diy solar

diy solar

Anyone ever build a system to run efficiently @ 11,100 ft?

The US version is built out of hobby parts available to any self-respecting DIYer


And some have DIYed at home


For operation at lower altitude, the Russian/Iranian collaboration has seen theft of traffic cameras and private plane engines for employment in the "special military operation" effort.



Only low-hours engines were taken; private planes with old tired Rotax engines were unscathed.
 
There is this post relating to Victron that references an installation at 4500m: https://community.victronenergy.com...solar-is-only-good-for-2000m-of-altitude.html
Victron replaced a new Phoenix 1200VA 24V inverter after a failure, possibly due to unruly batteries triggering multiple low voltage disconnects. Given that Victron did not ask to examine the broken unit, one questions if this problem has happened before? Anyways, Northern Arizona Wind and Sun was the vendor and was great with taking the time to help solve the issue and interface with Victron. Without hesitation I agreed to pay for shipping of the replacement, choosing the cheapest option. Turns out Northern Arizona paid extra to get it to me in a couple days.
 
Maybe that tittle has a Bull Dog bark but once you get inside its just a bunch of Chihuahua's bouncing around playing with each other?

Reminder: Danger no intelligent life form exists down here

Handing out insults is certainly a way to get good help.

Poorly engineered electronic circuitry.

The fact that a device doesn't fit your (rare) use case does not make it poorly designed. I get that you want to find a cheap solution, but belittling equipment that doesn't work for you is rather absurd.

Are you willing to work a bit for a solution, or do you just want to buy it and install it?
 
Handing out insults is certainly a way to get good help.



The fact that a device doesn't fit your (rare) use case does not make it poorly designed. I get that you want to find a cheap solution, but belittling equipment that doesn't work for you is rather absurd.

Are you willing to work a bit for a solution, or do you just want to buy it and install it?
Think of it like buying a car that only works up to 9,000 ft. and if you go over that altitude your engine blows up. Do you think that is a viable business model? Oh and they don't tell you about this hiden flaw.

How about the instances of the flat screen TV industry when they first came out and went to high altitude and fried the main board in less than a week. Took Samsung a year before they figured out what the real issue was and had a very expensive fix.

Yes these companies are getting away with making junk electronic components. Not only that but half of their design engineers are even aware of issues with altitude. Cheaper or not as a society we all should expect more from our technology and less designed obsolescence.

I'm not sure what you mean by work for it. I'm already working for it trying to figure out this mixed up rapidly growing industry full of crooks. I've chatted with several companies and half of them want me to fill out a usage calculator before I even talk to a designer to ask them if their equipment can run efficiently at altitude.

If you have a solution to my problem I would love to hear it rather than attacking my issues as they are very clear and valid.
 
potting or conformal coating could probably be applied after the fact to devices. ideally it would be applied from factory. the conformal coating compound is not usually super expensive, but applying it can be a bit of a chore.
 
Victron replaced a new Phoenix 1200VA 24V inverter after a failure, possibly due to unruly batteries triggering multiple low voltage disconnects. Given that Victron did not ask to examine the broken unit, one questions if this problem has happened before? Anyways, Northern Arizona Wind and Sun was the vendor and was great with taking the time to help solve the issue and interface with Victron. Without hesitation I agreed to pay for shipping of the replacement, choosing the cheapest option. Turns out Northern Arizona paid extra to get it to me in a couple days.
I have heard that from several Victron reps and seen it in several forums from customer. You are paying a little extra for that up front + shipping in your case.
 
Think of it like buying a car that only works up to 9,000 ft. and if you go over that altitude your engine blows up. Do you think that is a viable business model? Oh and they don't tell you about this hiden flaw.
Enough already. Just stop. We are not your enemy.

Manufacturers cannot make a product that works for 100% of the applications 100% of the time. Their products would cost 1000x's more and that added cost would serve no use to 99.9% of their customers.

You chose to live at that altitude, we didn't force you.
 
potting or conformal coating could probably be applied after the fact to devices. ideally it would be applied from factory. the conformal coating compound is not usually super expensive, but applying it can be a bit of a chore.
This. Exactly.
 
for clarity's sake, conformal coating greatly reduces the high altitude issue of electricity traveling through the air across the circuit board and causing malfunction and damage. it is like adding a liquid insulator (dries/cures to a solid) which can solve the failure from voltage at elevation traveling.

if you want effective and inexpensive, the most feasible option to me is find a solid enough inexpensive inverter, buy a bunch of conformal coating compound, open the inverter, and paint any exposed circuits you can find with the conformal coating. it will be messy and probably stinky and take an annoying amount of time to dry/cure. DIY conformal coating with an off the shelf device seems like the only way to satisfy the design requirements of cost and function. make sure to safely discharge the capacitors of the inverter before doing this.

disclaimer: i have never applied conformal coating to any circuit firsthand. this is how to fix it.


i recommend Painting approach.
 
Old board designs with thru-hole components were readily encapsulated using conformal coat.
With SMT, I expect air gaps to remain under them.
The conformal coat should be effective insulating between leads of different components, but not necessarily those of a single component.
I could envision processes involving drawing vacuum.

Worth a try, though. Maybe consider component type an assembly when selecting - some power transistors have formed leads even if surface mount, while others are molded with leads on the bottom, subject to this issue.

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Won't the diy conformal coating change the system's thermal properties for the worse?
Yes, that is likely, and runs counter to the related high altitude goal of enhanced heat dissipation. However it is not guaranteed that heat dissipation will be degraded, as the conformal coating can enhance heat transfer for some geometry of components.

Either way, I recommend conformal coating and higher power fan to enhance heat dissipation.

To satisfy the requirements of cost and function seems to demand modification of an off the shelf device with conformal coating and potentially an upgraded fan or even heat sink.
 
A lot of the military stuff is fitted into very light and strong hermetically sealed enclosures, and pressurized with dry nitrogen. That solves all of the environmental and heat dissipation problems. Its obviously completely waterproof that way as well.

Conformal coatings are horrible things to work with, just about impossible to fault find, because you cannot probe the boards with a multimeter or oscilloscope. Everything is covered with insulated glop.
Even worse if you need to replace a component.

If I had to do something like this this myself, I would fill the thing right up with oil.

That ends up being far too heavy for most militay applications, but its used a lot in safety critical equipment used in deep mining applications, where total flooding is far from unknown.
Substation transformers operating at extremely high voltages also use oil filling for both cooling and insulation.
It can work for you too.

If this is going to be a "do it yourself" project, oil is probably the simplest and easiest solution to your problem.
 
A lot of the military stuff is fitted into very light and strong hermetically sealed enclosures, and pressurized with dry nitrogen. That solves all of the environmental and heat dissipation problems. Its obviously completely waterproof that way as well.

Conformal coatings are horrible things to work with, just about impossible to fault find, because you cannot probe the boards with a multimeter or oscilloscope. Everything is covered with insulated glop.
Even worse if you need to replace a component.

If I had to do something like this this myself, I would fill the thing right up with oil.

That ends up being far too heavy for most militay applications, but its used a lot in safety critical equipment used in deep mining applications, where total flooding is far from unknown.
Substation transformers operating at extremely high voltages also use oil filling for both cooling and insulation.
It can work for you too.

If this is going to be a "do it yourself" project, oil is probably the simplest and easiest solution to your problem.
agreed that oil insulator might be simpler in a way. dunk the whole thing in a bucket and break out connectors to air. generally better for heat dissipation.

conformal coating

non conducting oil immersion

options on the table??️
 
conformal coating inhibits testing on hardware failure. hard to poke through coating, as has been mentioned.

with an off the shelf modification for high altitude, i would personally resort to disassembly and conformal coating. if it fails, i would abandon the hardware and recoat another device if months had passed.

managing a bucket of non conducting oil is more inconvenient to me than dealing with a "one time" conformal coating mod. of course it comes down to preference of implementation ?️

wishing luck to this project with kind regards.

lots of knowledge in reserve on this forum.
 
Oil filling should work pretty well in a harsh salty marine environment as well.

Oil is messy, but all you have to do is let it drain down overnight, and in the morning go ahead and carry out your testing and repair.
Re-test and then refill.

Conformal coating, you will be chipping and scraping and cussing for HOURS. And just applying fresh glop over the injury does not work.
I have worked with that crap, and would not touch it with a barge pole for a home project.

An ineffective conformal coating is no better than no conformal coating. And to do it properly is a very miserable exercise.
It involves using a vacuum chamber to get the bubbles out, and then an oven, and a lot more patience than I have.
 
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good point about vacuum chamber to remove residual gasses. i profess inexperience with effective conformal coating procedure. much more than simply painting and waiting. degassing with vacuum is a common and important procedure for epoxy coating etc.

thank you for expanding the discussion ??️

degassing liquid coating compounds that cure and dry can involve vacuum to speed up the process.

any air left behind under the coating can result in the same condition as before.
 
There may actually be a small but lucrative market for an oil filled inverter that could happily survive continuous immersion in salt water, or altitudes to the stratosphere....................

It would not need to survive being thrown out of a low flying aircraft with a failed a parachute, or the extreme temperatures that the military always insist upon.
Just something your average lone yachtsman, or off grid mountain goat, could find useful.
At a reasonable cost of course.
 
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