Why is solar so damn difficult?
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- Start date
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Exactly, and you don't have to buy the product to download any of it.
timselectric
If I can do it, you can do it.
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2022
- Messages
- 18,637
Yup
If you want every possible feature, known to man (or women). And have complete automatic operation.
You need a hybrid AIO.
If you want every possible feature, known to man (or women). And have complete automatic operation.
You need a hybrid AIO.
Because you're trying to do everything, at once, first time, correctly, for a complicated setup. That's never going to work out well.
My solar install is deliberately designed to grow with my knowledge. Started with a pre-fab kit of tiny wattage, some old throwaway batteries, etc. and then I pick one piece and upgrade or change it out as I go. I'd far rather play and blow up the £30 solar controller at the start than mess up and take out a more expensive one later.
I literally factor it into the cost of everything I do - that I will make mistakes, hit dead-ends, maybe even "get bored" with the whole idea of solar. It's how I approach every hobby. There's no point going out and buying a stupid-expensive professional fishing rod until you know how to fish, and you know WHY it's such an expensive fishing rod and how it differs and (most importantly) whether it would even make any difference to your skill to have such a fishing rod at all!
Same with solar - I started small (after research). Added a panel (after research). Upgraded the battery (after research). Added an inverter (after research). Upgraded the charge controller (after hitting some limits, and by then had enough data to spot a much better charge rate from MTTP instead of PWM, etc.). Upgraded the wiring (after research). Fitted the panels so they were angled correctly (after research, and again able to see the difference). Upgraded the solar again (after more research as the new panels were different). Upgraded the inverter (after hitting a limit and now knowing what I should be aiming for). Upgraded the batteries again. Then changed the battery chemistry entirely (once I'd researched it all and was confident... the previous batteries had cost me nothing as they had come from old car batteries or spent UPS batteries).
Along the way I would realise that I hadn't changed out that cable, or needed to account for the greater current, or realised I needed a cut-off switch, or a fuse panel, or a panel combiner rather than just Y-cables everywhere.
So you can say that I "wasted" some purchases and kit. But I wasted the £30 purchases, not the £3000 ones. And by the time I got into the more serious stuff, I had a feel for how it all worked, where I needed to upgrade my bottlenecks or for safety, and so on. And still I refuse to over-commit to a "hobby project", as I see it. It's rode me through power-cuts, I've toasted bread powered just off my inverter, and so on. But I'm still not going to drop thousands on a load more panels and upgrades just yet. In case I get bored, in case I get overwhelmed, in case I get out of my depth, in case I move too fast and miss something important. Several times I've gone back and gone "Oh... you're not supposed to have that grade of cable there now that I've increased the current in this part of the circuit" or "No, hold on, if I join all those panels that way, it'll pull too much current" - but because I never pulled everything to capacity, I had time to realise my error and correct it before it ever became an issue..
Thus far - I have "blown" nothing of value. The only fuse I've blown was one in a mains lead that I literally deliberately replaced the fuse for the lowest possible when I installed it, in order to be safe (and I forgot I had done so... but by that point I knew that the whole thing was safely capable of far more and so upped the fuse... again only to what I needed and all well within spec and what it had been supplied with).
And it's far better to get an unintentional spark that makes you think "Hold on, why is that live?!" when the system is tiny than when it's running your entire house. I once got a spark back from the INPUT of a definitely-turned-off and entirely disconnected inverter. Once it happened I sat down and thought about it and realised what was happening (capacitors in the inverter discharging). But better to know that and be aware and have the "scare" with a tiny system with a tiny inverter and being able to design against that later on.
If solar is a learning experience for you, then treat it like a hobby. Don't go out and spent £10k on a golf cart and clubs before you even know if you like playing golf.
To be honest, much of this forum is far too big a scale for me, and I still see people at larger scales making very silly mistakes (and those are only the ones who admit to it on a public forum!) or running setups that I consider dubious or amateur-looking. I'm happy with my little hobby and my nicely-done, vastly-overspecced cables that I took great care over, running a relatively minor load - isolated from the grid and my home electrics. And if I find it's not for me? Well, I have a nice few panels that can put on a light or run a drill in the shed forever more with little maintenance. But if I enjoy the project and see success, I'll just keep building it out.
Hell, I'm still on a 12V system. It does everything I need. Most of my kit is 12V/24V/48V capable so I have plenty of room for expansion but speccing the cable for 12V means that if I do upgrade, my system actually gets "safer" because the current will drop for the same amount of power. Once I have enough batteries / panels to justify it I will upgrade parts of it and convert to 48V.
But if you try to launch in straight at the top-end (even if you see other people doing so) without understanding - that's when you're going to waste your money and time, burn down your house, and potentially even hurt someone.
My solar install is deliberately designed to grow with my knowledge. Started with a pre-fab kit of tiny wattage, some old throwaway batteries, etc. and then I pick one piece and upgrade or change it out as I go. I'd far rather play and blow up the £30 solar controller at the start than mess up and take out a more expensive one later.
I literally factor it into the cost of everything I do - that I will make mistakes, hit dead-ends, maybe even "get bored" with the whole idea of solar. It's how I approach every hobby. There's no point going out and buying a stupid-expensive professional fishing rod until you know how to fish, and you know WHY it's such an expensive fishing rod and how it differs and (most importantly) whether it would even make any difference to your skill to have such a fishing rod at all!
Same with solar - I started small (after research). Added a panel (after research). Upgraded the battery (after research). Added an inverter (after research). Upgraded the charge controller (after hitting some limits, and by then had enough data to spot a much better charge rate from MTTP instead of PWM, etc.). Upgraded the wiring (after research). Fitted the panels so they were angled correctly (after research, and again able to see the difference). Upgraded the solar again (after more research as the new panels were different). Upgraded the inverter (after hitting a limit and now knowing what I should be aiming for). Upgraded the batteries again. Then changed the battery chemistry entirely (once I'd researched it all and was confident... the previous batteries had cost me nothing as they had come from old car batteries or spent UPS batteries).
Along the way I would realise that I hadn't changed out that cable, or needed to account for the greater current, or realised I needed a cut-off switch, or a fuse panel, or a panel combiner rather than just Y-cables everywhere.
So you can say that I "wasted" some purchases and kit. But I wasted the £30 purchases, not the £3000 ones. And by the time I got into the more serious stuff, I had a feel for how it all worked, where I needed to upgrade my bottlenecks or for safety, and so on. And still I refuse to over-commit to a "hobby project", as I see it. It's rode me through power-cuts, I've toasted bread powered just off my inverter, and so on. But I'm still not going to drop thousands on a load more panels and upgrades just yet. In case I get bored, in case I get overwhelmed, in case I get out of my depth, in case I move too fast and miss something important. Several times I've gone back and gone "Oh... you're not supposed to have that grade of cable there now that I've increased the current in this part of the circuit" or "No, hold on, if I join all those panels that way, it'll pull too much current" - but because I never pulled everything to capacity, I had time to realise my error and correct it before it ever became an issue..
Thus far - I have "blown" nothing of value. The only fuse I've blown was one in a mains lead that I literally deliberately replaced the fuse for the lowest possible when I installed it, in order to be safe (and I forgot I had done so... but by that point I knew that the whole thing was safely capable of far more and so upped the fuse... again only to what I needed and all well within spec and what it had been supplied with).
And it's far better to get an unintentional spark that makes you think "Hold on, why is that live?!" when the system is tiny than when it's running your entire house. I once got a spark back from the INPUT of a definitely-turned-off and entirely disconnected inverter. Once it happened I sat down and thought about it and realised what was happening (capacitors in the inverter discharging). But better to know that and be aware and have the "scare" with a tiny system with a tiny inverter and being able to design against that later on.
If solar is a learning experience for you, then treat it like a hobby. Don't go out and spent £10k on a golf cart and clubs before you even know if you like playing golf.
To be honest, much of this forum is far too big a scale for me, and I still see people at larger scales making very silly mistakes (and those are only the ones who admit to it on a public forum!) or running setups that I consider dubious or amateur-looking. I'm happy with my little hobby and my nicely-done, vastly-overspecced cables that I took great care over, running a relatively minor load - isolated from the grid and my home electrics. And if I find it's not for me? Well, I have a nice few panels that can put on a light or run a drill in the shed forever more with little maintenance. But if I enjoy the project and see success, I'll just keep building it out.
Hell, I'm still on a 12V system. It does everything I need. Most of my kit is 12V/24V/48V capable so I have plenty of room for expansion but speccing the cable for 12V means that if I do upgrade, my system actually gets "safer" because the current will drop for the same amount of power. Once I have enough batteries / panels to justify it I will upgrade parts of it and convert to 48V.
But if you try to launch in straight at the top-end (even if you see other people doing so) without understanding - that's when you're going to waste your money and time, burn down your house, and potentially even hurt someone.
Doesn't really apply to me.. I am an electronic engineer. I don't need to learn about electrical systems. All I need is documentation that is clear and concise, not a bunch of sprawling brain dumps that the Victron stuff appears to be. There's certainly tonnes of Victron documentation, but finding the relevant information is a nightmare.
