An Proto-Teach Éireannach

[Bruce S]

NOW! That's what I call a media center!!
Blows my project away.
TOTALLY MAN!!

 

[tanner0441]

Hi

You gotta love DMX it was just coming out when I Stopped being involved with groups and stages and was totally out of reach financially The lighting desk we hired was controlled with a dedicated keyboard and faders. I went to a demo at a venu in Birmingham they also had writing and animations scrolling round the walls and flourescent tubes fed with HF so they were strobed. all down one little data lead.

The price was never mentioned, just what you could do with it and the program could we written to disc.

Brian

[Scruff]

                             

[clockmanFRA]

dddeeerrr!    

Idiots.......

[Mary B]

                             

Okayyyy... lets have high voltage terminals exposed right where someone might back into them...

[JW]

YA!

 This reminds me of those people that service high tension wires on a helicopter. c

[Scruff]

[clockmanFRA]

Nice VID Scruff.

Very understandable.

 

[Mary B]

The el cheapo transfer switches I use have 2 30 amp contactors, and a delay circuit that runs off a large capacitor, when it drains the relays drop to no voltage state and battery power. About a 15 second delay. I use them in reverse, battery power is mains and grid is backup. When the inverter shuts off voltage to the primary side stops, capacitor discharges, relays drop to no voltage state and I am on grid. How I power the freezers/fridge. Low voltage drop out is 70% battery, leaves me power for the ham gear and lighting.

[Scruff]

I bias putting any system parasitic loads like relay coils on the abundant power source.

[Mary B]

Design on these wasn't mine... or the relay coils would be grid fed. As is they draw very little so parasitic draw is minimal. These were a quick and dirty setup back when I didn't have a ton of spare time. I really should redesign it... on my to do list some day!

[Scruff]

Hondoos beware!






600VA Set Burn Tested.



Does rated continuous with internal temps no higher than 30°C

Croc clips were 50°C at 60A...they mutated into lugs.

For the record Ctek Marine is a superior charger to Ctek Automotive.



The new reigning champ of off the shelf.
(I attribute most of it's success to a remote temperature sensor)

[Scruff]

Unit installed



Vessel fitted with Shore Power Recepticle



Complete with drip loop.




Shore Power Incomer Distro



16A 30mA RCBO (A Type, Trip Curve B)
Local Chassis Earth
13A Double Gang Metalclad Shore Only Sockets
16A Shore outlet to Battery Charger and Transfer System.

System Commissioned




Inverter Earth Leakage Test 16A 30mA RCBO (A Type, Trip Curve B) on a high frequency inverter within tolerance and repeatable (disconnect 30mA in 26ms)





Some hondoos some hondon'ts

[clockmanFRA]

Scruff,  That's all looking tidy.

But remember no rash reversing! or the 20 amp connector gets it. !

[Scruff]

I've been quiet lately...betcha know what that means... 

I'm a fan of fishing where the fish are.

See that last window of light of an evening? Put the solar panels there!



Here....what's that in yonder garden?



Boom! +2.2kW online!



This is how the young 'uns are doing tracker systems these days Clockman....East, South, West and up.

I've a combined 5kW grid tied now from a 2.25kW AC Coupled South-East stand , a grid-tied camper van, a grid-tied battery hospital and a 2.2kW new DC Coupled South-West Array.

These magical Studer Xtenders...grid-tie everything boxes folks...gorsh! They sure are clever..

I built this outtov scraps and spares.



It's the newly recruited DC Coupling contingent.
The souper charger is gonna bolster it to a 120A charge station. At the moment the 6 new panels are on the TS MPPT 45.
The Sunsaver MPPT is the grid tie interface between the battery hospital and the Studer Xtender.

Sorry about all the blurry pics.

The Grid Tied MorningStars' Charge profile is set to "Drive it like ya Stole it"

Preliminary tests are that AC coupled and DC coupled PV are producing parity.

What's that? Oh just 6 solar charge controllers in the power plant! What?
Haha..no it's not enough..I've another out on a job that'll make 7! 

[Scruff]

The Souper Charger is out being helpful.



Fancy PzS battery that. 5 times the capacity of a Lifepoo for the same money and works all year round.
We've electrolyte recombinant caps on the to-get list.

She's for a tiny house!



I'm doing first fix atm.



1k€ of cable in a trailer.



On closer inspection of the battery...

...the horror...of having paid extra to get it prebuilt...

Underwired 35mm, links. We're fitting 70mm² for the inverter. 

Is that electrically conductive locktite they applied with a blunt badger? 





Parasitic imbalanced (6V) load on 3 cells as an electrolyte monitor. 



The ground for it is a barb that pierces the jacket of one of those underwired interconnectors we paid for, making it a contaminant ingress point.



They asked what connector I wanted. I said M10 bolts. They attached them to a €100 electric pallet truck HD connecter at our cost. 

So having spent extra for professional help. As well as having to make up 70mm² Copper Bar links anyway, I also have to clean the bleedin' locktite off as well and find somewhere to dispose of the hardware we purchased.

....oh I've just had a great idea where I can shove it...

[Scruff]

Meanwhile back at the ranch.

I've installed a 3kW PWM diverter.



That animal lurking in the background is a 12kW tankless variable input temperature unit that's the reliabilty part of the system...to be connected still.

The iboost is online.

Eh yeah...tis grand. Grid tied hardware is always a bit naff to me...it's probably just me.

Low noise switching. Although I can hear the inoffensive carrier frequency in the powerplant transmitting on the cables.



Line with PWM diverter active. Hey look Mam! No transients!

It's set to always spill a minimum of 100W to the grid for reasons Marlec won't answer.
What they mean is an ample side of zero after system measurement inaccuracy I suspect.

I tried to set it to zero with CT tomfoolery with extra windings, magnets and wafers.

I eventually got it by just deforming the cable in the donut.



Import meter red light means net zero. 

[clockmanFRA]

Looks like you are having fun, and so nice to see the sun shining in your home land.!

Nice Pics.

Love the new house, just the right size/narrowness for those small lanes, and the small lanes hereabouts in Normandy when you come here one day!.

Family all here, finally after 6 months on my own.   3 strapping young men who move stuff like my scaffolding so effortlessly, Have a soar throat just talking to them all.

Never thought i would need so much paper work just to cross the channel.  Passport, Carte Sejour, (French residents Permit) and Covid Vaccine Passport.   What a World, what a World!   Still can not plan anything as Countries go amber, amber + and then red.  RED Then i am forced into Government run hotels/prisons and have to pay £1750 for the privilege of quarantine.

That battery pack is worrying, probably okay for a forklift mentality, but not for off grid.   And yes 70mm/2 is always good.

Keep up the good work Scruff, and yes i have missed your entertaining posts.   

[Bruce S]

Scruff
Tiny house ehh!
Here's hoping the gent from N.Z. show up there to give a tour. He also has ties to our great state of Missouri that is currently enjoying a rare break in the weather!

ClockmanFRA;
Yup, had my travel plans shut down so many times I've lost count.   Now I'm just bidding my time for the wife's tour to be up. Japan seems to be in a constant flux from almost Green to Red.

Cheers All
Bruce S

[Scruff]

You can follow the tiny house here.

Paul wants to make a tiny village.
We're setting him up as the tiny grid.

I've a few more updates but yee'll have to wait because I'm out the door at the moment and about to fall asleep. Can we have another pandemic please? Or step up to phase 2 of ecological fallout. I'm not finished all my projects yet and business as usual is resuming as are the associated CO₂ levels. We had a year to think about our culture...did we learn the distinction between forests and trees?

I'm working in 100-year storms, hillsides are blazing wildfire, pandemics raging, countries flooding...Oh I'm sure I'm just imagining things..it's only like every other gig there's rather blatant writing on the walls to the observant.

Planet versus humans...the humans thought they'd win. Clear the fallout with chainsaws and bulldozers!


The Souper Charger is back. One charge controller is better than 2....I RTFM'd on parallel operating controllers. Has to be isolated arrays. Bottom! I don't fancy trenching in another 65m cableset. I think I'll settle for the 60A @ 26V until the in-development TS MPPT 100 emerges.
It's a marginal clipping loss. I'm quite happy to oversize the array to ~120% the controller/GTI capability. It tends to be fairly on the money in terms of day to day performance in this climate anyway. The major benefit of oversized solar is when the sun isn't shining.

Grey overcast day today. Water tank was so hot Mrs Scruff gave out to me and I said I'd install TMV's.
I got to bathe in my own success all the same.

Now the next problem with poxy Irish plumbing...

[Scruff]

Fixt!



What a harmless nation...

[Scruff]

Feast yer eyes on this German Engineering.

12kW in that teeny tiny toob!!



This is a village brownout making device! 

Instant "tankless" hot water that mixes a variable input temperature to a stable adjustable output temperature. Reliablity beats hippy every time!

I ran 16mm² in the end. It wasn't a whole lot more than 10mm² but it's capable of 50A when derated for running through insulation.
The house main incomer is 10mm² the original card-holding qualified electrician wasn't bothered by such trifling details.

I also found this mysterious device in the attic by another hand.



Heaven's to Betsy I can't imagine what it could be for..¿

It's coming from the import meter.



on 6mm²

The earth has been discarded.
The neutral has heat moulded it's impression into the side of the enclosure.
As I found it it was live and feeding a 4 x 20A unearthed circuit SubDistro with 4 x 2.5mm² radials all unterminated and lying adjacent to the upstairs socket outlet backboxes.

I don't think there's much merit in investigating further...

[Scruff]

Huzzah! More toys!



Here there was supposed to be a box of talent with that!

Anna bottle of aargon...given I live in the stix though..I might fire her up on flux core.
Cwaor...metal melter..such potential...I'll never have to buy a new car again!!

What!? Yes' that welder cost more than both my cars put together...What's yer point?
Is it time for a bangernomics class?


It'll haveta wait until after I get some TriStar MPPTs to play nicely together.

[Mary B]

I decided to learn how to weld right at age 60... so far it looks as crappy as my stick welding I learned as a kid LOL they made grinders for a reason! I call my welds ugly but functional!

I need to get better, have to weld up a dish antenna mount before the snow flies...

[tanner0441]

Hi

I recently bought a flux cored MIG.  20 mins on bits of scrap to get your speed hand in and it can be as good though not as neat as gas screened. Just use as a lower size ie. 1 mm use as 0.8 because the flux occupies space normally occupied by wire so there is less filler wire.

Bonus with a little bit of pre heating it welds cast iron acceptably.

Anti spatter is a must.

Brian

[Scruff]

It's just like soldering isn't it? 

Flux core can be better than shielded...especially out in the boonies where a gas bottle is a weekend and 50 miles away.

(Er...that channel isn't the reason I threw in with ESAB...honest!*)
They're great machines for the pricepoint and inverter topology is super light and off-grid friendlier.

[Scruff]

I've been kicking off about Paul's battery most of the day.

The distributor has been mansplaining to me there's nothing wrong with it and I'm just being fussy. But I can return the 250kg lump on a 200 mile round trip for a refund if I wish.



All 3 electrolyte sensor AKA "blinkey" cells are like this:



Thuther 9 cells are like this:



I suppose nobody likes being told they're compromising end-user products and that doing less is better.

I told them that logic like "That's the way we always do it" is unacceptable. 

I'm seriously missing the Uk market...effin' bog warriors..

[Scruff]

I fitted this to the bathroom a while back.

It comes with a light switch trigger (pointless)



and a humidistat (pretty unreliable).

It's not a bad fan..pretty silent by standards.
The automation is shyte though.

I added the blue isolator to stop it from triggering false postives and running the day-long day for whatever (atmospheric) reason.

The humidstat is set to highest RH and timer lowest duration...it'll run for hours if it sees a cloud some days.

[Scruff]

TriStars seem to be harmonising to an extent.



It's handy having such well matched arrays. I can use the AC coupled array as a reference for what the DC coupled ought to be producing at any given moment.

The only reason I went DC coupling was because I don't want to buy another GTI by the way.

The Xtender is having issues being dynamic enough to AC couple and DC divert to AC without tripping over-voltage.

Miss Wu is now handling the morning immersion injection and AC coupled array I'll need a replacement solution come November.. ...oh wait...nope I'll just let her hibernate as she does because I won't have the excess PV power to worry about.

The powerplant is handling all the DC.

The TriStars are diode isolated on the array side but they were MPPT sweeping to eachother's detriment.

I set the 45A to cascade on at the fixed Vmp that the 60A hits the output peg.



Seems to be working lots better this way.

[clockmanFRA]

Eye Scruff, ESAB are the best welders, or perhaps in this day and age, they used to be the best welders.

I used to love X21 Lincoln rods, but all gone now.

Trouble is Scruff as i get older, been welding since my teens, I now go for 'deep penetration' for that true weld, and that in this day and age and Chinese made rods can lead me down a slippery slope.

I have a saying, yes another one of my sayings, ..... the more you know, the more you don't know!

Carry on the good works Scruff............

[clockmanFRA]

MMA FET welders.

Many years ago when i got mine, i noticed that the voltage output was about 65v DC.

HHMM said Oztules who had just bought a cheap Chinese version, and then took it apart and tested it.

Reason?

We wanted a cheap 48vdc battery charger for our large banks that would run from a cheapo 240vac genny.  Concept being an emergency battery boost with lots of amps and a sort of steady 61vdc output that would not freak the Inverter out.

Result, sorry i do not have the balls to go with it, but its in my mind for an emergency.

  Oztules, well he reckons what he has modified works well, but even buying the exact same and make and model type, doesn't always give the same Dc voltage range required.

Start of WARNING...... IMPORTANT ..... readers of this post, 'PLEASE DONT DO IT, its flipping dangerous, seek a suitably competent person!'    ..... End of Warning!

[Scruff]

Reminds me of another saying I have although others have phrased it better.



The trouble with welders is the duty cycle. A battery charger needs to be 100% duty capable.

Just bolt a coupla stand alone Elteks to an MPPT! Presto solar hybrid!

Oztules could make it work sure....for the rest of us mortals. KISS.

[SparWeb]

That worktable doesn't seem very level, Scruff.  All your tools and stuff are about roll off the left side!