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Current politics are hardly predictable for more than 24 hours. Expect also US made panels to increase in price as supply chain is hit with tariffs AND there is so little actual US production on panels that supply and demand is going to drive US made panel prices further up. On the bright side...

30 bucks a month is really cheap for dependable emergency power source.

I didn't want to sound rude but this was exactly my thoughts. OP comes out as really green, people run out of patience even here sooner or later with dumb questions. Most other forums are probably 5 times more brutal. If you go to forestry forum and start 5 different topics like "can I use knife...

Add to that that the VW cheat cars used less fuel and caused less CO2 emissions than they would have without the emissions cheat.

Black rubber hose is often somewhat conductive and black fuel hose is often even specifies and required by standards to be conductive(to prevent static build-up) Black color comes from added carbon and it also makes the hose more or less conductive.

Good sleeping bag makes wonders as long as you manage to keep it dry. Thick sleeping bag works ok for 1-2 weeks but tend to collect ice inside. Coldest I have slept was -28 C on a pick-up truck bed under night sky. Two summer or 3-season rated down sleeping bags, balaclava and long johns. Slept...

Yep. Tinned copper is more expensive than plan vanilla copper. CCA or copper clad aluminium is the one to avoid.

Maybe worth noting that these are most often copper clad aluminium (CCA). Conductivity is only about 50-60% of real copper cable and you would need to select 2 gauge instead of 4 gauge copper.

Thing is that it doesn't scale up favorably in any size or shape. You can have 100 kWh storage battery for 10k usd (or even less from 2-hand EV batteries) 1 kWh is 3600 kJ. To store 100 kWh in weight lifted to tower you need: 1 metric ton weight lifted to 36 kilometer tower or 10 meter tower...

Storage tank/boiler for water heater? Storing hot water is extremely cheap compared to storing same amount of electricity.

Perkele! En ymmärrä.

In my opinion the whole fast-blow "idea" of class-T is bit ill-informed. Any decent inverter should have very fast overcurrent limiting built-in. Only if something goes terribly wrong in the inverter it will draw enough current to blow fuse. Fast fuses are typically too slow for protecting the...

Cool! Oscilloscope measurement for the current and clearing time would be really nice. Would be also interesting to see how the cheap Classs T alternatives like bs88 and NH fuses would measure

Electrical shock wise not that huge difference. but electric arcs are nastier with 48 volts and you NEED to have proper fuses in 48v system. Some fuses are rated for 32v but not 48v. 24v system is somewhat more tolerant for stupidity(accidental short-circuits) than 48v system. (12 volt system...

Webasto/Espar/Eberspächer/Binar is the standard solution around here for pre-heating car engines. All sorts of remote kits and timers also available. And are we talking about -20F or 20F? at 20F I don't see the need but below -20F is a different matter.

And bottom one looks like difficult to connect.

2.5 billion trade deficit to russia in 2024 is not exactly zero

Heat or cool your van. Easily takes care of your ”extra energy problem” Also get get used to the idea that you need 900% oversize solar panel array and 900% oversize battery to cover most of the time. And you are still going to have bad day once in a while with empty battery and no sunshine for...

Band saw is still missing from the photo..

Degrees Celsius, sure. "Celsius" is often dropped from unit in informal text/discussion as we don't use use Frankenstein Freedom units or anything else that could be mixed up with degrees Celsius.

Smells like trouble: The Recognized Component Mark is a type of safety certification mark issued by UL Solutions. It is placed on components which are intended to be part of a UL certified end product, but which cannot bear the full UL Mark themselves.[20] The general public does not ordinarily...

Unless someone can actually verify that the washers are solid brass or copper I’d treat that picture with a hefty amount of suspicion.

Nonsense, I'd cross out that installer from my list.

Solar panel prices are also falling at a rate that soon most people are limited by available space. 410W panels for less than 100euros(incl 24% VAT) locally here in Finland

You still have "screaming deal" for solar by living in South Carolina vs. OP's Lithuania (or Finland for that matter.. :LOL: ) 16 kWh in Lithuania vs. 106 kWh in Charlotte SC for 1kW panel setup in entire december. (or 7kWh here..) Even Steve_S in Canada is bathing in sunshine compared to Baltic...

Test results shown are probably quite irrelevant. Contact is opening at limited speed in any case. I’d hazard guess that the mechanical contacts are nowhere nearly fully open in 0.00035 seconds. 2 Amps is not going to make much of an arc in the contacts unless you are really unlucky with really...

Honda’s are really proven and reliable option. I’d also consider LPG conversion kit as it gets rid of modern gasoline storage&stability problems. 10 yr old LPG canister runs just the same as fresh.

There is less than damage on terminals and bus bars than I would expect to see if something heated up there and ignited the MDF. Then on the other hand MDF conducting enough current to ignite doesn't make any sense either unless someone spilled battery acid on the MDF previously or soaked it in...

Not suprise with Liitokala-Varicore. They have been "famous" in flashlight community because of their counterfeit or recycled 18650 batteries. Aliexpress is a wild west bazaar and in generally Chinese way of doing business&ethics are different from what you are used to.

Pull/tensile strenght test is widely used to judge the crimp quality. bigger sizes get bit impractical or you need to get bit creative to make suitable load. with quality lugs I’d aim for MIL-xx specification, 875lbs for 4/0 cable

Bearings and seals are going to be interesting

Assuming you would get your hands on latest NASA AETB-8 Rigid Tiles: https://tpsx.arc.nasa.gov/MaterialProperty?id=5&property=4 Max temperature 1860K, thermal conductivity 0,316 W/m-K IN VACUUM! Graphite tile storage with temperature swing between 1860K to 860K (1586c to 586c) 100kWh storage...

While mods are sleeping Speciality bolt collections belong also to this topic

One option to use excessive panels would be to point some of them to evening sun. This would spread out the power generation to longer time span and to those late afternoon/evening hours when you have actual power demand.

Moonshine or maple syryp.

Joule has been the SI unit for last 76 years, I believe calorie is used with food energy content in US despite being half-metric? (also by grandmas in here) US should express the chocolate bar energy content in BTU's or foot-pounds-force :unsure:

His posting history looked like he is on one man crusade for ”all in one powerbank” and my conclusion was same as Q-dog’s.

Good shunt setup is lot more accurate on low current than (budget)hall sensor. Hall sensors have quite large offsets, +-0.5A for the linked 100A model if I found the right specs. Resonably good shunt setup on the other hand can have something like 0.01A to 0.05A offset making it 10 to 50 times...

US has longer traditions with nonsense watt claims. Just look who is selling 15hp shop vacs. 50-60 years ago Chinese were still learning how to make steel when you had audio amplifiers with more power than Saturn V main engine. :ROFLMAO:

Looks really easy in most of the US compared to Europe, let alone the northern parts of Europe like Finland. :whistle: 30 kWp panel set in december: Alamosa, Colorado: 4100 kWh Helsinki, Finland 295 kWh (the most southern part..)

Didn't have pic of my drill press but you get the drift.. anyhoo, found the bandsaw.

Oven part is just resistive heaters like normal electric oven. No induction in oven part.

You got it mixed up: Shouldn’t really come as suprise that German engineers use metric system to land in moon.

Body disposal.

With bussbars this is only a matter of needed size and maximum temperature rise. You can compensate the worse material by selecting larger cross-section. Power-wise the differences are neglible unless you have 100 feet of busbars. Limiting factor is in 99% cases the busbar temperature.

Smaller surface area could be also good thing. There is probably a sweet spot of force per area or pressure. You want to flatten the minuscule ”mountains” on the contact surface, othervise the actual contact area is only tiny fraction of the joint area. This also helps to create air tight joint...

Are you talking about THE A123 systems which: -had to lay off all of their workers after the battery disaster on Fisker Karma -Had big talks about battery manufacturing plant in Michigan but to my knowledge never produced anything there -after that went to bankrupty in 2012 -was bought by...

Level 2 AC "charger" is just glorified contactor and supervisory circuit. The cable itself is probably more than 50% of BOM. Basically extension cord with GFCI Charger part is actually inside the cars and the "wall box" supplies AC power trough contactor/relays. I Could bodge my own 3-phase 22kW...

Cheapest battery on aliexpress is not a great start. There is no lower limit on what kind of crap they sell on aliexpress. Plenty of professional con-artists there that are good in convincing ali customer support that YOU are at fault. The seller and aliexpress itself is just going to spin you...

You get better luck of you search for torque scredrivers. 1Nm is small screwdriver category. For example (by no means any recommendation) https://www.amazon.com/TAGVIT-Screwdriver-2-66-53-1-Adjustable-Notification/dp/B0CJRC58RV?th=1

I'd be vary of Liitokala products also. They are well known for selling counterfeit or repurposed Panasonic 18650 Cells for example. I'd rate Liitokala batteries B-grade at best, sketchy but usually "close enough" to rated capacity. btw the correct spelling is "Liitokala" that means literally...

Northern part of EU next to russia. Electricity market is kinda broken at the moment: -Russian grid import closed down (about 10% of total capacity) - many consumers still having 2-3y fixed price contracts with very low prices like 5 cents/kwh (these consumers don't really have incentive to...

In past you could load the UL approval cerfificates from the UL website and it showed even all the internals. Now they want 228usd/year to access the database. :mad: My guess is that the chinese supplier is changing components to every second batch and one batch is UL approved and the next one...

Yara (big fertilizer producer around here) seem to have low melting point tertiary mix that melts at 131C That would be really good for many uses but these solar salts seem to be mix of nitrates. Pain in the ass in the EU nanny state to buy, after all someone could make solar bomb..

Convection cooling is dominating at low temps so I woudn’t worry too much about adjacent object emissivity or color.

Not used nor available around here. Pretty often you also end up with PT that is 90% heartwood that doesn't take any PT chemicals. Last time I bought some 2x8 for outdoor stairs it had two 1x1" triangles at corners that were pressure treated, rest was heartwood. Doesn't matter much, local...

I have stashed these away 10 years ago, need some batteries to utilize box of these:

I would not bother with ev packs unless you get them for less than 50eur/kwh. Lifepo4 is already below 100eur/kwh. EV packs often have difficult voltage range and disassembling them to new confiquration is difficult. For example most VW packs are either 8S or 12S whereas you would typically...

You don’t need much resistance if the batteries have similar voltages. Initial surge current is not long-lasting if allowed to reach reasonably high value. Lightbulbs are one good option as they increase in resistance as voltage/current goes up and act like sort of constant-current limiter...

This one? row to row double terminal flexible busbar? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007438865037.html

Stainless nut on stainless bolt is asking for trouble. Stainless/stainless pair galls(friction welds) together sometimes with suprisingly little effort and once that happens the parts are solid assembly. Using anything else than stainless nut solves the galling tendency. Brass, galvanized or...

Getting AC power from type 2 charging station is quite easy, there is even ready made cables that you can use for that https://eauto.si/metron-shop/product/adapter-type-2-din-3-x-16-a/ In addition to that you need enough large 48v charger, for example 6x 2000W (2 chargers per phase) would give...

Bolted connection is better in many ways but threaded hole in copper or brass can be usable option also if these are not used in some extreme environment. There is also easily 10-fold difference between yield strength or hardness of annealed electrolytic copper and 3/4 hard brass, brass being...

66kWh/year https://www.amazon.de/-/en/H3R-330WNA-Fridge-Energy-Efficient-Class/dp/B0968PVDPF?th=1

Use bellewille washers aka disk springs. disk spings help to maintain the clamp load in the joint and that is the important part. Serrated nut can ”dig in” with time. It wont rotate loose but it doesnt provide original clamping load neither. bolted joints usually work better when bolt under...

Sorry, no solid data available as everything is just handwaving how green it is. https://www.energy-storage.news/million-cubic-metre-90gwh-thermal-storage-project-in-finland-could-begin-construction-next-year/ Remains to be seen but I think there is a bit more solid engineering behind that...

Looks like panel prices have fallen even here in Up North considerably in the last 1.5 years This works out to be actually cheaper than your package from Alibaba: https://aurinkosahkotukku.fi/tuote/pv-paneeli-trinasolar-mono-335w-silver-hc/

Still bit unclear what you are trying to accomplish but it sounds like you are doing something in a wrong way.

Qcells is pretty much the only one on the list that actually makes also the cells. Most others are just assembling imported cells to imported tempered glass with imported frames. AFAIK final assembly is something like 10% of the panel cost so this is just a way to skirt around the...

Where did you get the idea that he killed the batteries? lead-acid bouncing back to 12 volts (no-load voltage) still has 30-40% charge left. (Maybe even bit more as it takes some time for batteries to settle to no-load voltage)

Pic would be helpful. There is dozens of 2.54 and 2.0mm connector models, ”JST” is just one of them. If you are not looking for permanent connection a pair of sharp side-cuttters and x-acto knife solve lots of compatibility problems. At work I have to butcher connectors all the time as finding...

Goddamnit these chinese junk BMS not working totally outside of specifications. Shocking experience.

"modern" gasoline is a mix of all kind crap, notably olefins from thermal or catalytic cracking "Trufuel" base component is alkylate but on MSDS it has also some added crap, most notably aromatic hydrocarbons xylene and toluene ...

Xtra Tariffs for pretty much anyone exept amazing Comrade Putin?

Just for giggles think about the voltage drop needed in the bad joint to cut power in half and how much heat it is going to generate. Abysmally bad joint could have 100v voltage drop but that is only 22% power loss in 450v system. At 10 amps 1000W power loss on bad connection is going to show...

Looks like car audio connectors. Not big fan, so much total junk out there. Also note that amazon is filled with chinese junk crimp terminals. For example https://www.amazon.com/Glarks-Approved-Terminal-Connectors-Assortment/dp/B07LBQ4DTX/ref=lp_306730011_1_7

OK, this is starting to make sense. I'd really consider 1.1 volt drop between charge controller and battery "way too much" and reason for further inspection. You said you have 3 feet cable from charge controller? How about the minus/ground side cable lenght and gauge? 3+3 feet of 8AWG cable is...

And avgas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas "The main petroleum component used in blending avgas is alkylate, which is a mixture of various isooctanes. Some refineries also use reformate."

AntronX's posts seem to be usually have reasonably solid engineering background even if some things like 1500 Cel insulation or heater strips are not very realistic. Your post on the other hand was such a pile of nonsense that I don't know where to start.

:LOL: Filtering out reliable information from China is difficult: State media has it's own agenda and street-level rumors are often at absurd-level nonsense. Relying on one criminal brother selling counterfeit parts as informant is about as good as predicting from tea leaves.

You could PWM modulate the smallest voltage stage at higher frequency/resolution to get high quality sine wave. IIRC multi-level inverters are nothing new in really high power installations. Typical range might be 1MW and up

How is the project going? probably beating old horse here but maybe worth mentioning for others that connecting pv panels directly to resistive heater results really bad utilization of available power most of the time. when sun is at angle or behind light clouds you lose big time compared to...

Internals look like real circuit breaker or as in this case reasonable copy/counterfeit. Impossible to say more accurately how it performs without extensive testing but at least its got the basic functional blocks of circuit breaker inside.

Nothing unusual there, typical 100A ANL is supposed to blow between 0.8 to 10 seconds with 250% load.

OP location of Kalamazoo looks like excellent alternative compared to some fellow Finns here. Kalamazoo gets about 10-20 times more sunshine in december than Central Finland. Not to mention some of the forum members actually above the arctic circle.

Even with a fan 700w losses are not plausible. What did you use to measure AC side watts? Does it measure correctly between real power(W) and apparent power(VA)? Same/similar looking charger sold under different name claims up to 95% efficiency. That sounds maybe a bit optimistic but nothing...

In series connection they get equal abuse. Weakest/lowest capacity cell takes most "damage" as it always dischages further than others but there is nothing you can do about it. (In hot enviroment and high current use the cells in the middle of the pack could deteriorate faster than cells in...

IIRC level 2 charging was pretty easy, one resistor value tells maximum cable current and 1khz pwm signal from wall box tells the car how much power it is allowed to draw. Connector itself would be hardest to find in junk box but you could make your own with a lathe and couple of sticks of hot...

No direct experience either as beech is too exotic to grow up here. but based on quick glance the European Beech: -prone to rot and insects -high shrinkage during drying and "moves" with seasons -moderate strength, not as high as premium hardwoods like Hickory but considerably higher than...

Sounds like you need to do 2 things: 1. Invest 5 euros to a package of mosquito screen. 2. Start looking for a new place to live with more reasonable landlord.

You don't get core saturation unless you increase voltage. Transformer core saturates as volt*second product and it remains constant, not related to load current. You can run 1kVA rated transformer with 10kVA load and it won't saturate. Inductors on the other hand saturate with current

I'd use thick washers and disk spring washers (belleville washers) Disk spring washer is used in industrial busbar connections etc and it helps to maintain the clamping load on the connection even if the nut would slightly loosen on thermal cycling loosening the joint. Rethreading stainless...

In the long run it would be a good idea to install battery balancer suitable for 4x 12v batteries. Cell level balancing for the entire 16s set would be better of course but not easy to do.

I’d check the cells for self-discharge before building the pack. Top balance and leave sitting for a month, discard everything that is not at full resting voltage.

I’d say this is the biggest problem Living on 65N. Summer you have unlimited sunshine and no use for electricity when climate is just perfect and there 24/24 daylight. In winter there is no solar production at all, constant darkness and freezing cold.

2.5^3 = 15,6m3 sand density 1600kg/m3*15,6 = 24960kg specific heat capacity 800..900J/kg*Cel, lets take average 850J/kgCel Assuming you get usable heat down to 50cel sand temperature you get 24960kg*850J/kgCel*700Cel=14851200000 Joules 1 watt is 1 joule per second. 1 watthour is 3600 joules...

We never got really good crimps with the hammer type tool. 1500A discharge on a electric go-cart sorts out the bad crimps really fast. :) crimps looked ok but heated way more than compressed crimps.

You got the numbers mixed up: 3000VA and 2400W VA and W are same only for resistive ”perfect” load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power