diy solar

diy solar

the rapidly changing inverter landscape

Gavin Stone said:
Yeah Mike’s a cool guy. I’ve been following his channel for close to a year also. I think he’s really the only high voltage channel on YouTube. At least residential.

That inverter of his is a workhorse.
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I almost went the same route.
But the inverter took up too much space for me.
 
It seems inevitable that inverters move to higher DC operating voltages, as EV's have already done.
The cost and availability of breakers, fuses etc seems to still be an issue, one day this will change I am sure.
I wonder what the regulations will be for residential 400volt ESS systems in the future, got me wondering...not just the inverters are rapidly changing.
 
timselectric said:
It will be very diy limiting.
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Yeah, that is my worry.
technically already the case, if I were the type to follow all the 'rules' but it's in my nature to colour outside the lines.

Speaking of not following the rules,reminds me of a funny story:
one time I was stopped at a traffic light, waiting to turn left, for some reason the left turn arrow didn't come on. Stupid traffic lights.
Once the oncoming traffic was clear I turned left anyway, while the left turn light was red.
Some rookie cop pulled me over and writes a ticket, - I refused to sign it, told him I will talk to the judge about it instead, cop was pissed at me.

A few months later I get to see the judge to argue why I shouldn't have to pay the fine for 'illegal' left turn.
Judge asked me "so you took the option to address the court, and you don't deny turning left on a red so please explain why I should grant your request to dismiss the fine.
Well you're honour, I don't know why the left turn didn't turn green, but after confirming no on-coming traffic was pressent, as the officer here can confirm, and since I thought I might be smarter than a traffic light, there is no reason for a fine. Charges were dismissed! (and I saw the judge try to hide his smile).
 
I passed through an intersection with Red/Yellow/Green lights in Hayward, CA a number of times.
One day, there was a sign "Left turn on left arrow only". I ignored it and turned left.
The next week, there were 4 lights including the new green left arrow.
 
It all sounds fun to me, from a DIY point of view...

This year I'm doubling my PV capacity.
2025 will likely add a 2nd battery
2026 who knows, maybe a 3rd battery?
In 2027... because I have cheap Chinesium Hybrid Inverters, they will obviously self-destruct, with the oldest being 5 years old. So, I get to buy a new inverter and hey-ho, everything is HV then, so I have the fun of reconfiguring my three 48V packs into one 153V pack (or maybe I buy a few more cells and make it 200V) as by then, there will be HV BMS's more commonly available.

As for safety, the resulting ESS battery will run at a lower current, which is good in my books. And, although you won't want to touch live parts of a 200V DC system - and DC is potentially (cringe, sorry!) more harmful than AC, it's still lower voltage than the peak of a 230V AC waveform. So, it's not like it's going to suddenly ionise the air and zap you from 6" away. And anyway, this is a DIY forum, so the wary can always cover those bare connections with 2 layers of insulating tape ;)
 
SeaGal said:
In 2027... because I have cheap Chinesium Hybrid Inverters, they will obviously self-destruct, with the oldest being 5 years old. So, I get to buy a new inverter and hey-ho, everything is HV then, so I have the fun of reconfiguring my three 48V packs into one 153V pack
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BUT! by then the cells are all Sodium so you need to buy all new cells,
then again at 1/10th the price of Lithium by 2027 this will not be such a bad thing.
 
Instead of purchase I want to just lease the latest inverter (AIO). That way after a couple of years it can be turned back in for the next model. So long as I don't go over 2MWh a year there would be no additional fee at trade in time. There is just something about the new inverter smell that is hard to resist.
 
SeaGal said:
And, although you won't want to touch live parts of a 200V DC system - and DC is potentially (cringe, sorry!) more harmful than AC, it's still lower voltage than the peak of a 230V AC waveform. So, it's not like it's going to suddenly ionise the air and zap you from 6" away. And anyway, this is a DIY forum, so the wary can always cover those bare connections with 2 layers of insulating tape ;)
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DC can cause burns, but AC may be the greatest danger because at 60 Hz (and probably your 50 Hz) it is quite effective at scrambling ion polarities in heart muscle.

Based on my DIY electrical "challenge" tests, 230Vrms is enough to cause a moderate tingle in both arms (each hand touched one node), and cause quite erratic heart rhythm. (I think my mistake was not building DIY defibrillator and DIY EKG first.) It put me in the hospital for a few days monitoring and medication until EKG returned to normal, heart rate stopped making excursions between 50 and 150 bpm, and the sono tech had time to image heart pumping.

On the other hand, my test with 480VDC caused a much stronger hit in one arm (one hand touched while kneeling on damp ground) but the heart was unaffected.

Note - the body may measure 200k ohms with DMM, but is non-linear. At high voltage the skin's dielectric breaks down and your innards are about 500 to 1000 ohms.


As for tape, working around my overhead utility drop I noticed the crimp between their wire and what came out of my riser was wrapped partially in tape, part was exposed with only paint on it. I (successfully) tried to avoid touching it while stuffing 3/0 down the riser inches away. Standing on a metal ladder (I got to get me one of them fiberglass ladders), with vegetation brushing against me. But not in the rain.
 
diysolarforum.com

⚡Shock⚡ through the heart,

And you're to blame, You give solar a bad name! Meant to be safer than a cheater cord, power cord with shrouded banana plugs + Similar wire and banana connected to equipment under test. Now it's easy to stack banana plugs and plug in HV scope probe. It's just as easy to mix up Line and...
diysolarforum.com diysolarforum.com
 

Human challenge study - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The Covid mRNA phase-3 trials were not "challenge" tests, because Covid was at the time (or considered to be) quite serious; didn't want to increase risk to subjects. That meant that subjects continued to take precautions, and only a tiny fraction of the 35,000 in each of test and placebo group were exposed.

So we get 95% relative effectiveness, something like 8 cases vs. 165 cases. Leaving absolute effectiveness 157 cases avoided out of 35,000 subjects, less than 0.5% absolute effectiveness. And more (supposedly unrelated) heart attack deaths in test group vs. control group. So the Anti- crowd talks about "absolute effectiveness" and "needed number to vaccinate" (to prevent one case or one death.)

But of course over time, virtually 100% were exposed, so I think "absolute effectiveness" approaches the percentage for "relative effectiveness." The Anti- crowd never updates their claims. Neither side seems very good at statistics, and both cherry pick evidence. The Pro-crowd of course had to tap dance around the statistical truth, because with variants and after waning, infection rate was higher among "vaccinated" than "non-vaccinated" (like saying it must be different behavior between the groups.) The Pro- group also said naturally acquired immunity (from infection) was much lower than vaccine induced (a lie, maybe cooked numbers, because the non-vaccinated population with lower infection rate were virtually all antibody positive.)

Electrical safety gloves, I don't think "challenge" tests are ever done.

Parachutes, there finally was a "challenge" test to determine effectiveness in saving lives, compared to double-blind group without a parachute. (the outcome will surprise you.)

So yes, I did perform a "challenge" test on electric shock, AC vs. DC. Or because it was inadvertent, maybe this was a non-challenge test among all forum members, so the end point "Still active on the forum" represents both those who didn't get careless, and those like me who none the less got lucky.
 
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OffGridForGood said:
It seems inevitable that inverters move to higher DC operating voltages, as EV's have already done.
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Most grid-tied hybrid inverters here are higher voltage DC, in the 400 V range. 48 V is uncommon.

You are far more restricted with battery choices as they need communications to operate, so often these systems are set to operate with only one, maybe two battery models. And what happens is those battery modules go out of production making expansion later problematic.

An example of grid-tied HV DC is a Fronius Gen24 Plus inverter + BYD batteries.

Even then you need to decide which type of battery module to go with, and you can't mix and match. It's very solid stuff, premium prices.

Examples of higher voltage battery systems sold here:

BYD
Tesla Powerwall
LG Chem Resu
Sungrow
Goodwe
Huawei
AlphaESS
Enphase
Sungrow
SolarEdge

and about a dozen others.

Here higher voltage DC batteries are the norm and none of it is DIY (not legal here).
 
timselectric said:
I was just going on what he said.
I never read YouTube comments.
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Ever since he had like a dozen videos he kept saying he was going to delete everything. I like the video where he thought adding a cheap pf correction capacitor was going to fix everything, lol. And another one where he said he had the wrong size breaker and that is why all his lights are flashing, lol. He makes me laugh.
 
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