diy solar

diy solar

Battery Alerts from Enphase Encharge?

svetz

Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
Joined
Sep 20, 2019
Messages
7,201
Location
Key Largo
Looking for feedback from folks who've had batteries for a while to leverage their real-life eye-opening experiences.

Current storage: capacity is ~20% the normal daily consumption. But can be curtailed to last 24 hours via turning stuff (e.g., hot water heater, ev, Air conditioning to parts of the house) off.

My concern is that when the house switches to battery it's not noticeable, not even a light flickers. So, how will I know to start switching stuff off or on?

Is this even a valid concern? For short term outages there's no need to curtail consumption. For times when there is going to be a long term disruption (e.g., hurricane), I'd probably be aware in advance. So, possibly just not important in practice?

Eventually I'd like to get some home automation in place that curtails power based on available solar energy. I'll also get more storage capacity when EVs have V2H. But that's a ways off.

The next question is how to get the alert? I don't want to watch pretty GUIs... I need something that taps me on the shoulder and gets my attention. Similarly, it can only use the local things.... for example the local network since the WWW or cell service might be inaccessible.

Thanks in advance!

Update: Built an android app that uses the local wifi to get alerted when there's an issue, see #101
 
Last edited:
NC relay held open by the incoming grid AC. Lose incoming grid AC and relay closes energizing a buzzer, flashing light, fog horn, etc. powered by inverted output or directly from the battery.
 
Fog horn? That is more than just a tap on the shoulder. :ROFLMAO:
Actually. you beat me to that relay solution, which is a simple one to implement.
 
Last edited:
I assumed no one in the home suffers from incontinence with that one. Of course, YMMV.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top