Comments on Profile Post by GoodEnoughGear

Leaving aside idiophilia and do real life stuff ?

Well, losing power for up to 7.5 hours/day (ormore) and dealing with voltage sag and surge when it comes back on is unfortunately real life for us for at least 6 months to a year.

And that's IF the govt can improve which is a slim to none chance. So in this case the inverter/batt bank is not so much just for audio, but also refrigeration, lights etc.

I wouldn't try to power a full house on batteries. You gotta look at generators

For sure. Just some lights, refrigeration, internet and computers really. Some PV panels would make sense for the long run.

You might find inspiration here

https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2016/07/solar-shed-summary-my-off-grid-office.html

That's pretty cool :). I wonder what the acoustics are like? :P

I have a 7.5kva Honda generator. Runs on petrol, so running costs are quite high. Bought it for running our 2.5hp flood-control pump in monsoon, but it will happily power "the house" if we limit ourselves to just one Air-conditioning machine. For minimal fan, lights, computer (not fridge) our inverter+150Amp-hour battery will see us through nearly ten hours.

If I would do that I would start building my battery bank slowly.. You can always add more. Saying that you cant power your house on betteries is.. bs.

Cover the walls with foam and might not be so bad

I am thinking of building a solar wind system with batteries in the future. The good thing with your own energy production is that you won't be paying the 2/3 part of the energy bill that is not energy. Super useful in the long run I think.

Victron are big here, seeing a lot of different brands in the US I don't know. I do have a CTEK charger and nifty CTEK dual battery device that takes 12v DC and is a MPT solar controller as well, but it's really a travel device - kinda small potatoes.

Also this

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzz7zm/diy-powerwall-builders-are-using-recycled-laptop-batteries-to-power-their-homes

@dark_energy, Yes But!

In the first place, you have to decide between 12 or 24 (or more) volts, which tends to mean adding batterries in singles or pairs. Second, you have to decide on the capacity of the inverter unit itself. You can start small and work up, but there are big-jump points.

And I would not consider it practical/economic (let alone affordable for me) to build a battery/inverter system that would power two or three AC machines for a day.

I'd love to go solar. My dream is to have solar capacity to power at least 1 AC machine. Make the sun pay for itself!

Definitely need enough power output on that inverter, but I am imagining a system that you can expand on in time. I expect batteries to get cheaper every year, because the production expands fast. Getting the right voltages and power on these should be easy connection wise (Enough series and parallel connections).

In theory the charge controller and inverter should not care much about how many Amp hours you have installed, just that the batteriias put out enough voltage and power at any given time to the inverter and load (output).

Assuming that you have one box called an inverter, it does care, because it has to have the capacity to charge the batteries. It also cares very much how much load it carries. They come with kva ratings.

I cannot just add another battery in parallel to my inverter, and get 20 hours instead of ten, powering the same load. The inverter won't charge them.
I can't choose to have forty-five minutes with a 2.5kw airconditioner instead of ten hours with the computer, because its load will trip the inverter.

With solar charge controller charges the batteries. The “capacity” in your inverter is literally power output in KVA which is apparent power(power “through” the inverter). It might be so that in your case the inverter also charges the batteries through the grid.

I thought it was obvious enough to not mention it seperatly that your inverter will bottleneck you power output with the batteries, but having more batteries gives you more time on that power which is more Ah or in other words Wh.

I don't have solar. Just an inverter which charges the battery from the mains and then converts it back to AC when needed.

All is possible with the right bits having the right rating.

No, whatever the power source, you can't just add batteries: the charger must be able to cope.

But, with Dark Energy, I guess everything's different ;)

There's a nice Victron AIO that does this. It'll cope with 240 Ah. But no solar. I must check if it can coexist with a simultaneously connected Victron MPPT charger.

We will see when I build my own system. ;-) I bet there are a lot of different options out there. Just checked, 14.4 kWh of solar batteries would cost 2200€ for a company (2763€ norma price). When you have off-grid capable system then they say you need at least 3 days battery power available. That would be at least 3x that.

It's a bit like turntables and speakers! The bits at each end of the chain can get very, very expensive. Solar panels... ... ...batteries!

And the bits in the middle are not cheap.

I'm not even looking to go off grid. Just need to support essentials through regular short power cuts and would *like* to reduce the power bills during the day. Anyway, for supporting the essentials I am sorted, at reasonable cost.