What's the best solar-related item you bought in 2023?

[chilly2]

Unfortunate chainsaw accidents happen every day.

Heh, yeah. I'm conflicted. It's a fantastic tree. It's just in the wrong place!

The thing half overhangs my house, and the way the wind blows I generally get all the leaves also! Knowing my luck it'd fall my way too.

 

[Danke]

Sinclair mount.

I may buy some of those in the spring. But dang, it’ll be more expensive than the panels I put on them…

 

[Zwy]

I think someone mentioned once that salt is a good fertilizer for neighbors’ trees.

Copper spike works better. Copper roofing nails with the head cut off so no one notices.

Or so I heard.

Copper sulfate sprinkled around the base might work too, but takes too long.

 

[Rednecktek]

I actually scored a pair of those 280Ah 8s pack from BatteryHookup in the 6 minutes they were available. That's going to triple the battery capacity of my camp for about half the price of the bare cells in my other battery.

 

[Crowz]

I just did a screen shot of another post and realized the picture includes a few toys from this year that I like

The red display is for controller that runs the heating pads keeping my water pipes above freezing.

The green display in the renogy display for its shunt that measures the power in my 12v bank that runs all of my cameras and the battery heaters and the water pipe heaters.

The white box with the blue display is for the wifi thermometer that monitors the workshops temps and emails me if it gets to cold or hot in there.

The black button at the top is for the gowise 1000watt pure sine wave inverter that runs the charger for an old cellphone and charges all the batteries for my power tools. It also powers the ac in the summer and the heater in the winter for the workshop.

 

[ezwryder]

I read somewhere (here??) that the chemical in PT lumber damages aluminum frames (of solar panels). Not true?

I use untreated wood and coat it with oil based paint.

I used rubber pads between the mount brackets and stainless steel screws.

 

[Kiwi2000]

I upgraded all my Epever solar charge controllers to Victron SCCs.

Was well worth it.

 

[disruptit]

My System is pretty Ghetto. I added 8 x DJLBERMPW 12V 100 AH LifePo4 batteries for 1,444.78 after taxes off amazon, which is equivalent to 2 51.2 v 100 amp batteries. I know they are cheap, but they're working fine so far, and staying top balanced to each other. I did initially order two of the AOLithium 51.2 Volt Server rack batteries but they cancelled my order as they oversold their stock. Anyway, I doubled my battery capacity with those, so have 20Kwh's now, which means my array is puny in comparison, I have 1200 more watts of solar panels, that aren't installed yet, which will bring me to 3.6Kwh's of panels, which is still small for 20Kwh of batteries. I plan on getting that system up to probably 5Kwhish of solar panels, So, a max of .25C charging at optimal conditions. So, still pretty gentle on the batteries, as 90%+ of the time it'll be less than .2c rate, and really less than that as I use some of the power as generated as run some loads off it 24x7.

I also upgraded my BMS on my other 10Kwh of batteries to an OverKill solar BMS, which is better than antbms I had before.

I also stopped being completely psycho with my setup and added some more breakers and fuses this year. Flirting with disaster to long. lol.

Next year best thing will likely be cutting down a tree, that is stealing my solar power for a couple hours in the morning!! I'll likely get a couple more Kwh's per day doing that.

 

[EnderWiggin]

OP: Amazing idea for a topic, super kudos on the idea! Ask this again in a year, I’m in the process of planning for a three phase 208/120Y install in the Caribbean with 13kW of panels and over 50kW of battery that got delayed a year due to supply chain. Wife is likely to kill me over it but solar in the Caribbean makes sooooo much sense.

Sorry that I don’t have my own purchase or good story to post (yet), though I guess you could say my investment in three Emporia Vue 2 to monitor usage (in prep for the build, currently monitoring the condo we have on the same island) are my invaluable assets, seeing a tankless water heater hit 8600W on fire up was an eye opener along with tracking how a dishwasher uses power.

Aside from that, and at the risk of sounding far too sappy as I fly home for Christmas, I wanted to say that I’m thankful for this forum. Even when there’s arguments, it’s usually over being as clear and specific as possible, which really just improves us all. I mean come on there were about a dozen posts about how the 18kpv should have been named differently (which I agree, it should have been named the 12k or something, but given that even Victron, one of the most honest and open about their capabilities insists on a 4kW constant load inverter as being a “5000”… meh… ). The members and contributors to this site have been amazingly inspiring.

Thank you all, and Merry Christmas!

 

[mactech]

Victron smart shunt and more batteries and panels.

 

[Will Prowse]

I upgraded all my Epever solar charge controllers to Victron SCCs.

Was well worth it.

I love my epevers (had at least ten) and still haven't destroyed one, but victron the way to go. The app and data logging is amazing.

 

[MAC20121]

Zendure super base 4600/sat. Looks good, moves good , works good. Heats and cools thru heat pump ac.

how long working?
my hybrid ac went blank 2nd day, running on v4600 direct line 240v

 

[OPTIMALSOLAR]

how long working?
my hybrid ac went blank 2nd day, running on v4600 direct line 240v

9 months. Running my heater as I write.

 

[Hedges]

I got the Fluke i2000 scope probe. 20 kHz upper bandwidth, good for capacitor and transformer inrush.
Shopping used hint: The yellow one has 20A, 200A, 2000A scales. The brown one I got is only 200A, 2000A.

Fluke i2000 Flex AC Current Clamp

The i2000 is an AC current probe utilizing the Rogowski principle. It can be used to measure currents up to 2000 A when used in conjunction with multimeters, recorders or data loggers. The flexible and lightweight measuring head allows quick and easy installation in hard to reach areas.

www.fluke.com

If anybody else wants a flexible current probe (good for DMM, or scope with BNC to Banana adapter), here's a listing $45 each plus $7 shipping. I just bought four. He's got 7 more.

Fluke I2000 Flex Flexible AC Current Probe Pm9081 for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Fluke I2000 Flex Flexible AC Current Probe Pm9081 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I also bought a couple VFD. Figure I can get waveforms of all three output leads and the asynchronous single phase input I'll be using.

[Edit: Of the 4 I bought, I haven't been able to get any to work. One I already own does work.]

 

[JRH]

A new Moss 590 12 ga with mounted light.
( to help protect all my stuff sitting in the dark out in the pasture everynite ).

J.

 

[Honuz]

Happy New year to everybody .. !!
I replaced my chinese inverters / MPPT with 2 Multiplus II (nice promo in Europe : 950€ for a 5kVA and 620€ for a 3kVA), a cerbo and an RS450/100.
The MPPT start to produce earlier then the chinese all in one i was having and waste less energy doing so, i would like to see 2 options for the RS450, "startup voltage" and "Shutdown Voltage" to reduce those 30min wasted in the morning and 45min in the evening...
All is working pretty well, i'm on the subject i talked about some month ago, connecting the Junctek shunt to the cerbo, the junctek is precise enough and the display is far better then the BMV7xx.
In the end, the whole 2xMultiplus II+RS450+Cerbo cost 2.8k€, this has to be compared to the 700€ of my previous chiinese system ... i regret having wasted my time with those cheap chinese devices, i learn things .. but i wasted time.

 

[fpgt72]

I am really new at all this still, and this will be my first winter.

I think it will be my heating pads to keep my batteries nice and comfortable.

 

[teeumup]

A light-hearted thread for Christmas time...

As the title says... what's the best thing / what do you love the most that you bought this year. Either directly solar or a solar related tool, component etc...

I'll kick it off to say I love my new Raspberry Pi 5... amazingly powerful yet so small and power efficient. Lucky to get one as they're very limited supply over here. It will be put to good use for to handle some inverter RS485 comms in due course - once this old dog has learnt some new tricks, that is ?‍?

 

[teeumup]

SPAN panel....probably the best power device I have ever owned. Eventually, it will be my critical load panel as well but for now it has all of the analytics I could want. Replaced a 25-year-old dinosaur of an electrical panel that had a smoldering fire in it.
Second would have been my EG4 18KPV with a wall battery, but my first 5 days of commissioning experience have been very bad. Either I got a lemon or the firmware is not ready for primetime...still hacking away at it for now but going on day 6 and it still can do simple stuff.

 

[littleharbor2]

My Mirage Magnum22 Mini Split heat pump. This thing uses half the power of the Panasonic unit it replaced. The heat it puts out is wonderful. Summer's coming up and the AC cooling side will get a workout. This unit runs off a new 3000 watt 24 volt AIO fed by 4- 550 watt solar panels. I have a minimal battery bank connected for buffering. Basically I'm running off the PV all summer long.