Recent content by Symbioquine

There's a rudimentary wiring diagram earlier in this thread that might help with figuring out what to probe. The simplest thing to check first would be that all the connectors are fully seated and that kind of thing. Next, I'd look visually for signs of a failure like burn marks around any of...

I don't know anything about Home Assistant, but assuming you're talking about the "Charging equipment status" (0x3201) register, you can't just map from the number to a single status value in most cases since "different parts of the number" mean different things. There are lots of ways to...

Or, similarly, you might be able to avoid the superstructure/air-resistance necessary to support the lens, by instead pointing the solar panel down and making the body of the vehicle into a reflective collector that focuses a larger area of solar onto the panel. (Though you have to be careful...

Pretty much all off-the-shelf converters will have capacitors inside so you need to really nail down what the rules actually mean and how they're enforced.

Reducing rolling resistance, air resistance, and the rotating mass of the wheels should also be considered. Possibly even with unconventional support and propulsion - depending on the surfaces this device needs to operate on (and the weather conditions it should operate in)... * Very light...

Possibly helpful: &

Is that all extrapolated from their marketing numbers or have you measured for yourself? 6.667 (kWh generated) / 33.41 (kWh total energy) = 19.95% efficiency 6 (kWh generated) / 33.41 (kWh total energy) = 17.96% efficiency If we assume ~$6/gal for fancy ethanol free gas in the US, that's...

Probably worth mentioning (at least for other folks that find this topic), power supplies like the ones for computers usually aren't designed for supplying constant current (CC). In other words they will try and hold their output voltage stable at all costs until you try and draw too much power...

Haha, don't beat yourself up. Lots of folks talk about "days of autonomy" (i.e. total kWh ÷ kWh/day) which is what you're referring to there. "Coasting" (as I'm trying to define it here) is a bit different. It's about the behavior that the system exhibits under real-world conditions. While you...

Not sure why (almost) everybody thinks I need "advice" here. I'm at ~48.6 degrees N so I know about seasonal variations in production (though maybe not as intensely as @upnorthandpersonal) - and yes my system is arguably oversized for the rest of the year too. That's not the point of this...

Not relevant. The question I'm posing (updated title to make it clear that it is a question) refers to the abstract reservoir of power a system has relative to production capacity and usage. Whether that reservoir is in one big battery or segmented somehow with a software control scheme...

I'd argue that you should replace "full" with "full enough", but otherwise that's correct. I should have specified that the idea of "coasting" as a system size metric really only makes sense in the least productive time of year. Most of the late fall and early winter I get that. A good day at...

We'll call the time where a system is neither all the way full nor too close to empty: "coasting" IMHO, time spent coasting is one measure of how well an off-grid system is balanced in terms of production capacity, storage capacity, and usage. Lots of ways to look at this, but; If your...

I think you may have missed the specific case I was talking about. I'm referring to dry never activated flooded lead-acid batteries. For example the Rolls documentation includes this; I can't remember where I saw the 5 to 10 years claim, but I'm pretty sure that's true. Presumably, storing...

There are a lot of trade-offs, but several of the flooded chemistries can be purchased as dry/empty cells and activated by adding electrolyte when needed. Some lead-acid battery manufacturers advertise 5 - 10 years of storage with minimal loss of capacity. Nickel iron batteries should store more...