Search results

I see in the news this morning this interesting tidbit Well dandy. Not sure exactly how this can be achieved since your average low income household likely lacks a electrically knowledgeable individual to install or operate PV. Than there is the fact that many lower income folks do not own...

Watching paint dry is a walk in the park compared to monitoring some of this solar equipment for when it will fail. Hard to establish an item's worth until you have some data on how long it lasts. Then there is the fact something new or better is out there but you can not justify ripping out a...

For lead acid, deep cycle batteries are rated based on time (20hr is a common period) and amps delivered over that time scale. So if you wish to test a LA capacity you would takes its AH rating and divide by time to get amps and run your test to see if it can deliver that with not reaching low...

Not quite Aircon weather and with all the upgrades to my PV setup I am ending up with my batteries fully charged by noon. I don't have an interconnect agreement nor want one. So this leaves me with idle panels during some of the best production time when the weather has been fair. Sadly you...

I replaced my 5 year old phone yesterday with a new one that has a much better camera (never used my old phone for much photo work) so I decided to do some testing of it today and also how I could transfer it to my computer for later use. Bit of a gray day for doing this but it hit me that my...

Almost 2 years back I decided to try out these new fangled LiFePO4 batteries. Because I am cheap, and distrustful of things that are new to me, I bought the lowest cost liFePO4 battery I could find. No communication, no uploads to the 'Net, no fancy apps to monitor individual cells, no internal...

One of the issues with an Off grid setup is knowing what your loads are so that you can most efficiently make use of your solar/inverter and battery resources. Load management in other words. There are some folks that are experimenting with automation now rather than having to manually switch...

Got an Email from the Co-op the other day. I thought it was interesting especially concerning the State changes to Net metering installations. Arkansas has mandated that electrical companies provide a 1 to 1 net meter arrangement. As you would guess this meant the companies put many obstacles in...

You know how it is. Your original intention was to see if this solar stuff actually works. So you pick up a solar panel or two and prop them in the sun. A voltage reading tells you they are doing something so you hook up a SCC and a battery and all of a sudden nothing happens. Oh yeah the...

In the process of DIY solar keeping everything right is not an easy task. Especially for those like myself that suffer from mental processing errors. What is a mental processing error you ask? For me this is looking right at something and allowing my mind to process it incorrectly. This led to...

I ordered 4 of (2-100w) packs of Eco-Worthy panels off Ebay during their 20% off Spring special on 3/9 and received them today (3/14). This is 800w worth of Bifacial panels with a total price after tax to me of ~$407 with Free shipping. This is the largest one time amount of panels I have bought...

What is the most likely failure mode of a standard BMS? Does it block all current or does it simply stop performing any safety cutoff functions? If it just becomes a non performing lump, with current flow, I wonder how you would know it was no longer functioning if your charge controller was...

Probably some of you already have seen these but I had not until now on Amazon while looking for a 30a din rail AC breaker. About twice the cost of the Chinese mini breakers but I would trust the Westinghouse name much more. They are rated for the 1 pole at 277vAC and 60vDC and the 2 pole...

It was a dark and gloomy day... My 3100w worth of panels this morning (10am ST) are putting out about 130w. Although not much it about equals my loads. 130w is around 4% of rating. Not enough power coming in to charge back my batteries from the nighttime deficit. But it is something. It does...

These are no longer being offered.

Looking back over the 5-6 years of mucking around with Solar my best guess of how much I have spent is ~$7500. It is now at the point I save about $25-30 per month on my electrical Bill. Doing the math I only have to live another 25 years to pay for all of it. Not exactly a quick return. However...

I happened to be looking about at various AIO's hoping to find a bit more power than my present 24vDC 3kW 120vAC units without jumping to 48vDC. Not anything US standard available but I did see a 4.2VA (3.8kW) unit model really dirt cheap ($286) ISolar-SMH-II-4.2KW that got me thinking about...

In my neck of the woods the sun has came out! Time to start thinking of rethinking my PV setup. After the long Winter of discontent (not enough solar), and bad cabin fever, plans are being hatched for new solar projects. So I thought I would list some of the things I have planned and thought...

Been looking at all the new offerings for AIO's this year with all kind of impressive specs. Hopefully there will be many folks that rush out and put them in operation so the inevitable quirks, faults and operational gotchas will be exposed. Also hopefully these early adopters are eager to...

I am thinking of creating a common bus bar battery parallel setup. What I am thinking of doing is wiring two batteries in parallel with short equal size cables between and from them a set of output cables to terminal blocks with the positive to battery 1 and negative to battery 2. There will be...

When researching other things I happened to spot these battery bus bars They seem fairly well built and might be just the ticket for someone wanting to connect several batteries in parallel (although not inexpensive at $160 for the red and black pair). Not having used them I can not vouch for...

I have been using a old 12vDC 24w Auto trouble light that has a couple of alligator clips to do my pre-charges (image below). It works but is not elegant. So what I am thinking of is a hard wired around the battery disconnect breaker lamp/socket with On/Off button to handle the task. If someone...

Battery from scratch. This is my first ever attempt to build a workable, cheap as possible, LiFePO4 24vDC using 105ah battery cells. The cells and BMS were bought on Aliexpress with some items coming from Amazon (tape, battery separators, terminal connectors and 8 awg soft silicone wire) plus...

After being in Town yesterday, and having to pay more for just about everything I bought, it struck me about the price for solar panels. I remember my first ones I bought were close to $1.35/watt 6 years ago whereas now I can buy the same watt rated panel for 60-65 cents/watt (with delivery...

I received a busted glass 200w solar panel yesterday that the Seller is going to replace with new. He is not requiring me to return the broken one and it got me thinking of if a shattered glass solar panel has any utility or is repairable. After some Internet Search I see that several places...

After just purchased another couple of solar panels due to arrive in a few days I am busy trying to come up with how I am going to integrate them into my PV setup. Like Victor Frankenstein I have all kinds of parts of a body to assemble into something that approaches a whole. Like the good...

It struck me this afternoon as I sit with full batteries (before noon!) and hardly any loads (cool weather has cut back any A/C needs and my hot water tank is up to heat) that it has been months since my AIO's have had to transfer to AC Bypass to power anything. AC in does not do anything...

Just for fun I decided to see what I could come up today off Amazon for an Off grid starter system that could provide a decent amount of PV power for someone looking to setup a small system. What I came up with is the following. 1200w worth of PV. 6-200w Alrska panels at $158.98ea for a total...

The solar patrol is usually not out flying the County on Saturday mornings searching for illegal solar installations. So I had the camouflage netting down off my solar panels to maximize my solar production when I heard the ominous "Whup-whup" of helicopter blades coming up the Valley. It was...

OK, it might not really do anything solar related but I am pleased to announce the arrival of my new Baby Ex. It arrived yesterday afternoon after a short gestation period of less than a week. Weighing in a 2200#s (1000kg) and healthy from the look of things. I hope if I feed and care for it...

I have been using a 900w microwave that was drawing around 1375w when running. This was no problem with my 3kW AIO even when other things were also running. I happened to get a buy on a new 1000w microwave so I put it in the place of the old one yesterday. It is quicker to heat things and runs...

Been using these din rail power meters on my AIO's AC out to keep track of things. With all the information it always displays I do not have to cycle through the AIO's screens, run an app, log on to a PC or anything more than a glance. I went with the type that has the coil sensor rather than...

Although there does not seem to be a consensus on what the dividing line is at it seems that low voltage are the typical panels for many of us. With the panels Voc being in the 20-40Voc range. Higher Voc panels have been mostly used in grid tie setups. Many of these are 60Voc and higher. I was...

Recently I changed out the small din rail DC breakers I was using to disconnect my batteries for these rather massive MCCB ones (see image) it got me to looking around the 'net if i could find a tear down or an internal diagram of the insides of one and I came up blank. Does anyone have a link...

Spent the last two days (July 11&12th) in replacing my original near 1 year old #1 EAsun 3kw-U AIO with a new similar (PowMR label but just another SRNE) rated one. It has a higher PV voltage range (up to 450vDC) and 80a charge versus the 60a charge. My original #1 EAsun unit is now a spare. I...