"I think I'm over burnout just enough to hack a bit on a fun thing"
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@[email protected] what part of the US are you in? I am assuming somewhere near US Central?
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Dave Andersonreplied to David Andersen last edited by
@dave_andersen I'm interested! I'm likely to err on the side of boring for base utilities (same reason i use a boring home router instead of homeland nonsense, my hobbies should not be able to take down the Internet for the household
), but always up for some ideas and data! -
@puppygirlhornypost2 ah no, I'm on Vancouver Island, southwest Canada (aka the PNW, since geography doesn't care for borders). Lovely place, but in the fall the Juan de Fuca strait forms a big wind tunnel, which doesn't mix well with the whole trees everywhere vibe.
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@danderson I have a large install for different purposes but I'm quite happy with my Sol-Ark 15K-2P hybrid inverters. If you have 200A service, you can probably insert one between the utility and your main panel without a lot of surgery.
This would cost $6-7k, and would gain you a 48V DC bus to connect batteries of your choosing, a second AC input for a generator, and three DC inputs for solar panels. The operating modes are super flexible and can be controlled using Modbus if needed.
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David Andersenreplied to Dave Anderson last edited by [email protected]
@danderson The tl;dr:
Decision tree:
(1) Whole house; or (2) Critical subpanel.I decided to go with 2, because I have some really awfully large loads I don't want to provision an inverter for: Two AC units (house is annoyingly geometrically complex) and 5kW of outdoor heaters that only get used about 5 hours per year, and an electric oven.
Once I'd decided on (2), it was a question of getting good runtime without needing to spend a ton on an inverter.
1/2
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Michael K Johnsonreplied to Dave Anderson last edited by
@danderson I have 40kWh nominal (36 actual) LiFePO4 storage and a large portable tri-fuel inverter generator I can plug in for an extended outage. I'm using a single Sol-Ark for the inverter, though I was annoyed to learn that they won't let you update firmware yourself but instead insist on logging into your inverter over the Internet to do the update themselves. As a result, if I had it to do over, I'd say least consider an EG4. I already had an essential loads breakout from my 20+ year old broken Generac junk generator, so I grafted into that.
I have Pytes batteries. That's been a roller coaster. I like a lot of the features. The pack has gone into alarm and after some investigation Pytes said it's the BMS board on one of the batteries and has sent me a replacement which hasn't arrived yet. So I'll know more soon. They are relatively inexpensive as these things go.
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@danderson We installed two Powerwalls in 2019, 27 kWh total capacity.
Being able to charge overnight and power the house in late afternoon makes time-of-use electricity billing really work. All of the incentives are lined up: we avoid drawing from the grid during the peak load, and use batteries to loadshift what we cannot avoid.
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We also do have a generator, not wired into the house just with a couple outlets on it.
We have never used it, even during power outages before we installed the batteries. It is too inconvenient to pull the fridge out from the wall and run a power cord out the door.
We'd probably have used it for a days-long outage, but a couple hour outage was not enough.
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@dgentry thanks for the pointers! Up here we have no time of use rates yet, so a lot of the value of local storage is diminished compared to other locales. We could either size the storage to ride out common outage lengths, or at least use it with a generator input so that the generator need run less frequently, and at peak efficiency when it does. And of course there's the option of a solar hookup, even with low insolation and no sell-back incentives...
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Michael K Johnsonreplied to Michael K Johnson last edited by
@danderson The "nominal" is because Pytes recommends 90% discharge. Will Prause recommends 100% discharge and says you'll hit calendar life limits before discharge limits even in a daily solar cycle situation. But I decided I want the warranty.
Happy to answer questions about my setup if you have any.
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Dave Andersonreplied to Michael K Johnson last edited by
@mcdanlj thanks, I may have questions later, when the power comes back and I can use a proper computer and Internet to load stuff, rather than a phone on an overloaded local cell network
