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I've got a Espar diesel heater on an aluminum pilothouse-style that I used in/around Anchorage AK without any real insulation and a 5 gallon can was enough for a weekend trip, but we'll be spending weeks boondocking so the big tank will get used. And I really like the idea of when I'm filling...

Our outdoor kitchen is worthless - in fact it has negative value because it takes up room in the rear bunkhouse. If we cook outside its always on a propane grill anyway. I'm thinking I could rip out contents, sell the stove top and micro fridge and use the space to put in a 15 gallon plastic...

We've got one of the Harbor Freight 3500 inverter generators and its super quiet. Can't be heard from inside the trailer.

I want a wind turbine to boondock at the coast but it just doesnt make sense no matter how I massage it. We've got a lot in a place called Ocean Shores in Washington, the only thing between the lot and the ocean is about a quarter-mile of sand so the wind is constant and strong averaging about...

No, it's strictly a active balancer, albeit the highest amperage balancer that I know of.

This guy, fair warning though, it wasnt cheap at about $530. The cool thing is that it moves 10A even when the voltage is only a few millivolts apart. I had to get something with that amount of amperage because my bank is rather large @64kwh and anything smaller wouldnt keep up with my badly...

Here was my solution, I paralleled each module using 10 gauge wire and attached each cell to its group by a fusable link that pops at ~100A. The BMS and balancers are attached in the middle of the stack so resistance differential was minimized.

You might want to add something like: When overpaneling, since unused power from a panel raises the input voltage if you hit the maximum input power limit the panel voltage will start rising towards their VOC voltage. Or words to that effect.

Honestly, if I'm in a trailer in the middle of nowhere I want absolutely deadnuts reliable and I'd rather go with a component approach and the brands that "just work, always" with "just can't kill it no matter what I do to it" reliability: Victron, Outback, Magnum, Midnite pretty much...

Looks good! I would also add rear 45 degree bracing. The bending moment at the base of your poles in a wind gust will be a lot more than you think and pipe bends easier than you think.

Thanks! Much appreciated. Of course now I'm looking at the new 304AHs too. A bit more capacity in the same space.....

Havent been on the forum much lately, summer projects have taken precedence (~1850 yards of fill dirt to level out back yard, sprinkler system and fence) but I'm starting the research phase of adding on to my monster sized BYD bank and I noticed Amy has two types of cells and am wondering what...

Eventually it would, but at such a low draw it'd take years on my 64kwh bank to even be noticeable, the BMS draws more than the resistor. On a small bank like for a ebike it'd wouldnt be such a good idea though and it would indeed draw down a battery. I also found that the surge on my gigavac...

Its just a plug-->diode-->inductor-->diode-->twisted pair wire and then the same on the other leg with the diodes. The inductors are 330uH 3A toroidials and the diodes are 20A axial schottkey that I had laying around. I think I got both from Amazon. It does drop the output voltage about 2...

FWIW I ended up going with the 10A supercapacitor balancer. Works awesome.

I don't see any problem paralleling or serial connection groups of modules to a tigo optimizer - as long as you stay within the optimizers voltage and wattage limitations. You're much more likely to cook a optimizer if you overvolt it (rather sensitive to overvoltage conditions), if you overamp...

Midnite has a few shunt trip breakers, for example the MNEDC250RT, the only caveat is that they require 1 amp to trip, which is more than the PVAF can handle directly but a interposing SRR would handle that.

Max is 1C which'd be 15A, standard charge is .5C or 7.5A

Without getting into specifics, I'm fairly rural and I have been a fairly hardcore disaster prepper since 2005. There isnt much I'm not prepared for. I've always simply assumed I'll be feeding the neighborhood (all 8 houses of it) even though half of them are preppers of various levels too...

The BYDs were badly under expected capacity but worse than that the individual cells in the modules are horribly capacity mismatched and I had to figure out a way to even them up. Required a shitton of testing and cycling per module and then adding booster cells to the weak ones. Rinse and...

It's sitting on a shelf somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. I ended up going in a completely different direction with used BYD modules - which turned out to be a huge mistake and almost a year of labor. I should have stuck with the 280AH cells. I think I might have been the first to get...

This is what I made to power mine directly off the battery as external power. Two shotty diodes with an inductor between per leg to smooth any possible voltage ripple/spikes, the twisted pair capacitance measures out as .39uf and is another inductor but I didnt measure it. It works great, even...

FWIW the gigavacs I'm using never get above ambient as far as touching it goes. And their being held closed 24/7. They're screwed down to a metal plate so that could be acting as a heatsink.

The chargery balancer is too small to handle 280ah cells if they're prone to drift (which it sound like they are). I highly recommend the inexpensive Heltec/JK capacitive 5A balancer. https://www.amazon.com/Heltec-Equalizer-Balancer-Transfer-Capacitor/dp/B08D9D4NGW

I can't believe thats actually a question. Renology is at best a tier 2 reseller of various chinese manufacturers products with their label slapped on it. And half of it dips down into the tier 3 grade. Victron is so much better in every way, except for price. And it's very true you get what...

You could always go down to Harbor Freight, they've got several small ones. https://www.harborfreight.com/home/electrical/solar.html

I'll chime in; I wouldnt. An all-acrylic box is a little too potentially melty for my tastes. Wood'll char at higher temperatures than acrylic will melt, also the fumes from an acrylic fire would be nasty as hell in a enclosed space like a van. As far as sitting on its side, I wouldnt. There...

Niche market, if I had a van in hot country I'd probably go for it if I couldnt find a RV rooftop AC unit that'd work.

Surprised nobody has mentioned the 'Zero Breeze' portable AC unit yet, its a dual hose input/exhaust and provides 650 watts of cooling @ 240 watts of power used (whatever that works out to in BTU) and runs directly off 24V DC power. Spendy though, about $900...

Because it's not cylindrical, its a flattened jelly roll. There's a video around here somewhere that shows a guy taking one apart and its a big flattened jelly roll with tabs spaced along it for the neg and pos terminals. The upshot of all this is that yes, both pouch and flattened jelly rolls...

I heavily favor the individual components option - preferably with redundant components. With an all-in-one if one part goes out you have to replace the whole unit. With separate components not only do you have the option to repair/replace the one component it means you can upgrade the the...

They're 33mm wide by 140mm long according to the documentation

In this context it means that it rectifies and then re-inverts the power to allow the compressor to run at different speeds and match the load demand. This is in contrast to the usual method in which the compressor kicks on and off with greater or lesser on/off times to meet the load demand.

Good find, I'd go with those. I could tell the ones I got had been sitting on the shelf for a really long time as the copper was quite dark - the same copper color as the pipes in my 21 year old house. But they were cheap so....

Here's a PDF on the cells, it actually says 5C discharge max but I dont know if I believe that. You're also not supposed to solder it with anything but a laser welder but I did it anyway. Just use a 300 watt + iron and get the drop of solder very hot before touching it so it adheres and...