Tesla has fewer charging stations all together than the others, they just have more fast charger plugs than all the rest combined. EA has ~4000, and now that the hardware platforms are starting to improve other companies are building out their networks as well. It gets harder to stay on top as...
Being forced to lower prices does not necessarily mean things are falling over. One of the big drawbacks to EV is the cost of the cells, doubling the production costs of the vehicle. Demand will increase for electrics if the capital expendatures can come down. I think this will be especially...
Really people?
Perhaps you should re-think the DIY aspect of messing with electricity in general if we are not smart enough to work with it without blowing sh*t up. For example:
Step 1) Turn off the inverters / place it in standby / shut the breakers off ... (doh!)
Step 2) Turn PV disconnect...
I think some of this is a little silly. I've been in the computer business forever. The modbus manual is going to have pretty much all the operational settings, they have 'advanced' settings on this box which you can change if you are so inclined. There are always factory things that you...
WSJ Just posted an editorial Tuesday, ... Covid lockdowns and masks accomplished nothing, they used (as I keep saying) raw death numbers rather than trying to use categories compares various countries by response . . .
Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing at all.
It's about learning, money, and independence. Electric rates here just went up, and I live in one of the most favorable locations on the planet for solar. I built out simply to see if I could do it, and what it would take to realistically be in a 2000sqft house completely off-grid. I've got...
It is a violation of federal law to use some products in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. You can go to jail. Thus if you take a bottle of anti-freeze and feed it to your dog. Mis-apply a pesticide, you can get sued. The manufacturer is not liable unless it was negligent in some way...
The latest firmware improved it, but the 18K's struggle when shifting the load to battery. Also the firmware is a little sketchy when managing two inverters in parallel. Hopefully future firmware will improve this. If either inverter drops out while in parallel everything shuts down...
Will had a nice review. I have some nits I can pick. I put it all together:
The cabinet is a conventional computer/equipment rack Rear doors, sides come off.
This is actually much nicer than the EG4 I have. The shelving for the batteries is pre-installed in the rack:
It comes...
I have 150A service feeding a panel on the outside of the house. The house is all-electric. I have TWO EV's. This panel now has 3 breakers besides the main.
- A 100A feeds the secondary on an ATS common to a 100A sub-panel with everything on it. (on)
- A 50A secondary to an ATS that feeds...
"Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure". No I'm not calling you a liar, it's just you fell right in a trap. You can't take the numbers and correlate them the way you've outlined. I'm not sure where your numbers are coming from, but there appear to be a whole lot of baked in...
No, I don't realize this at all, sorry. This is a ludicrous statement on it's face. I mean you realize if it wasn't for the cold war we probably wouldn't have micro-chips, computers, and the internet? Simply because at some point DARPA threw some money at LSI/VLSI, and DARPANET? I mean it...
My son sent me a handwritten "Thank you for making me do stuff" letter while on a deployment. I will keep that one. My father was never afraid to try and do things, and always had me help. He grew up in a different world where people were more self-sufficient. I think a lot of the folks in...
People left Twitter for Truth Social BEFORE Musk bought it, in large part because they were being de-platformed. When your options to express your OPINION or worse actual FACTS become limited, you squeeze folks out into other spaces. Things started to fall-over, all-over when "they" tried to...
Everybody likes to oversize the small wires and undersize the really big ones. I also built my own surge box, which I am re-engineering because I have to move it outside with the 18K inverters . . . ran out of space on my rock board wall. The MC-4's will go away, and I'll run it in from 3/4...
Nah, your full of poopey :ROFLMAO:. Nobody builds/buys what you have for the money. I'm trying to catch up but you've spent serious coin not to mention the "Free" labor setting up all your stuff. Your motivation is the same as most of us zealots here. Bragging rights. Having a little fun...
As a long time IT guy, you learn things about redundancies and MTBF num(lies)bers, and MTTR numbers. A lot of it is just plain math and statistics. The more stuff you have the more likely you are to have a failure. This is something that is sometimes difficult for smart people to grok. I've...
One on hand, I agree with this. On the other, I think if it will handle the signaling just fix the port so it can tell if someone was stoopid. Last thing you need is another proprietary connector.
No, that is not what you said. What you SAID was:
I called Bullsh*t!, provided receipts, and then you came back with some drivel about me benefiting from the climate change agenda. If you want to make a point, it would help to stay on it. You are beholden to whomever you take the money from.
Ummm,
Sorry, can't agree with you here. This is not a microwave oven or a TV you get at best buy. It's more like a split a/c system or something. If you are not comfortable cracking the case, I'm thinking you probably should not have purchased it in the first place. I for one would be...
"Predatory" is in the eyes of the beholder. It bothers me when people use this term in this manner. Now if someone is misrepresenting what they are selling that is one thing, but this looks to be pretty well documented, what you are getting and what it costs. Anyone is entitled to charge...
Why/how does it void the warranty? You can use any MPPT/source you want to charge your batteries, assuming it is designed for lifepo4 charging. Not sure what any of that has to do with the inverter. If those devices are not compatible with lifepo4 battery charging, that would be something...
It's a real shame so many "under-regulated" power companies would prefer not to toss their existing investments. I think what we need to do is just shut them down cold, and re-start all the underlying processes and build out new grid infrastructure. This will surely cut the capital costs to...
I'll try this again. 6 pillars of 8x8x16 block on 8' centers. Plan is to go 4 more up, 4 studs on every third block (M8). 4x4's on the top, then maybe 11 trusses 10x5x~13. Run 1x2 along the bottom want to put a 5x2 array 72x45" panels, strap from underneath, just have a panel roof. Torn on...
Sorry. Not "Super Cheap", particularly not at scale. A large scale gas generator is going to be the cheaper, more scaleable and the timeline is not that long. My DIY setup has cost me over $40,000. That's 15+ years of commercially generated power at retail, if it operates flawlessly over...
I briefly had a "100A" Victron Autotransformer. I returned it, and ended up with different AIO's. Seemed to be well built, nice aluminum case. Pretty much impossible to stuff three 2AWG cables in the thing, much less 6. I managed it cussing the whole time. The openings had an odd "gland"...
<SIGH>
I should have picked up on this . . . Died two days ago I was returning from out of town, charging stopped working. This connection was a little loose. Was running the EV charger, 32A continuous. I really think you should re-torque screws after you run a few cycles. I found a couple...
On the contrary. Local mail trucks should all be electric already. If I have to listen to that grinding starter as the gal drives around cutting off the motor at each stop traveling between mailboxes to save fuel. . . I asked she said she drives about 30-40 miles/day. This is an absolutely...
Just put in a transfer switch, treat your solar like a gas powered generator. You cannot grid tie, with the inverters you have so you don't want to grid tie. Run your service to the meter and a separate panel with a single breaker that feeds your transfer switch.
You will pry my cast iron cookware out of my cold dead hands. Induction loves cast iron. Get some hi-temp silicon mats, and put them under the skillet while cooking. Keeps you from scratching the surface. It has to be the hi-temp stuff. I just cut a big square of mat and punched some holes...
The problem with panels to battery is somewhat complex: Can your panels fill your batteries, and cover a load for a day? Will it be able to do the same for enough batteries for 3 days? 4 days? What is the longest stretch you will have without sun?
IMNSHO In a weak solar area your panel...
Trying to get YOU to do this. He couldn't care less. These fools fly around in private jets, live in, and buy huge old properties with horrid insulation and oil boilers, drive around in huge gas guzzling full size SUV's with large entourages, and then they look you in the eye and tell you you...
Mi mamma was raised in a dry county, in the hills of rural Kentucky. Let's just say Grandpa could have used the power wisely, and 'Justified' is not as far off the reality mark as you might think. I'm with OGFG, the best apple-jack comes out when the temperature is stable. Much easier with...
Disagree. I'd have a propane heat backup, but variable speed heat pumps today will heat a room very efficiently without extreme electric usage.
I disagree. I would build my home all-electric, induction range all electric, standard electric HWH. I would not use a demand HWH unit.
This might...
RJ-45 satin cable for phones, straight thru and flipped. Hand crimped T-1's, that's 1/2,4/5 swapped. Old cisco cards . . . I've had occasion to use a crossover ethernet from time to time. Some of the Cox handoffs required it 3 or 4 years ago coming off the fiber gear.
South west is optimal for de-stressing the grid in summer. It takes time for the sun to heat things up in the morning, thus cooling costs do not kick in high gear until the sun has been up for a while. Conversely in the evening as the sun drops, the heat is still there, and cooling stays in...
Just because your paranoid, it doesn't mean the aren't out to get you! Even in the burbs, you should always have some fresh water, and a couple of days of dry food consumables. I have solar, and probably 25lbs of flour, 20lbs of rice, and 15 gallons of RO water in jugs, a very large bag of...
You have to build for peak demand. I have hit 100A on my 240V/100A panel, albeit only briefly. I routinely hit 18KW (75A) and routinely have continuous loads for more than 15 minutes above 15KW. My home is a modest 1500sqft all electric block house in Phoenix. I don't really feel like this...
(Scowl) Rainy and cloudy the rest of the week. Production has been in the low 30's the last two days, not enough to run the abode. Had to pop on the grid to charge the cars. You'd think I lived in PA or NC or something...
On a better note, I should have best case solstice day baseline...
I bought my new 455's from San Tan, drove over and picked them up in a truck. I also bought some used CS-250's (see sig) off Craigslist as-is. They have cracks and some have trails, and all but 1 seem to put out consistent power. They they have something better than about 1/3 the output of...
IMNSHO, It's generally first about demand. You need enough inverter and battery output to meet your maximum demand. The second thing will be storage. The more battery you buy the longer you can last. 24KW is 240v/100A, basically a 100A panel. I used this as a baseline. If your demand never...
2 18K's makes for a very simple setup and wiring, 2 boxes and 100A of AC output. If you like connecting a lot of wire and putting in bus-bars, and ... then by all means buy more boxes and hook them up. The more boxes you have the more complicated the wiring, but the greater the redundancy. So...
Not fair at all. We are just generally a bit more frugal. I for one would rather not pay for "Five nines" of reliability for things that are not critical. Things break, they can be repaired. This is usually dramatically less expensive than trying to engineer something that cannot break.
@Markus_SignatureSolar touched me so I downloaded and installed the latest firmware (0E10 / Jul 1 I think) yesterday AM. It took about 40 minutes to get it on both inverters. So, umm . . . it's probably a good idea to drop into standby before upgrading a parallel system. The primary crashed...