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I've used three Emporia Vue devices in three different buildings (two properties) for well over two years. Works well and aligns with what the power company charges me for overall use in each building. The measurement for the heat pump circuits in each of these buildings seems correct, and I...

Read this whole thread, and still not a clue about how to reasonably protect a working system.

Warning - bit of a rant here. So... We (our country) wants to encourage more energy from sources other than fossil fuels. To do that, we need things that produce that energy (solar cells) and a way to store that energy (larger storage batteries). So what do we do? Make them more expensive! What...

Went out to see if any more "northern lights" and.... nada. Helloooo, pillow.

Not that I can tell. Just a lot of alarms on the UPS devices that were connected to the grid. Saw friends for breakfast that live near the main branch of the grid and they said nothing at all at their house. We're the last property down a long stretch of the smallest circuit they run, so maybe...

Well, at least I can turn the UPS's back on this morning. They were going wild. The one at my wife's desk beeps at almost any grid fluctuation, and the one for the router is also sensitive. But I have a couple of others from which I've never heard a peep after several years no matter what's...

My Starlink seems OK, but the UPS powering the router (I don't use the SL router) is going nuts along with others. Everything touching the grid here is going nuts, but the off grid buildings on our property are undisturbed. Pretty wild...

I posted this pic and a couple of others in a thread in the general discussion area, but thought I'd post this one here for the EMP afficionados. Every UPS in our grid-connected house has been going crazy for almost an hour now with this G4 solar storm tonight. I had to shut two down, and think...

A couple more shots for you folks...

One of the pics I snapped outside our house a few minutes ago. Every UPS in the grid-connected buildings was beeping like mad (Had to shut two down) so the grid here in Maine going crazy. But my Victron equipment (off grid "shed" buildings on the property) and everything attached to it...

I live in the epicenter of the PFAS problem, in rural Maine. This whole issue with PFAS started (basically was discovered) here because years ago the state encouraged farmers to take sludge as a great source of fertilizer. It isn't really the US EPA that's "shutting down" farms, so much as some...

Hmmm... Some differing info & opinions here. Please note, I understand why a mfr might select ~ 16 feet for convenience and profitability, but that's not my question. I'm wondering about being able to install a future unit (e.g., a Pioneer or similar) in a similar install setting, and NOT have...

DIY mini-splits (Mr Cool or EG4) both have ~16 foot line sets as standard when they ship. I just installed an EG4 In a location that needed only about 8 feet of line, and of course now I have all that mess coiled up behind it. I know I can't cut that, but in thinking about future mini-splits I...

Also saw it and thought, "Multiple pumps, and they have no money to get this certified. They need to sell out to someone." Then I saw that they're using all off-the-shelf parts and I thought, "Hmmm... Any real IP there?" I dunno... Seems like a nice topic for a YouTube guy to do a video, but...

We were in the very first beta test shipments, with a gen 1 dish. I think I've seen our Starlink go down three times: Once when it snowed and sleeted so hard the snow melt function couldn't keep up. That lasted about an hour as I recall, and then it corrected itself. Then twice more during very...

My father was incredibly smart but grew up poor, and lacked higher education. So, he pushed college like mad (while giving me great DIY practical skills, as the thread title and my original post note). I ended up getting an MBA and worked in the corporate world before starting my own company...

Well done, sir! Well done! That pride is justified.

Thanks for comments and input, @Cmiller and @1201 . The induction cooktop and electric oven are definitely the power hogs in the new house, but the electric water heater will be heat pump type, running in heat pump only mode. While US models all have 4500 watt elements in them, you don't have to...

As we plan out the new house and barn, I'm struggling at finding ways to go beyond about 10KW at any given time, unless my wife suddenly decides to prepare a meal akin to Thanksgiving dinner. I'm pretty sure she'd give me a heads up for that. At our present property we have a 3-BR guest house...

I was speaking with a guy I sorta/kinda know at a local watering hole this evening, and he was crying into his beer that he had just spent $1700 on a 50 gallon hot water heater. I said, "Well, at least you'll get a good-sized rebate and tax credit for it being a heat pump type." IT WASN'T! This...

Has anyone tried the AOSmith heat pump water heaters? In looking at their specs, they seem to need about half as much space (cubic feet) as the Rheem units (450 CF vs about 800). That could be a big difference in many mechanical rooms, but you have to wonder if they sized things correctly...

I hope to be able to answer this in about two months, when it finally gets hot here in Maine. I went with EG4 for two reasons: 1) Very high SEER2 / HSPF,, and I'm trying to squeeze every watt possible out of my system in cloudy weather. 2) CurrentConnected has just started carrying them, and I...

So... Is it safe to say that a reasonable approach with these inverters is for each string to be somewhere around 350V, 11.5 amps? In other words, try to stay well under the voltage limit (to protect the unit) but not so far under (say, under about 235V) that you start to hit the amp max? These...

One thing I'm starting to notice is that if your early marketing is primarily paid sponsorship of YouTube personalities (e.g., Ambition Strikes) you may not be for me. Likely expensive, with a lot more "cool factor" than I need. I do see about a zillion EG4 and Victron videos, but most don't...

Thanks, folks. Basically no AHJ here (very rural) but want to be safe, of course.

Any good ides for what to do when running over exposed bedrock ("ledge", as we call it)? I have some great locations for a ground mount that could anchor to that bedrock, but then running the wire back to the house or barn becomes the problem.

As @Cronix mentioned, many weather stations have a solar meter built in. I use an Ecowitt weather station that has this built into the anemometer (wind sensor). I also have a Hubitat home automation device that can read values from the Ecowitt station and control a relay device. With similar...

Ooof. Don't think I'd rely on that. Relying on Amazon to not sell junk makes for a poor quality control system.

Best summary of "how to think about your generator needs" I've read. Well done.

Thanks, @sunshine_eggo - exactly the info I needed!

This is a great point. For me, the big reason to tilt more is snow shedding. The actual improvement in production isn't as much as I thought, when I look at PV Watts. But every extra degree matters when it comes to a cold, snowy Maine winter.

As I plan out our new (hopefully off grid) house, I see that I have room for quite a few strings of panels mounted at various angles and orientations to optimize sun position and season. I want to use either ground mounts or mounts on only the steepest portion of the roofs (e.g. steep angle of...

If you can run with 120V AC, that sounds like the easiest approach. Our Rinnai propane tankless seems to just sip power. I have an Emporia Vue and noticed a few days ago that the Rinnai was using just 39W when running. I didn't catch it at the moment of actual ignition, but suspect that's not...

I've been thinking about the easiest way to do a 24-32 panel ground mount in a field with much ledge (bedrock) that varies from being at the surface down to perhaps 3 feet below surface (no opportunity to just drill a 5-6' deep hole for the posts). Any good reason a person couldn't just build a...