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That is a good idea, if I could find a place to buy something like that here in Canada. I'd have to dig around some more next time.

Interesting I figured a high level solar flare was much harder to protect against and that a simple faraday cage was not enough. And yeah I lumped EMP all together, as it's a sorta similar type of threat in the sense that it's sending tons of energy out that can damage electronics. A solar...

My goal is to eventually live off grid, bought the property now I need to start building, will be a long process due to work and often lack of good (non rain) days to go work on it, but with inflation I won't be able to keep living in the city if I want to eventually retire. But yeah, need to...

So wiring is done, did end up going with resistor, I feel better doing it that way than wondering if the switch is being damaged every time I use it. This is more or less the final product. The solar panels stow away in front and door closes over them. The two small switches at the bottom...

The panels are out of the equation when I connect it, it's just the charge controller alone, as the battery does power it to show the display etc. It seems they decided to put a fairly beefy capacitor in there on the battery side. I might go ahead and just add the resistor anyway to be safe. I...

I know the loads are under 1800w as they are rated for a standard outlet. Of course the surge can be more, but most non chinesium inverters can handle double that. Basically this is a 200w system with 2,000w+ surge, if I was to actually rate it. I have not actually measured the loads, only...

Oh yeah I get that, I'm also limited by 200w nameplate solar as that's what the portable panel is, but I rather have more inverter capacity than I need than not enough, so it can deal with surge loads etc. Lithium cells are very hard to get here and I'm not that great at electronics yet to...

I won't be typically loading it up to it's full capacity, I just like the ability to be able to momentarily (ex: mitre saw) if I need. I did 1800w as a test and yeah the voltage drop is massive and I also lose capacity much faster. Typically though I'll be pulling 400w or so, maybe 800w. It...

Everything is prewired so everything gets hooked up at once, technically. Charge controller and inverter both connected to battery, the switch would then take the battery out of circuit. The solar panels are plugged in the back so are disconnected from circuit when the station is being setup...

I'm building a portable solar power station, it mostly all works except I have not implemented the cut off switch yet because I was waiting for it to arrive in the mail. I want to be able to turn the entire system off at the battery when not in use otherwise the charge controller will stay on...

Ah shoots ok, so it works like most inverter chargers then. Was hoping this could be a cheap solution to do what I want without building something out myself.

Anyone have experience with this unit? https://ca.renogy.com/48v-3500w-inverter-charger/ I am curious if the AC comes from the inverter at all times when it's in grid mode. Ex: can I use it as a dual conversion UPS? Hook it up to grid, and to battery, and then if power goes out there's zero...

You definitely want something that has a bit of intelligence, such as a delay before switching. A fast transfer switch could work for non motor equipment such as computers if you're trying to use the transfer system as a UPS, but for general purpose where you're going to plug anything in it...

Did some changes to the setup. Re-tilted the panels so that 1: snow has a better chance of coming off and 2: if it doesn't, I can at least see them from the ground, so it's easier to see what I'm doing with the long brush. So far it seems snow is staying mostly off though. The main issue is...

I did this mistake with a 12v cigarette lighter wiring. First thing I plug into it was a little inverter, an el cheapo 50w one that just plugs straight into the plug. "poof". Then I realized I never tested the polarity of the plugs to make sure I wired it right... I didn't. Oops. Some...

Get an inverter-charger and use them as a UPS for computer or other equipment. You can use them with a regular UPS but I find a lot of UPSes charge at too high of a voltage, which is why the gel cells never last in them. I have a 12v Tripp Lite I use with my servers with several 12v FLA...

Yeah going to just forget this test. I thought maybe MPPT controllers basically could double as a power supply if you feed it an arbitrary voltage below it's max, but I guess it really wants a current source as it will just try to pull as much current as it can otherwise. The first test was...

Yeah this would not be a permanent setup anyway, just a bench test thing. I've done much worse when it comes to safety with temporary setups lol. The cat stays out of the room for those questionable experiments so that nothing that should not be licked gets licked. If I needed a DC power...

Yeah this was just for a quick test for something else, I guess it's not worth the hassle then! I was thinking if the MPPT is smart enough to limit current then it does not matter if the input is voltage source or current source, but guess that is not the case. But it does also answer...

It's a Renogy Rover 20a. It's going into a portable solar setup that will only use 60w of panel, but I also have 2 320w panels so I was thinking I could set those up too in a tree so when I'm at the main camp area I would plug into those. When I need to bring it somewhere else I'd bring the...

Oh ok, yeah that's what I was worried about, whether or not they have current limiting. Guess it's best not to try it! So that also means one should ensure to oversize the controller to ensure that solar panels don't produce too much current at any time such as winter when it's cold and sunny.

You are probably getting gel or AGM. Those "technically" never lose water, except, sometimes they might if conditions are not favourable (high temp, too high charge rate etc). This can be hard to control depending on situation/equipment. Those are not really meant to have the caps removed...

That's the problem, a few bad actors ruin it for everyone else. 99% of people are going to be responsible and not fly near an airport. Instead of dealing with those few bad actors they punish everyone. Now you need a license and registration for anything under 250g...

Is it safe to do this? Stay below the max voltage of course. Basically I would run mains through a variac, drop voltage to something sensible, rectify and filter it then feed the controller. This is a temp setup, I just want to use one to charge a battery, and to also test it out indoors...

When solar started to remotely get popular this is what I was afraid would start to happen. Any time something starts to get popular the government wants to regulate it and make it harder and more expensive for people to do it. Just look at what they did with drones. RC aircrafts have always...

Make sure the bulk and float charge setting is not too aggressive. ex: it does not put too much voltage and does not do it for too long. I had to lower the setting on my epeever unless I wanted my shed to turn into a hydrogen bomb. It was charging my 24v bank at like 29 volts for hours on...

Going to cycle it a few times while it's within warranty period and see how it goes... I put clear plastic tape over the cell caps, if there is any leakage it should cause a bulge in the tape or something visible at least. Also been measuring temp of cells to see if any are warmer than others...

So does this mean the battery might be defective then? 7a is also not a lot of charge at all so I fear this will only be worse once it's on solar and in a heated environment.

I tend to only deal with flooded batteries as I like that I can just add water and if cared for well they last long. Gel/AGM you can't. Gels don't tend to last long at all and not sure about AGM as it's my first time having one. It's a 79ah 12v battery for a portable solar setup that will be...

Wow that's a very nice clean setup! I recently bought 40 acres to build a homestead. Been considering buying a small travel trailer myself to bring to the property in the meantime until I build something. Would make a fun project too.

Quebec seems to get hit with big outages often, it gets fun when we got over 50 sites out of power and only 3-4 techs to go around. I always felt they should put solar panels at the cabinets and small COs, could at least buy a bit of extra time but guess they would probably just get stolen...

Could be that you have fibre to the node, and the node batteries are shot. They are typically not any bigger than what's in a standard UPS but setup as a 48v config, usually 8 12v batteries (2 strings). I've heard of techs being able to charge these with their truck in a pinch. Not sure if...

I always kind of wondered myself if doing cycling once in a while is a better idea than constantly letting it full charge. I know doing equalize once in a while is good too but not sure if it's enough on it's own.

I work in a telecom CO myself and we monitor a good 1,000 of em or so. We have the same Powersafe G batteries at ours. 4 strings. Those round ones are very interesting design. Almost looks like standard buckets. Funny enough it has crossed my mind to look at the viability of DIY lead acid...

Yeah if you can do a DC DC converter that works better, but may be harder to find unless you design your own. Depends what voltage to what voltage you are trying to get to. A proper power supply should not use THAT much power though. There are some conversion losses going from AC but modern...