348/

For the electro-curious, TVS diodes are there to do... almost nothing. They don't conduct electricity in either direction until the voltage goes above a certain point. They are meant to dissipate a quick voltage spike that might otherwise damage nearby components. The ones pictured here...

Big Clive is a worthwhile watch for all kinds of teardowns.

I'm educated-guessing here, but it also says 90 Watts at 10-30 Volts. I suspect it has a 3 Amp limit and you will only reach 90 Watts if your source can put out 30 Volts (30V x 3A = 90W). When you plug in your solar panel the box adjusts its load to limit the input to 3A. Maybe your panel in...

I can drive to Sacramento and pick up Znshine 405W panels on clearance from A1solar for $104. That's the best deal I've found so far.

Have you tested it? That battery is rated for 10A (128 Watts) or double that for 5 seconds. The larger home UPS units often demand large currents from their battery at rated output.

This sort of thing exists but you probably won't see it in the USA https://www.theverge.com/24150901/ecoflow-powerstream-review-diy-balcony-solar-microinverter

Once I got the right info on the RS485 ports on my Seplos v3 BMS, I was able to make a cable that works in either BMS port A or B. pins 1 & 2 for RS485 A/B pin 5 is the only common GND across both ports so use that. If you're chopping up a standard LAN cable, the colors will probably be orange /...

What if 1 hot cell started melting the plastic wrapper, shorting 2 cells case-to-case? A chain reaction could commence shorting one to the next as the heat grew.

Any straight-thru wired LAN cable should work just fine. And to be fair to Victron, they don't claim otherwise and they don't play the "ooh our cable is better and should cost $100" game.

I think it's referring to an adjustment in a narrow range.. here is a screen grab from the VEconfig app

Hmm, I thought Renvu went out of business because their website didn't come up at all with my adblocker turned on. I fixed that and I see they only have 1 panel for sale in <10 quantity and the size is too big and the price is not great, aaand they don't even mention which location has the item.

The only overcharge protection is the output voltage that you set via the potentiometer. (the original one that comes on the board) As it reaches that setpoint the current tapers off and it floats there as long as there is sunlight. edit: and I did add a schottky diode to the output of this...

It's kinda frustrating because the BMS has a shunt and seems to be coulomb counting already with the "TotalCap" and "RemainCap" numbers and yet the SOC number gets worse and worse between full charges

2 days. Fridge, TV, WiFi, gas furnace blower (if winter).