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This is hilarious. A ten amp fuse is rated to carry ten amps. So why cannot manufacturers make ten amp fuses that can safely carry thirty amps ? It would save a lot of blown fuses, and the user should be allowed a bit more margin than the rated maximum. Its totally outrageous that a ten amp...

A few years ago when I finally decided to go off grid, the first thing I did was a complete energy audit of every electrical product in the house. That led to tossing out a lot of my old kilowatt hour munching dinosaur appliances. So I bought an almost new current model low energy refrigerator...

I have east west, both pointed 60 degrees above the horizon, and it works wonderfully well. It starts up at least an hour before my main (and much larger) array even wakes up. In late afternoon it keeps on going after my main array is fast asleep on the job. A lot depends on your latitude, and...

That was certainly true at one time, but definitely not these days. You guys watch too much Clint Eastwood, Rambo, and Top Gun. The reality is very different. The US military is now full of wokeness, and vaccine, and the entire nation is morally and financially bankrupt I truly wish that it...

It does not use pwm, but combines the output of four low frequency square wave inverters. Each of these inverters has an output transformer that has a different secondary voltage. The four secondaries are connected in series to directly generate an analog ac sine wave. Its rather like direct...

I just charge up to 3.45v and hold the voltage at that. Never any higher ! Once it reaches 3.45v and charging current has tapered right down to to zero, the balancer is activated. Balancer turns itself off at the slightest measured discharge. Its been working fine like that for six years...

All this has some hobby value as well, especially in retirement.

Scammers can be very clever. There was a case in the UK many years ago, where someone was advertising a device that was guaranteed to cut your electricity bill in half. Absolutely guaranteed, or your money back. A great many people fell for it, and received a cheap pair of plastic scissors...

Sure, gasoline prices are low, a vaccination never hurt anyone, and Joe is the best president America ever had. Nothing to see here, move along.

Most efficient (and simple) way to connect solar panels to any heating element is to keep the solar panels operating at very close to VMP no matter how much or how little solar there is. One way to do that, is to connect a very large electrolytic capacitor bank directly across a suitable high...

Mosfets particularly have a very low tolerance for overvoltage and overcurrent. Quality control is excellent these days with fully automated manufacturing. They are tested during manufacture to meet the specified maximum only, and it takes very little extra than that to destroy the device. The...

Its completely my own unique design, pure sine wave, but NOT using the usual pulse width modulation. Load is just normal domestic loads at my home. Its been functioning without a single problem for almost six years. Several other people over at The Back Shed forum have also successfully built...

This caries on from the "Open source microconverter" thread which I am very guilty of hijacking. What follows is a home project to build a really simple low cost solar mppt controller that does not involve any software or a microcontroller. This all started as a bit of an experiment, and it has...

I find the biggest problem here is the sheer volume of posts. Its far too easy to miss something potentially really interesting. Its like wading through a thick fog looking for shiny nuggets.

Agree, Its not a question of will it cost more, but will stuff from China or anywhere else, even be available at all, at any price. We are on the brink of major war on several fronts, also on the very brink of world wide total financial collapse.

You have that exactly backwards.

So you need a fully aerospace qualified military spec inverter for cheap Chinese prices ? I wish you luck.

The "ton" came about in the refrigeration industry, because back in the days of horses, your domestic cool box used a block of ice to keep your food cool. So the amount of cooling you got from a certain weight of ice was a useful measure of cooling capacity. Its all about latent heat of water...

Just to expand a bit on the above. If I doubled up on panels, during really bad sustained cloud, I would get twice as much. Twice almost nothing is still almost nothing. So installing more panels here would not make much of a difference. A better solution for me here, would be a much larger...

The problem has been the same for thousands of years, and there is only one solution to cheap heat, burn something. I suggest you check out some of the small diesel heaters advertised on e-bay and Ali. These are not expensive and run very economically and put out an amazing amount of heat...

That will never be possible these days. It was possible once, but those days are long gone. Think about it. Do you really expect the privately owned utility supply companies to supply power and maintain all the lines and equipment at zero cost, just so you can draw power whenever you feel like...

Have to agree with OzSolar. Its all been done before, many have tried, spent a lot of money (many from government grants) building active thermal storage systems, and all have had problems and been a big disappointment. When the government money stops flowing, the owner usually ends up ripping...

There was one famous bloke that was tried, convicted and then crucified. The news media of the day said some very bad things about him too.

Oh sorry forgot all about compliance. Must be 110% compliant in all 180 countries. And must be Greta approved.

Water entry into cables has always been a big problem. Usually it occurs at the ends, and water wicks up between any cable strands due to surface tension, and can travel amazing distances over time. The oxygen in the water then reacts with copper turning the copper into a green copper oxide...

Better to fly below the radar and put NOTHING back into the grid. Use absolutely minimal grid power from time to time just to keep the connection. My last quarterly bill came to a massive $7.26

There is another way to generate very low THD waveforms with high power efficiency, but its not cheap and not really cost competitive commercially. Several individual square wave inverters driving individual transformers can have different voltage secondaries all connected in series, and is...

Circuit diagram, sure no problem. There are two error amplifiers, the first one regulates solar voltage, such that duty cycle increases if solar voltage tries to rise. The second error amplifier regulates battery voltage. Duty cycle falls as battery voltage tries to rise. Whichever error...

You guys still don't get it. Different culture here, we think totally differently in Oz. The certain way to lose yourself an election in the US is to suggest enforcing stricter gun control. The certain way to lose an election in Australia is to suggest more relaxed gun laws. The gun lobby...

I have been playing around with this for years, and as my system uses all home brew electronics, I have total control over control strategies. The best and most consistent balancing occurs when the cells are completely resting, and sitting there doing nothing at full voltage. If the balancer...