131–140 of 234 posts
For example: OP re lead-acid battery options:
"Heavy, cheap, easy to use and they work! Typically will last about 3-5 years. Slower charge rates than lithium, much heavier, and they cost way more in the long run."
That is just plain incorrect. Lead-acid batteries regularly last a decade or more and are far cheaper than any lithium option at a given capacity. Look at nearly every 12v car or boat battery. You don't see those being replaced every 3-5 years. It is old reliable tech that just works. And, at a given price point, they can charge faster than lithium too.
The downside of lead-acid? There is little profit to make in selling them. All the patents have expired. They don't need software to control them. They are mature, centuries-old technology. A thousand companies are making lead-acid batteries and you can get them cheap. They weigh more, but for residential installation that isn't an issue.
The upside? Whereas lithium packs are a nightmare to recycle, lead-acid batteries hook into an established and profitable recycling system. They are the greener alternative to anything containing lithium.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
very much with you and GP on this. the route I personally take is to learn with small trials and error of what comments and advise is good and what is silly or outright dangerous. Places I frequent for such advise though aren't YT videos but forums where it's easy for others to call out silly ideas (which isn't always the case on YT). YT is at best a gateway to deeper content such as explosion-charts, repair and main…
I would highly recommend battery university, they have excellent content: https://batteryuniversity.com/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Still not sure how I’ll ultimately get around this. If it's portable, your option works well. For year round off grid use, there's something to be said for sealed lead acid, or flooded lead acid - they don't care about being cycled while cold (capacity is down and the voltage sags a good bit), and as long as they don't get too deeply discharged, they don't freeze. A single panel, facing south, absolutely vertical,…
Hypothetically, for the lithium batteries, what if you made a big stainless steel vacuum wall insulated enclosure? Or just a metal box with r-60 value of foam around it? The amount of heat needing to be generated can then be calculated based on the average temp over a longer period of time, and those batteries I don't imagine have to be "warm" exactly.
Any charging around or below freezing causes pretty quick destruction of the cells as the chemistry switches to a more favorable destructive one way electroplating process instead of the desirable (and reversible) ion exchange process.
A common engineering solution to this has started to be temperature dependent shunts that route charging energy to heating pads around the battery until the battery temp gets above a certain safe point.
It adds complexity, cost, and adds several undesirable failure mode however, and Lithium battery cost is already a major factor in these systems, so if you’re in a situation where you can’t reliably temperature control your batteries (cold climate, non-conditioned battery space), lead acid is still a very viable and often desirable chemistry instead.
Round trip efficiency isn’t great with them, and you have to way over provision to get good cell lifespan, but it works.
There is so much tree cover all the time. Some days, even though it's mostly or fully sunny, we're almost always at the end of some disused fire road on the wrong side of a mountain, and we're lucky to get a couple of % back from all-day charges. I'm considering one of those water-powered turbines, since it'll work all night long as well.
I recently set up my own off grid solar system in a tiny cabin that I designed and had built. I used the Solar Controller+Inverter Combos recommended on this site (Growatt) but ultimately switched to ones by Renogy. The Growatt one I purchased has a wifi adapter and app - wifi requirement was a deal breaker when remote. The renogy one has a Bluetooth adapter and app, plus feels better designed (though actually I thin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you dig a hole for your batteries and store them below the frost line?
The problem with holes in the ground for storage of things like batteries is that... they're holes in the ground. The ground, as a general guideline, actively dislikes holes in it and strives to fill them in whatever way possible. Liquid rolling in, soil creep, debris blowing past and building up, it doesn't matter - given a long enough time, a hole in the ground won't exist anymore. You can build a hole that will ho…
I know it’s only lighting as a load, but I’ve heard standard LED light bulbs will happily run as low as 36VDC, as they chop the voltage down to that level anyway.
It makes me wonder how many “120VAC” devices with switch mode power supplies could be plugged into 48VDC without any thought at all. And not just electronics like a laptop or non-plasma flatscreen, but everything is moving in this direction:
Like… what’s my Variable Frequency Drive “inverter” refrigerator motor voltage really running at? In theory it should happily run off 120VDC at least. Don’t do that, but somewhere under 110VDC should work fine. And it’s inherently soft start and easier on one’s low voltage wiring than an on/off duty cycle fridge.
Of course I recommend none of this officially.
Will Prose seems like a really great person. If you’re interested in what you see on this site, check out his YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/WillProwse
I have seen enough of his videos to know that he can be spectacularly wrong (dangerously so) about some of his stuff and if you are not already very knowledgeable about this then you may well end up following some very bad advice. This guy has far more practical experience and seems to be less error prone, and also does not shy away from showing when he gets it wrong, which is often far more valuable than a polished…
Together with my girlfriend I’m planning a trip. Driving from the Netherlands to South Africa and back with an EV. We want to charge the car with solar panels we bring with us. See our website for more details: www.4x4electric.com Challenge for now: how to charge the car with ~60m2 of flexible solar panels. We need a threephase offgrid solar system, but did not find a suitable solution yet. Any ideas?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have seen enough of his videos to know that he can be spectacularly wrong (dangerously so) about some of his stuff and if you are not already very knowledgeable about this then you may well end up following some very bad advice. This guy has far more practical experience and seems to be less error prone, and also does not shy away from showing when he gets it wrong, which is often far more valuable than a polished…
Would be very interested to see specifically he has wrong. I have ee background and don’t see major issues