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Forum Index : Solar : We had a bit of weather Wednesday night. How did the solar go..
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poida Guru  Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
Evidently there was a big and energetic storm Wednesday night, about midnight in the Dandenong hills area of Melbourne. I of course slept through it. Most of us were watching 6 ft diameter trees crash down everywhere. a bit of info First, some info on my solar system. 12 panels, 250W, facing North, about 15 deg angle 12 panels, 250W, facing East, about 25 deg 2 mppt controllers, one for each array 8 x 200AH 12V SLA. A recent capacity test showed 15kW.hr 4 x 200AH 12V SLA on a separate circuit, capacity estimated at 8kW.hr The 4 x 4 FET inverter (nanoverter and 6kW Madness power board) Wednesday brought a sh!t-load of rain and the battery/charge situation is below:  Brown is inverter power Dark Blue is solar charge power Light Blue is battery voltage Purple is street power. We can see that my wife was hammering things from 12pm onwards. Total charge for Wednesday was 1.18kW.hr and probably the lowest on record for me. Inverter energy was 1.53 kW.hr Battery at 12am was 48.6V But we had street power.. Thursday:  Street power stopped about 12 midnight. I woke up at 7am and put the inverter on "manual" which will keep it running no matter how low the battery goes. It was cloudy all day. Total charge energy was 3.54 kW.hr Inverter energy was 5.39 kW.hr No problems, we got this. The power will come back on tomorrow. Friday:  hmm, starting the day with a low voltage of 47.2 is not good without street power. I notice my wife made some toast at 6:30am. Just what the battery needed. But we got some sun during the day. So much that I felt confident we could run the dishwasher from 1:30pm. I hope we get street power tomorrow. Total charge was 7.49 kW.hr Inverter energy was 7.98 kW.hr We can do this. Saturday:  I spent the day watching the charge power curve. And getting pretty nervous now. We could do with some sun. But it is Melbourne. NO SUN FOR YOU, POIDA. charge energy was 3.66 kW.hr Inverter used 5.13kW.hr The battery voltage is now too low. No street power. AusNet text me saying power back Monday, 1pm. Seeing all the damage all over the hills I think "in about a week or so more likely" Sunday:  And the weather prediction was for half cloudy skies. Not where I was. But just as I was finding a razor to cut my throat the sun came out 1pm. charge energy 5.14kW.hr Inverter used 5.39kW.hr "We" felt confident enough to do some gaming with the Xbox and 60" TV at 8pm. "We did", but I knew it was not a good idea. So let's start a day with the battery at 46 Volts. Perfect! not Monday:  Not looking good. At 12:30pm I did a short test to see if an Eltek power supply can charge the spare battery. I thought I could put the 4 50kG batteries in the back of the car and drive to work, charge them while there and run the house with them in the car, plus inverter on the back seat. That's a plan... AusNet now say Thursday, 11pm. Maybe. They are too busy to even make good guesses now. I did a quick run to Bunnings & total tools to see if I could buy a generator. Of course not, silly! I then get the bright idea maybe RenewableMark has an generator. He loves camping with the caravan and family. He does and I can have it. Off to Mt Evelin to pick it up. One hour later when driving into my driveway I see our outside lights on. Street power is back. So I put the 2kW Eltek to work, charging the battery and spare. I expect further power losses as AusNet sort out things and rewire this and that. You can see the rapid battery voltage drop 12am-8am Monday This means there was about 1/2 of naff-all charge left. We did get some sun. We could have made it through the night but I think the odds were not good. I think this is a good time to review the system design and how it's run. What's good: - the inverter. It needs about 0.45 Amp with zero load. This is not a lot of waste compared to the working loads. - The battery. It still is good enough. I connected the spare in parallel to the main battery to bring it to a nominal 600Ah at 50V. But the state of charge at the start of the power outage was low, maybe only 50%. And capacity was not nominal, it was about 2/3 that and maybe less. - the mppt controllers. They just worked. I love them. I know they are efficient because I tested and measured the efficiency carefully on the bench. - 6kW of panels. During overcast weather, orientation is not significant so I probably had full use of 6kW but could only ever make 600-800W during bright overcast weather. That's good.. - we did all cooking on 2 burner BBQ stove inside. Always enough gas. - heating was from the Nektre wood heater and we had 4 cubic meters of cut, dry hardwood. - even the bloody tropical fish traveled well. I spend about 100W on the tank when the heater is on. Ungrateful beasts. Do I ever hear them say "thanks poida?" - rechargable torches. You get what you pay for too so spend a bit. What's bad: - Melbourne weather. Not enough solar power and that is that. - The 3kw array facing East. It gets almost zero Winter direct sun. It is there to double output during overcast conditions. I need more panels and I need to point them North. - the battery. - ignoring the weather predictions. I could have used the lonely braincell and pre-charged the batteries overnight Wednesday and got 15kW.hr in the bag. - dark houses and 60 year old bodies. It's easy to fall and injure yourself in the dark. And we have a 16 week old puppy running around our feet. Meet Bill:  parts of the plan: the battery: Once I run it into the ground, take it to the scrap yard and then get my back repaired at the physio, I will get the biggest forklift battery I can find. 1000Ah is about right. Power In: 1 - Replace the solar pool heater with 12kW of panels, and these will face West. 2 - Put another 6 panels on the only North facing house roof area. (the 3kW North panel is on the carport roof and it's covered fully now) 3 - Will need another mppt too but that's no problem at all. 4 - set up an Eltek power supply permanently with a remote control and timer so I can switch it on and off as needed at any time. 5 - buy a new generator, good for 2kW. See below for thoughts on generator power Out: The inverter is fine. No need to change anything. Maybe do another power audit with the Powermate Lite. Procedures: 1 - test generator every 6 months. 2 - use charger to top off battery every month probably more changes or additions The generator just needs to be 2kW. I will use it to charge the battery via the Eltek. This will work well in my view. I run the motor at high output and maybe it's best efficiency. The Eltek draws 2kW with a near 1.0 power factor so it's generator friendly and it even has a soft start cycle so the generator will not cop a huge switch on load. The Eltek is 95% efficient which is great. Finally I want to thank Mark for providing me with the loan of his generator. At that point in time on Monday things were looking grim. Edited 2021-06-15 11:10 by poida wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
VERY interesting read! That is one incredibly beautiful little pup! I have a thing for animals. Bugger all compassion for a lot of humans but animals I have a real soft spot for. I see your solar generation is equivalent to mine in bad weather, Useless! North is the holy grail for panels. You can do east and west and get good results but my limited north array just seems to perform so much better than the others put together for what it is. I put up a north ground mount in winter to help. As far as a generator, I surmise you don't want to spend a lot on it so a Diesel would probably be out of the budget. I would STRONGLY suggest however, if you want 2kw, go for a 3 or a 5Kw especially in petrol. Inevitably you will get something Chinese, even if you buy a western brand like a Briggs, and they are always Optimistically or peak rated. The engines are actually at peak efficiency ( and best lifetime) at something like 70-75% output rather than full tilt and then you have other issues like heat build-up in what is often the aluminium windings. Myself I would look at something at least 4-5KW because then you have some headroom to run the lights and kettle, whatever, while you are charging the battery and that is worthwhile and efficient. I would suggest you look for and spend the money on a genny with copper windings, if you can find one and I would also clarify if they are full copper windings not the BS slight of hand they use now which is copper coated ally. Any damn trick to save a dollar, even if it is only one dollar. You would be FAR better off getting a genny that is under stressed rather than running flat out but that said, if You can buy 2 or 3 Cheapies for the price of one decent one, that may be something to look at with any advantages it may have for you. Most of the Chinese gennys aren't bad now and they are all pretty much clones for the given size with different paint and stickers on them. 6.5 and 8 Hp motors are popular and the ones I have are Ultra reliable as well. Putting up another 13.5 Kw of panels should at least double your Charge input so that may lessen the need for a generator but No way I would not have one. The cost is well worth the peace of mind having them gives me even though I only use them about once every 10 years but I do have a belief from watching how things are going in the industry rather than just the media that here at least if not in most places, the power situation is going to get very grim in the next 5 years. I am prepared already. One other thing, make sure you have a decent fuel supply on hand. Like with going to buy a generator when the power is out or Pumps when there are fires, you may not be able to get fuel easily in the case of an outage. Just no power to run the pumps. I always have a good supply of petrol, Diesel and Oil on hand and rather than store them as such, I have enough drums so I just rotate them. Use the oldest fuel first in the mowers or tractor whatever and then refill the drum and that goes on the end and then use the next one when I need it. Nothing is ever more than 2-3 Months old and I always have plenty on hand to get me though any outage or even price hike. I use those 25L Square Translucent Drums. I get them from restaurants and Car washes. They can have detergent, disinfectant, dishwashing liquid or whatever in them and the restaurants throw them out when they are empty. They NEVER leak and are quite tough and last for many , many years particularly if you keep them out the sun. You can fit a Tap in the bottom of them as well. I would also Suggest you run the generator more like every 3 Months. NEVER use any ethanol laced fuel in them, that causes all sorts of problems especially when things are sitting round for any period. The ethanol Absorbs water like no ones business and you will have a carb full of water the next time you go to start the thing. I have seen it in mowers that are not used for as little as a fortnight. I don't put that rubbish crap near any engine I own. Many generators don't have a fuel tap. If you get one that does not, go to the mower shop and buy an inline tap and install it. I would also get an automotive inline fuel filter and install that as well. All mine have good car fuel filters on them off subarus which work really well and can be easily spliced in. When you run the genny, turn the fuel off and let it use all the fuel in the carb so there is none in there sitting and evaporating to gum it up. I also put some 2 stroke in mine at about 50:1 so it coats everything to prevent moisture problems. Did you get any questions from your neighbours when they saw your lights On? I had an outage many years back and fired up the genny and had neighbours telling me if the power was out much longer, I would HAVE to put a lead over the fence because it " Wasn't fair" I had power and they didn't . These were neighbours I got on really well with but the attitude was astonishing and relating the tale, I have had many people say they have experienced the same thing. One of my neighbours here has generators himself so between him and I, when the last outage happened last year, we had the places lit up like Christmas. I had more lights and things going than usual because all these LEDs don't put much load on a genny and it was hunting a fair bit because it wasn't doing anything. From memory I ended up putting a fan heater on low outside to ballast thing a bit. Are used panels easy to get in Melbourne and what do they go for? Just Finished loading up half a 12 Kw order I have to deliver tomorrow. |
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| poida Guru Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
Davo: used panels are fairly cheap. But last time I bought 8 x 250W factory seconds for $40 each so I will probably try and get more of them. My location and neighbours are pretty cool. On one side they are a bit "no, no, we don't need any help". Could not work it out until it twigged and I think they are running a bit of a home grown dope thing in the garage. The others bought a new generator Monday. Across the road are good people who manage OK. We offered to boil water for hot drinks etc. charge things for other people around here. I think if you are in an agro and idiotic location, put a power board out the front with a sign "free phone and torch charging" and offer a coffee while they wait. Maybe that might help smooth things. And a little sign showing the cost of the generator and the fact you paid cash without any tax deduction. It's great you discussed Alum winding type generators and why to avoid. And why cheap is cheap. My wife offered to go halvies with the purchase so that means we can look a bit more carefully. Yamaha make them. Maybe they have copper windings.. As far as efficient running, I need to do much more research obviously. a 4kW unit seems about right, with the 2kW charge and the occasional extra load, landing in the 50% capacity spot. I can't rule out petrol engines. Well maintained they must run well with clean fuel, no crap in carb etc. Diesel would have to air cooled and so a bit noisy? But they run and run. Ideal would be water cooled for the noise but now it's getting serious. Edited 2021-06-15 17:47 by poida wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
You sure have a generous Community spirt mate! Here we are in a very good neighbourhood although like everywhere else, there are still the bogans living in the $1.5M+ houses around here. I have a panel on the roof that is connected to a cheap PWM charger sitting on my desk. It's connected to 2x 12V 9 Ah batteries and does all my phone, tablet and battery charging. I have a torch fetish and run them all on rechargeables. The 18650 types are awesome now. One I have is literally better than the headlight on a car. Will light up a road in broad beam for a good 50M, will throw a spot for several hundred and has a Candle function that is still better than 90% of torches from 10 years ago but lasts about 60 hours. Was going to get another but they are discontinued now. Might look for something else. I think one has to keep things in proportion. If you add in all these extra panels, the amount of times you need a genny might thankfully be once a year or less. Yeah, I love my big Diesel gennys but they are a proclivity of mine, not a practicality for 99% of grid connected people. Even water-cooled, they are pretty noisy, especially compared to something like a Honda or Yammy. You can fire those things up and put them on the back verandah, close the door and you can't hear them over the telly. Been there, done that! Then you pick them up with one hand when the outage is over and put them back in the laundry or shed for next time. I need a tractor to move my diesels. The last little diesel ENGINE I bought is 4 Hp and weighs 60 Kg. Add a gen-head and it's 80-100. I think a 3 Kw Honda Inverter is about 40 all up? Diesels might be good if you are going to run them everyday or a day a week but even then, you would come back to the cost and lifetime of one Vs, the cost and lifetime of a petrol genny. We all tend to think of longest life but in so many things I have found that to be a false economy. So many things are Cheaper to buy cheaper and replace 3 times if you have to which will still be cheaper or no more than getting the better product. In my repeated experience I have bought the cheaper unit and never had to replace it and the things worked Brilliantly for my needs. I think gennys could be like this. Sort of a contradiction with what I said about copper windings etc but I think there may still be some out there. I think one is best to look at your use and spend accordingly. IMHO age is in some instances a bigger factor when things are sitting round unused than the hours of life in them when they are being put to work. I have a petrol genny I used to have running my trailer full of computers and printers on location. That thing must have hundreds of hours on it and I think came from super cheap originally. I bought it second had and other than the occasional frequency check as it's not an inverter type and adjustment, the thing has been great. Only changed the oil a few times and don't ever remember putting a plug in it. I buy cheap gear often because I work on the times and hours I'll need it. 100 Hours on a genny would be nothing even for a Cheapie but that may be 10 years use for what you need. Going the extra for a Yammy or Honda is OK but they will still need maintence and checking. My father has a Honda and left it a couple of years and it was still a bugger to start because the fuel had probably gone off for one thing. The fuel might have been last added 2 years before he last used it anyway. I try to remember to run it every time I'm up there because although it's a great machine, there are other limiting factors. People often talk about Diesel being cheaper to run but if you are only going to spend 5 or 10 Bucks on petrol in a year, who the hell cares? You'd probably save maybe .50C on the cost of running a diesel. There are Gennys now like the Ryobi and I think Kawasaki's that are Fuel injected so their consumption is so close to diesel it does not matter and for occasional use, certainly is not worth the premium you pay for a diesel. Very easy to get caught up in going overboard to get the best but I think it's more important to get the tool to best suit the job. In this case no question any half decent petrol genny ( and probably most of the chyneese types) would do the job YOU have for many, many years without problem. |
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Revlac Guru Joined: 31/12/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1022 |
Nothing like a bit of bad weather to prove your off grid solar system, there was at one stage a lot of little gensets being sold with aluminium winding's, the diesel gensets used to shake the aluminium winding out and mash it all up (I know, I picked up a cheep one just for the motor) Some of the new generators might have written on the box that they have full copper winding's. Generally when I (rarely) have low power (5Kwh overnight usage) and need to charge the battery, I put the most power in to the batteries in the shortest running time for the generator, and have enough power into the battery to happily last over night. As far as generators go I have many other uses for them whereas others would not, quite often use one for 3 phase, the grid we had, would never supply that sort of power at the time. Cheers Aaron Off The Grid |
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Haxby Guru Joined: 07/07/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 423 |
We copped the same storm here too, though we are at sea level so the winds were closer to 80km/h as opposed to the 100 - 110 km winds Poida and those to the north east of vic would have. I only log "sold to grid" kWh, after self consumption, and Wednesday was an all time low of 40 watt hours sold. Ha ha! Thursday was 1.06 kWh sold. That's basically nothing for my 10.8kw of solar array. About 12 cents worth ha ha. We didn't lose grid power but our friends in the same suburb lost power for 4 days. When power was restored, they found that half their appliances were burnt out. Do you think that's from the inductance in the power lines? Or residual inductance collapsing in a street transformer? Not sure if the surge was when power turned off or power restored. (Or both) |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I wonder how many other people were in the same Boat? Probably be a rush at the local Whitegoods shops. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
More likely the 11Kv (or whatever it is) high voltage lines came down and came in momentary contact with the 240v lines lower down the same pole. Not much you can really do about that either. I am told that the biggest single problem with any standby generator is fuel and fuel storage. Condensation into diesel, petrol going off over very long storage times, not to mention the possibility of leakage and fire risk. The fire brigade and home insurers can get really anal about fuel storage. Anyhow Peter, as you are in Melbourne, check out small generators that can run on either low pressure propane or natural gas. With natural gas, no need for any fuel storage, or going out to buy the stuff, no exhaust smells, and no topping up the fuel every few hours. Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Which is exactly why I rotate my fuel to keep it fresh and from going off. A lot of people talk about adding expensive fuel treatments but They are always just based on Naptha which I bought at Bunnys on Tuesday For $9 for a Litre bottle and I don't think it really makes up for stale fuel or preserves it that well Better to keep it fresh. Anyhow Peter, as you are in Melbourne, check out small generators that can run on either low pressure propane or natural gas. Excellent Idea for this Purpose. I looked at this some years ago for reasons that now escape me and found the specific LPG/ Gas Generators were very exy compared to the petrol ones. There were conversion kits available pretty cheap like this one: GAS Carb kit. They make them specifically for Honda and Yamaha Models as well. They all seem to be much the same for the other gennys, some say LPG, some say LPG-nat gas. I imagine the jetting would be different for the 2 as would the Nat gas pressure which I don't know if the regulator would handle. In any case, having the ability to run just off LPG would be good and eliminate the fuel storage issue if one did not have a regular ability to be able to rotate in through Mowers, tillers, petrol vacs etc as a normal use. Could always just put it in the car every 2 or 3 Months and refill though. I have picked up a bunch of LPG tanks at the local scrappy. They are glad to get rid of them. Some are in date, some not. The Minimum wage workers at the local independent servo don't ever look at the dates, long as the bottle looks OK they fill the thing and take your Money. Wouldn't be hard to get 4-5 of these for nothing and have them filled and waiting. Long as they are indoors and out the weather, should last 20 years. Could probably work out how much run time you would get out of a bottle buy loading the genning and weighing the bottle and see how long it takes to use half a KG of gas and Multiply that by 18 and you'd have a reasonable idea. Even if they are a one shot deal, if you don't pay anything for the used bottles other than the gas, then the price is still well worth it. |
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| poida Guru Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
Thanks all for your thoughts on a generator. To summarise my view: 1 - Melbourne weather means cloudy skies and at best 1/10th output from the panels. It is an unwise person to assume there will be sun. So that means a genny. 2 - diesel generators start at about $3,500 AU for 3kVA Not going to happen. 3 - LPG generators are everywhere in USA. No so here in OZ 4 - petrol generators are what the OZ market sells, in the main and I think I will go there. 5 - LPG conversion is a road I do not want to go. Reliability is key. Let's say I blow $1,800 on a 3.2kVA Hyundai genny that runs on petrol. Fuel will be handled by the fact we use a fair bit with the lawn mower so there will be 10 litres of fresh fuel at hand at any time. We can pull more from either car if needed. I assume power will be available at fuel stations anyway. This is not an End Of The World situation, just fallen power lines in large numbers, combined with a privatised network operator who has 1/4 the repair & maintenance personnel available compared to the State run organisation. (old SEC people note well the difference of things after it was sold off by Kennett) Private profit is more important than providing essential services. Amen. Just keep the generator well looked after, no stale fuel in it etc. It can't be much harder than that. The Hyundai HY3200SEi genny will not start with a flat battery. Even the pull start won't start it. So that will need to be looked at, maybe an external 12V IN connection to the battery as a user modification for keeping a trickle charge.. (just a bit of info on finances - I work and can fund this after one week's wage and my wife will chip in $600. It's not going to be too bad for me) wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
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| Haxby Guru Joined: 07/07/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 423 |
How about adding 2x 24v truck alternators to your car? If one alternator can be isolated from chassis, you could get 48v out and charge your batt bank? The newer alternators are good at producing power at low revs. Older ones not so much. |
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| poida Guru Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
Hax, I also was thinking of some sort of hack involving alternators. Thinking all I need is a big motor - got one here with the wood splitter - and remove it, some belts etc and a couple of large alternators. Whatever Volts AC will be good enough to feed into a crude controller based on a solid state AC relay. Latest news for about 3K customers (or homes and people if you prefer) in the hills is power will be restored about 10th July. https://twitter.com/AusNetServices/status/1405075630094422017 Yes, 3 weeks from now. We still have street power after it was restored Monday. AusNet can grovel and apologize all they like but I think it's time we got organised and made some microgrids. Time to take control of our destiny. Stop being used and abused by one or the other multinational utility. And elect political representation that enables the above, not obstructs it. It's one thing for me to be OK and under control. Mark's generator is sitting unused in the workshop right now. 3K people/homes have nothing for 3 more weeks. What can I do to help this? One idea I have had for while is to join the local Men's Sheds and talk them all through home brew solar power. Start with the idea that it's all extensible. Put some panels on a roof. Get a battery of some sort. Make a mppt. Then make an inverter. Then hook up some loads. Stand back and survey the independence and satisfaction of doing it without multinational profit making pricks involvement. Then make a bigger battery. Put more panels up. Think about better charge control. Show others how to do it too. wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
What about an F&P Motor or a couple thereof? IF you can work something from AC, What about an Induction motor Generator? If you could put a constant load on one, they would be cheap and ideal. I have a 4 and a 12Kw up the back now I'm going to set up for backfeeding but then look at the best way I can get stand alone out of them. I think you have the knowledge and smarts to come up with something to that end quite easily. If you don't want to dismantle the splitter, the Chinese Stationary engines are Cheap and in my considerable experience with about 20 Of them, Extremely reliably. Parts are unbelievably cheap as well. The main thing I have seen go on them ( And plenty of Honda's) is Coils. They are about $17 delivered off fleabay and work perfectly. That is Unreal! I will bet all these people get is some insulting make believe off of compensation like $50 off their next bill or something equally inappropriate. The power industry in this country and most others are legalised extortion. The level of contempt they have for their customers I have not seen in any other business. They insult us with crap about trying to make power prices cheaper while they are pulling $3 Billion, ( yes BILLION) net profit out of this country alone. They then talk rubbish with the Gubbermint ( any gubbermint) about w"orking hard to bring power prices down" and in the same breath not being able to afford to upgrade infrastructures and having to pass on every little cost. It IS criminal but it's covered up and allowed to happen. Don't even get me started. My hatred and contempt for the power industry is borderline Violent. Well I'm with you there and it is why I am so heavily into solar and Generators. I can see bad power shortages coming in this country and even capital cities in the near future. The way they are just biasing the system to make the most obscene profits while providing the least service while still being the most overbearing and controlling entities makes me think that going off grid is just a matter of time and I want to have as much in place as I can for when I want to make the jump. I am sorry to be rude but that is laughable. Whom are you going to vote for? The majors are as corrupt as each other and in bed with these companies and the independents don't get a look in because people are too lazy and stupid to vote in number for anyone but the majors. When people like me do that have done all my life, almost without exception that vote goes to the majors anyway. The average person has no clue as to the legalised corruption, backhanders and general way the cesspit of a system is played. It's all about money, looking after the boys and ensuring the nest is well feathered for when they leave politics. Nothing will be done, the only thing is for people to do what they can to lower their bills, and increase their independence and go off grid if that suits. For me, cheaper to stay ongrid and just minimise my power costs best I can which is substantially. I laugh when I get power bills as to how little I am paying them while getting them to provide me with a service I am well in front with.... at the moment. I think the deciding factor in the interest and motivation of people is going to be how often they get outages and for how long. If people get 2-3 a year for an hour or 6, they are unlikely to be that worried. If they get one a week for a day, probably different but they have also probably already got a genny and backup. Do not mean to disparage your idea in the slightest, I'd be in with you boots and all if you were near me however, I am aware of slack arse, lazy human nature and thats the deciding factor here. On another forum, I was talking to a guy that was doing a backup setup. He lives in a place were the were frequent outages although the great majority under 6 hours and most shorter. The inconvenience was getting to him and he was concerned for his elderly mother that lived on site. He came across some Cheap batteries that had been used for a few years in a Data centre and got one of those Chinese Hybrid inverters that will backfeed to the Grid from solar, charge batteries from grid or solar and have a built in inverter to supply AC power to boot. The beauty of these inverters as I pointed out is they can also supply power to the home whole the grid is active from the batteries or like a regular GTI. My suggestion was that he could run loads like his pool pump and a small AC direct from the Solar/ battery setup but set the inverters so it didn't really fall below flot voltage. This way the panels instead of sitting there doing nothing ( he didn't want to backfeed) could be running loads, reducing his power bill completely legally and still have 99% capacity in the case of an outage. He gets over 50% During the day so if the sun is out and the loads are under 4KW, he can run until the sun drops and still be at full reserve capacity. Something like this may in crease the appeal of a backup system when it can be saving money as well as providing power for when the grid goes down. This would also I think sell the idea better to people when they could see it would be doing something not just hanging round doing nothing for the majority of the time till needed. I spent some time this morning dropping off panels to a guy that is doing his own Bootleg solar system. The cost of power is screwing his Business and as he has Miles of spare roof area, he wants to utilise it. He's done with any sympathy for power cos and although seems like an honest person, is quite happy to screw the power cos any which way suits him just like the power cos continue to do more and more with their customers. As an essential and a monopoly, what these greedy lowlife mongerals do is immoral in my book and I don't blame this guy a bit for looking out for himself. He's getting 10 Kw of panels to start with and 8 Kw of inverters and has said he's going to give me a deposit on another 5Kw for as soon as he gets this lot up and running. I told him I'll give him any help I can because I admire and support doing something to stop being screwed over. The more people you can get to wake up and do something for themselves the better and I commend you on any initiative you take to that end. |
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| noneyabussiness Guru Joined: 31/07/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
As much as im all for the above, the problem is if these greedy dogs start losing too much money, they will outlaw " off grid " for " our own good / safety " etc etc... so having some sheep in the system isn't always a bad thing... as much as it grinds my goat to write that. As far as a generator is concerned, your ac gen head idea is great, put it through a cheap diode bridge and a standard GTI , auto sync and limited by size of GTI . I think it works !! |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Yes, I completely agree. Look at anything from the power co's regarding solar or anything that goes near small generation or their everyday PR Bullchit and the over use of the word "Safe" is laughable and cringe worthy. Any mention of lower power prices comes with the word Safe mentioned numerous times as if what they charge has any effect on the physical setup of the system. They are doing what you say now with trying to Limit or do away with anything they percieve as a threat to their obscene Profiteering. They Limit the amount of power you can feed back in from solar as an example and have recently made noises about actually charging people to feed back in by way of an extra usage charge. In effect they charge you for supply to use the poles and wires to bring power to your property and now want to charge again for feedback as well. Of course as we all know, moving power both ways though a cable wears it out twice as fast right? ( facepalm!) In some places there is no feedback allowed or they pay nothing for the power you send back. Watch this change in future. If the EV thing gets any legs at all, the demand will ramp up and they will want all the rooftop feedback they can get to prop up the system they refuse to put any proper infrastructure spending into. If they keep going down this ridiculous unreliable grid path and doing away with coal like it is a cancer, the system is going to be in massive trouble. I am sure they will and I am putting my ducks in place for when it does. I forsee the system getting in real trouble and the Gubbermnint having to come in and spend Billions to get it back on track at which time the power co's will have walked away scot free with the billions they pulled out of the enterprise and taken all the cream after milking the cash cow to death. Us the suckers will be left paying for a basic need all over again. Right now their excuse for limiting solar ever more is the system can't handle all the feedback. They make it out it's a technical/ Physics problem which is complete and utter BS. In some places like Canada, they encourage feedback and have upgraded their system to modern equipment that can handle the feedback without the pathetic voltage regulation we have here though 50+ Yo gear they refuse to upgrade. In canada you can credit your excess from summer to winter. The bills are paid quarterly or monthly but settled up yearly so you get your credit at whatever trime and that's offset against your useage and averaged out over 12 Months. The excuse the power cos make is some areas have too much back feed and they system can't cope. Ok, tell me where 3 of those areas are? Tell me one of those areas? On another bleeding heart forum full of shills and vested interests, this is a regular line but I have asked on there endless times to point out where these areas are and got nothing but a lot of pathetic excuses as to why they can't be divulged. Yeah right. I wrote to 2 power companies sympathetically as I I was on their side and got nothing but BS about confidentiality and other crap. Funny, the media and Police can tell me where there are Drug or crime problems but there is some secret about which areas are generating too much power from rooftop solar.... They love to insult ones intelligence that's for sure! They blame solar for high line Voltage but Mine here can be well over voltage at Midnight and 3 am and where I am, there isn't a whole load of solar feedback at that time so sort of shoots that excuse in the foot. There is still plenty of load from water heating which everyone has round here due to there being no town gas so it's not a matter of low usage either. I would guess the average non solar equipped home is still using under 3 Kw at most times bar perhaps the morning and evening peaks and even then I wouldn't think much more. What I can see happening is they will try and stop people going off grid or try to mandate that you have to have a power co supplied system for which you will have to pay them their monthly pound of flesh. In the lands of the so called Free, they have all sorts of similar regulations where you must have or pay for anyway, services from the utilities. The same will come in here. The thing is, because of their greed and wanting to cut endless costs, they are largely toothless tigers. There are few people actually inspecting violations and when they are found, they do very little about them. They are so busy employing overseas call centre operators and trying to minimise staff here, all they are really interested in is people to sign up new suckers and get their money out of them. The rest is just meeting annoying regulations that impose they must provide some sort of service for their customers. And the majority of that is contracted out to the cheapest bidder as well. They rely on the majority being scared sheeple that will obey their pathetically biased rules and regulation and don't worry too much about the ones that don't because the cost of monitoring them is more than it's worth. Unless people are blatantly stealing power, they have very little monitoring and even from what I have been told when they do catch people thieving, they do bugger all about it. easier to do screw the people who do the right things for more money. I think that's really a given. I have a brother in law that is a prime example. I call him Mrs. Straight. Whatever he's told to do by any self interested entity, he does and without thinking or question. He looks at anyone that does question or not follow the line as trouble makers and not people he wants to associate with. Last summer he expressed his indignation at me because I said I ran my AC all night in hot weather to be able to sleep. He arced up and said that was Illegal. I asked what he was talking about and he said you are not allowed to run an AC after 10 Pm. I didn't know and sure as heck don't care. I'm on acreage ( as is he) and there is no way in hell I'm going to disturb my neighbours. We don't live in some hell hole where you can stand between the houses and touch each one at the same time. You could build another 2 Houses between them and still have more space than they build these " Estates". I noticed the neighbours run theirs too at night and I never took any notice or had reason to till he pointed it out. Clearly does not worry me and I don't worry them. Not like it's a tractor or chainsaw going all night. It's the sort of petty thing like that he gets so pedantic about that will always have him following whatever line is preached no matter how stupid. He made his Disgust at me not following the rules very clear even though it has nothing to do with him. The other one was I was watering the garden with a hose when that wasn't allowed. I pointed out I was using the water from the Biocycle I pumped into a tank for the purpose, not the mains. In his mind it didn't matter because someone else might see me doing it and think it was OK for them to as well. I pointed out it was! He said yeah but they might think you are using the mains water like I did. Was tempted to say I can't help it if you are a fool but I thought better to keep the family peace... if that's what you call it. Such a pathetic sook. The big problem is he's far from a one off. There are way too many like him which is why the world is going down the crapper at an accelerated rate of knots like never before. In fairness though, there will always be the unit/ townhouse/ estate dwellers that have no room to hang clothes out let alone do anything else. They will have no choice but to conform from the choice they have already made to live in these places. From what I read, in the next 20 years 1/3 of Sydneys Population will reside in these unit blocks rather than free standing homes. I am sick to death of bleeding hearts carrying on with concocted BS about Solar being paid for by poorer people so the richer people can be subsidised. That's moronic sheeple mentality and of the lazy and poor me mindset. Solar still costs money and I'll bet a LOT of the whingers could afford it but choose to spend money on other things with Booze, cigarettes and Tatoos and hotted up crap cars featuring prominently. I tested this years ago and have a Vid of it. Worked perfectly although the GTI trying to do it's MPPT did make the engine surge a little but no big deal. It was a small engine on a larger motor so to be expected. I suspect someone with Poida's skill and knowledge could easily whip up or modify a controller to do a fairly constant load and charge to his batteries which is what Induction generators need. They are fine at a set output but don't tolerate much variation very well. Whether it suits his needs and position over just going and buying a genny I don't know but just throwing it out there for consideration and ideas for others. The way I want to set up my cogen system is just feed the power back to the mains which can be direct coupled. Might put a clutch ( Belt Tightening ) system on it so I can kick in the 3 phase motor, have it start the engine and then the power is synced and I just bring the engine revs up to create power and push it back. This way I can have the power to Run the AC If I want and the heat from the engine to warm the place as well. 3 phase motors are cheap and plentiful second hand. The engines are also cheap on Fleabay so would be a cost effective solution to the requirement with a bit if skill in building a controller thrown in. Might be more rewarding and satisfying for a DIY'er to make up themselves or maybe they couldn't be buggered and just prefer to get an off the shelf solution with wider application? Options to the problem either way. |
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| Jacob89 Newbie  Joined: 10/09/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 39 |
They're already doing their best to stamp out any kind of DIY off grid. It used to be that a non licenced person could work on up to 120vdc, but the new AS5139 has brought it down to 60v, and any system with more than 1kwh of storage has to be worked on only by licenced electricians. It only applies to fixed installations (for now) but I do recall reading about Victoria trying to push through some crap about even a dual battery + solar setup in a 4wd needing to be done by an electrician. |
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Clockmanfr Guru Joined: 23/10/2015 Location: FrancePosts: 429 |
poida, Nice story/adventure. I say you can never have enough PV. Always power outages here in rural Normandy. For all our 8 buildings and accommodation we now have spent about $7000Usd and have 18kW of PV. Thats 63 Mono panels. We took the view that in gloomy ambient light we get about 20% of rated output so a good 3kW trickles in to the 1300ah Marine/golf cart type batteries. All except 5kW of PV is AC coupled to our Mini Grid, so only that 5 kW is using expensive DC to DC MPPT controllers. The Ac coupled PV is using standard GTI's which all have very good MPPT, and all ours are second hand/used old toroid types. So we gleam every watt out of the PV. Our new salt swimming pool all runs on the Mini Grid, and that includes the Air Source heat pump Pool Heater that draws about 2kW and puts out about 5kW. Been at this sustainability and renewable energy project here in Normandy over 20 years now, boy does the time fly. Every day i look at the detailed weather report which are reasonably accurate to see what and how much i can run down, but still leaving reserves in the battery bank for 48 hours. I now find that modern Longi 120 cell Mono PV are down to $100 per 370w per panel when bought as a full panel of 30, so around me there are friends that are always building up there own PV, so we share the costs of the pallet. Oh yea those Eltek power supplies are a fantastic bit of kit, take any old rubbish generator 220vac and give a very controlled DC charging voltage, and i managed to get a big used rack mounted one from a friend in telecoms PSU supplier. Photo shows the most recent 10PV panel AC coupled 3.7kW with old torroid GTI's installation. I stick to the French regs.  Still learning and always will be. Thanks poida for your works and your kindness. Edited 2021-06-26 18:29 by Clockmanfr Everything is possible, just give me time. 3 HughP's 3.7m Wind T's (14 years). 5kW PV on 3 Trackers, (10 yrs). 21kW PV AC coupled SH GTI's. OzInverter created Grid. 1300ah 48v. |
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| poida Guru Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
Good luck getting someone licensed to work on anything solar with batteries now. There might be 5 electricians in Victoria who will work on R.E. (renewable energy) type projects with batteries and inverters and stuff. All the rest are "oh no, I might loose my license if I do anything other than 240V AC domestic wiring.." My mate made a tinyhouse with 8 300W panels on it. 2 on each side and 2 on each side of the roof gable. He wanted to do a demonstration project to show what is possible. a Victron 3kW inverter 4 x Victron 150/20A mppt The Victron all-in-one data display A big TV connected to it. 4 x 200Ah 12V telcon standby SLA batteries. Companies would happily sell you the stuff to make it happen. But to wire it up so that the TH had inverter supplied 240V AC? Not possible. He had 5 sparkies come and run away from the job. Too hard. Too risky. Not what they know. Not what they do all the time. Nobody wants to and is able to do something different. Too risky. Could loose my license. Now worth it... And so we just f*^kin well do it ourselves and don't tell anyone. 1kW.hr storage needing a license? That is electric bike battery size now. A 20 Ah 50V Lithium battery for a bike is a common fitting in the USA. That is 1kW.hr "But won't somebody think of the children!!" wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Hey Mate, How are you going there? Recovered from your bout of the Plauge ok now? Always good to see you here. My position exactly! :0) Exactly why I go overboard on my systems. It's not the 100Kwh a day I can walk in during summer, it's struggling to get 20Kwh a day in winter and less on a bad day that I try to allow for. Wow, don't think I have ever seen anyone say that before. It's pathetically unreliable where I am and most people I talk to in other countries say the same. Many say it's too inaccurate to even bother with and their 50/50 chances with looking out the window tend to give them a better accuracy rate than the forecasters. The cost of panels is falling substantially... unlike batteries. Do you have many used ones available on the market around you? There is quite a supply here if you know where to get them due to people upgrading and the stupid regulations that make it uneconomical to replace and do the necessary upgrades ( even if you can, pretty much impossible on anything over 3 Yo) if you can find anyone to do it. There are a lot of decent and not too old panels available here although many people have very unrealistic expectations of what they are worth. Last few lots I have picked up, some for free, have been brand new. We have an approvals list here that is good for about 2 years. Once the panels or inverters fall off that approved ( supposedly safety) list, they can't be installed by the commercial businesses so are effectively a waste product. I bought a load of inverters cheap because the guy Bought them in and then only a couple of months later they changed the regs out of the blue and they were no longer compliant. Good one day, stuck with half a container load the next. I pay no attention to any of these stupid approvals which change constantly to keep the industry turning over so am happy to get them. The size of the outputs is growing rapidly too although I have found the larger Circa 2M long panels to be a right pain in the backside to handle and Install. I saw a 600W panel listed with my suppliers and it's one of the cheapest per watt going. They were Jinkos or Trinas, decent if not the best quality but I think looking at these beyond a 10 yr life is pointless anyway. Forget the dimentions now but damn sure I wouldn't like to be putting them up on my own like I have all the others. That is a beautiful, neat installation. Obviously not done by a professional, licenced Installer. :0) Clearly too much time and attention to detail spent there. I got one of those SMA inverters a while back. I didn't even realise it was the old type for a while. I simply bought it because I wanted something around 1200W to run one leg of my 3 phase AC. That leg can't be back-fed because the meter registers any current flow as a consumption. I am going to wire that leg of the AC compressor to a DPDT relay so when it kicks in, the inverter will Boot up and feed it. When the compressor drops out, The relay will fall back to the other side and feed whatever other circuit I direct it to. I have been experimenting with keeping the house warm by running a heater on low pretty constantly this winter therefore heat soaking it so it stays pretty stable in temp and it's worked well. I'll do the same thing with the AC in summer and get in before it gets hot so I am comfortable all the time and there will be minimal need for it during the night. I Completely ignore the Australian ones because they are Contradictory and in parts, ridiculous. We are still supposed to have roof mounted Isolators installed which have been proven time and time again to cause fires and create more problems than enough. There are also other things that you are not allowed to do in solar applications ( on the AC side) that would be regarded as good practice in on any other circuit and offer additional safety. Moronic that adding in extra protection violates the regs. Makes them worthless to me. If one looks at them critically, they are really a formula for nothing more than doing the minimum one can and as fast as possible to achieve a minimum level of safety . Great for the installers to rip though one job and onto another. The very fact I am not a SOLAR licenced sparky means that anything I do is non compliant so no need to worry about following any regs from there! :0) I work to my own safety standards which my sparky mate says are all overkill. So I spend an hour and $20 more than I need to and sleep at night. No problems. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
The butt covering is getting over the top although to an extent I understand it. On one hand they just want the simple, low effort work, on the other they can be inspected at any time and have to issue these compliance certificates which can be tracked and followed up on. On the 3rd hand, one of my daughters friends works for a power company doing the inspections and the things he finds and can show pictures of are beyond belief. Clearly not all sparkys are paranoid about loosing their Licence..... if they even have one. It's a wonder more people aren't getting into this field. There is a company in the nearby industrial area that specialises in off grid. Some of the examples and costing on projects they have done would make your eyes water. I don't even think they do the install themselves, just the designs of the systems and farm the hands on work out. Only a small place but the value of the vehicles in the car park out the front indicate they are making some serious Coin! I had a guy I KNOW put in a 3 phse outlet for me. Didn't want to be crawling roound in the roof and I don't like playing in the meter box. For $300 was happy for him to do it. All I wanted was to run 8 Mm cable to a small breaker box on the wall. I could see him stammering for an excuse and backing away as well when I told him it was for solar. He pointed to the yet to be installed Spa and said Did you say it was for the Spa? I said Yes that's right. He said OK, no problem. Did the job and listed it as a spa outlet on the paper work. Ok then.... Hooked up my inverters myself and all good. Yeah, that's my approach. Of course you then if you mention it always get the typical bedwetters mentioning " Insurance". yeah well if what you do causes the place to burn down you are SOL. If it's because the fridge caught fire and nothing to do with what you did, than there is no comeback... although the bed wetter will argue that too. In any case, if you do it properly, how are they going to know who did it? I'm not the first owner of the home so it was done like that when I got here and if it's done right, no grounds to refuse coverage anyway. I'm confident in what I do and if I'm not, I get other sparky mate to look it over for me. Tells me I went overboard, no need to do all that and I know I'm good. I have seen several solar setups done by professional and Licenced installers and they have taken shortcuts I wouldn't even think of. Anyone that thinks the Tradies are a guarantee of quality, safe work is woefully naieve. If I had a system professionally Installed, I'd be all over them like a rash on a kid that's been to the local house of Ill repute watching everything they did. I had a look at a setup on a place week or so back done by a local installer. they have a good rep and I can see why. Definitely good work and attention to detail . I'd recommend them on what I saw for sure. Hahah! About the size of it with the safety sissys and the DIY inept bedwetters. I know of a whole forum full of people of the sky is falling mentality. |
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