Hey you need to get an amateur radio license at least a general license !

FilterGuy said:

BTW: I have not been involved in the RF noise issues for quite a long time, but back in the 80s and 90s there were some pretty stringent requirements about noise generation.

However, I never once heard of a situation where the government actually tested or enforced the specification. I suspect a *lot* of the equipment sold does not meet the existing requirements on noise generation.

Click to expand...

BINGO! Now add a few decades of the FCC almost never enforcing the laws PLUS our desire to get the least expensive devices while companies focus on profit margins and there is no surprise we are exactly where we are.

Sandman said:

I think the Hams should figure out how to deal with the noise.

Click to expand...

Let me use an analogy. Say your next door neighbor has an expensive car and parks it on his property, between your houses. Since he is worried about it getting stolen he puts a 2 million candlepower light on it all night long. That light also happens to point into your bedroom window.

You can put up room darkening shades, board up your window, quit sleeping at night or move. All are possible solutions but maybe there is a better way for him to secure his property and still be a better neighbor so you can coexist.

Sandman said:

There is a lack of incentive.

Click to expand...

That is the heart of the matter. If the FTC and or FCC would enforce the requirements that are already in place, the manufacturers would have the incentive to correct the problem in their equipment.

Sandman said:

I'm planning a small system. I'm willing to do something to help if anyone has suggestions.

Click to expand...

There's not much we hams can expect from Joe Q. Public. Just buy decent equipment and correctly install it. If a neighbor knocks on your door with a funny looking yagi antenna and says you are emitting excessive noise, he probably just wants to find the cause and see if HE can help fix it. So be polite and invite him in...that's pretty much all we can expect.

I have many stories of hams tracing their noise to a neighbors faulty or cheap XYZ, and most times they offer to fix it at their own time and cost, or even replace the XYZ with a better unit. Anything to silence the noise...a couple hundred bucks is peanuts compared to what most hams spend on their rigs.

The neighbor with a loud stereo is the best analogy...the only way to really fix the noise is at the source of it. Anything else is just a bandaid. So we gotta knock on your door, and it's not because we just want to complain, we just want to help fix it.

Have you ever been sitting in a restaurant trying to have a conversation at your table when someone turns on the tv hanging from the ceiling in the corner. They are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they have just greatly reduced the ability for all others in the room to have a pleasant conversation. How about someone two tables away deciding to play a video of their favorite facebook post at levels you can hear from the kitchen... again.. seemingly oblivious to how disrupting it is to those around them.

Yes you can put in ear plugs but that does not restore the ability to have a conversation. Better to put the tv on silent with Closed Captioning so that the one person watching it can do so without disturbing others. Better for the facebook fan to put in some earbuds. Consideration for how your conduct is affecting those around you is why smokers now have a much harder time finding a place to feed their habit.

I am sure that rf interference created by solar products is a subject that most of the people in this forum were totally unaware of until now. I am also pretty confident that unless they live close to a ham operator they will never hear about it. However, the problem is real so don't be surprised if someone nearby asks if they can look at your system to try and 'quiet' it down somehow with some grounding or ferrite beads so that they can actually use their equipment. They are just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Also be aware that rf 'noise' is more than just 'noise' It can also be causing problems in local phone lines or cable tv lines that your unintentional solar 'antenna' is radiating in to so be aware of how close you put your equipment to such things. Also if you or your neighbors have medical devices or monitors for those in failing health. You might want to make sure you are not causing any problems for them.

It seems that those most devoted to using solar are the kind of people that are looking to solve the problems of society and not creating new ones for others in the process. If your system is causing problems in your neighborhood and it has been brought to your attention, it is your responsibility to work with others to find a solution.

Also... if your system is producing a lot of 'noise' into the immediate area you may want to question if it can affect your health and those that visit you. There are millions walking around with pacemakers and thousands get defirillators installed each day. You certainly wouldn't want to trigger and event in one of those devices. Remember the signs that used to be everywhere warning about microwave ovens in use for those wearing pacemakers? They have greatly improved both microwave ovens AND pacemakers so that interference in the gigahertz range is very small..

It's only by getting this information out there and making others aware that this problem exists that any thought will be given to incorporating noise reduction into these systems as they are designed. Thank you for bringing it to the attention of this forum. I don't feel that obtaining an FCC license is the solution... and yes I have been an Extra class for decades... rather making others aware of the problem and discussing the normal offending devices and measure that can be taken to reduce interference would be most helpful. Perhaps some 'before and after' videos about interference and grounding, ferrite beads, faraday cages.. etc.. would be the most practical and welcomed...

KI7CSN said:

The reason to get a license so you don't create RF problems for us radio operators.

Click to expand...

Seems it was a drive by.

Many years ago I was doing RnD on 802.11x stuff.
We had a lab with hundreds of radios.
The poor company upstairs complained and we shrugged our shoulders.
Then we moved to new offices real close to the airport.
The radar would mess things at random times on a more or less daily basis.
Then when we started looking into Faraday cages and replacing the antennas with coax.

FilterGuy said:

That is the heart of the matter. If the FTC and or FCC would enforce the requirements that are already in place, the manufacturers would have the incentive to correct the problem in their equipment.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I would say that the most reasonable sensible level for this to be solved at is the product manufacturing or importation level. Its just unrealistic and unreasonable to expect households and consumers to test for and diagnose RF pollution. That's not to say that you shouldn't be a good neighbor if you live near an amateur radio guy/gal and work to mitigate the problem, especially with their help/expertise.

And there probably should be established 'best practices' and some general awareness among DIY solar folks on minimizing RF noise. Maybe we can try to establish some straightforward and reasonable guidelines/practices in this thread.

Since OP seems to have just been engaging in a low effort drive-by post (this was an uncharitable assumption, lets wait and see if OP resurfaces its only been 5 days), maybe some of the other Amateur Radio folks can shed a little light on the topic (also I'm pretty sure I remember a member here had RF Engineer Extroardinaire or somethign to that effect listed in their profile but can't remember who, was that you @ghostwriter66?). What have you done with your own systems to reduce RF noise?

I found this little tidbit over on SolarPanelTalk:

Samlex makes some of the rf-quieter inverters. Note that they also provide power supplies designed primarily for amateur radio use, and thus know about noise issues.

Click to expand...

And a lot more info in this article (correct link here) on reducing Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) In solar systems:

Main Sources of Noise
Any digital electronic equipment produces at least some noise. And nearly all equipment now used in PV systems is digital. The most common types of equipment to have problems are charge controllers, DC lights, and some modified sine wave inverters. Nearly all charge controllers send pulses instead of a steady voltage/current to the batteries. High power digital pulses are one of the worst EMI sources.

Click to expand...

How to Get Rid of EMI
The most common ways of reducing noise are:

• Shielding
• Cancellation
• Filtering
• Suppression

Shielding
Almost any metal will offer some shielding. A shield basically blocks the noise, just as the name implies. Metal enclosures are common for inverters and some other equipment. But metal conduit will also act as a shield. Shielding is effective but not always possible, and will not do much to stop any noise carried on the wiring to and from the device.

Cancellation
Cancellation might not be the best term. But it is very simple to do and pretty effective in some cases. It is basically just a matter of twisted wire pairs. Noise in twisted pairs tends to cancel itself out at each twist. It does not work in all cases, but is so simple, cheap and usually easy to do, so that is often the first method to try.

Filtering
Filtering has been around since electronics was invented. The most common method is to use capacitors across a signal line or wire to ground to get rid of the noise. Inductors are sometimes used also, but they have some frequency limits and can also get pretty bulky and expensive. One limitation of using capacitor filters is that you usually must have a good ground nearby for one side of the capacitor. If you have long leads between what you are filtering and ground, you could even make the problem worse.

Suppression
This is relatively new and often the most effective. The most common method uses Ferrite chokes, cores, and beads. Ferrites are powdered molded metal powders cast into various shapes and sizes. Ferrites are actually a type of molded ceramic. They are usually made of powdered Iron Oxide (Fe2O3), along with Zinc, Copper, Zinc, and other metal oxides. The EMI portion of the filtered spectrum is converted to heat within the ferrite core and dissipated.

Click to expand...

Dzl said:

I found this little tidbit over on SolarPanelTalk:


And a lot more info in this article on reducing Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) In solar systems:

Click to expand...

Thanks for adding some use-able information to the conversation.

Dzl said:

And a lot more info in this article on reducing Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) In solar systems:

Click to expand...

I think the link on "in this article" is wrong.

FilterGuy said:

I think the link on "in this article" is wrong.

Click to expand...

He may have meant to use THIS one.

Thanks @Dzl and @jimdandy !

The remedies discussed are all along the lines of what is typical for RFI. However I had to chuckle when they said to "twist" the battery cables together. That is going to be a bit of a challenge with 2/00 or 3/00 cable. I have not looked, but I'll bet finding ferrite suppressors that will fit around a 2/00 marine grade cable will be a bit of a challenge as well.

FilterGuy said:

I have not looked, but I'll bet finding ferrite suppressors that will fit around a 2/00 marine grade cable will be a bit of a challenge as well.

Click to expand...

I'd be more worried about the core saturation. I've not looked but 100 or 200 A isn't nothing, even if there's only one turn on the core.

BiduleOhm said:

I'd be more worried about the core saturation. I've not looked but 100 or 200 A isn't nothing, even if there's only one turn on the core.

Click to expand...

How many times do you have to loop it? :|

You don't. But each time the wire passes through the core it's counted as one turn, so just passing the wire once without any loop is one turn.

BiduleOhm said:

I'd be more worried about the core saturation. I've not looked but 100 or 200 A isn't nothing, even if there's only one turn on the core.

Click to expand...

Wow.... you are making me dust off stuff I have not even thought about since college. It is counter intuitive to worry about DC current when talking about RF noise, but you are right the DC will likely saturate the core and it will no longer help.

jimdandy said:

He may have meant to use THIS one.

Click to expand...

Correct that's the one, thanks for fixing that for me. Link has been updated in my post.

So this thread is kinda funny since not only am I an EE but I specialized in RF engineering and I am also an Amateur Extra for Ham Radio... I don't think that i have ever actually used a ham radio in my life -- but the license allows me to legally test our long distance equipment on the ham bands before we move it to the appropriate freqs ...

BUT due to the size of the solar equipment that we use often (literally solar farms) and the SATELLITE systems the oilfields use - most major oil companies are required to hire RF Engineers to make sure that things aren't interfering with each other and to install and maintenance a huge variety of communication platforms that are scattered all over the world ... and my little piece of the world is South Texas all the way to the NM/AZ border ... A year ago it was the LAX CA area ... i thought that i would miss CA but to be honest with you -- I am getting so use to these wide open spaces and seeing billions of stars at night (although the platform smells can be bizarre if you are downwind) ... but also that you can actually get pissed off at some of the guys and say things and they don't melt like CA snowflakes that I was so tired of dealing with ... (I do miss the Beach and the food in LA, but on the flipside I have discovered TEXAS BBQ and gained 5 pounds, and have literally got all four wheels off the ground in a company Ford Raptor (by accident) and have learned at night when your out there and you hear coyotes that an AR-15 actually has a 30 round magazine for a reason - LOL)

Actually a good AM radio can help you find where most of your RF leakage and interference is coming from on the smaller systems ... on the bigger systems we have these fancy $15K handheld tablets that literally does our job for us .. we just stand in the middle of the field, turn it on, and it will find ALL the interference on a site and then help to determine what it is and literally means to negate it ... So YES my job can be outsourced to a tablet made in China...

smoothJoey said:

How many times do you have to loop it? :|

Click to expand...

The more turns the better.

I believe type 43 is the preferred mix and you can find them up to 2.9 inch internal diameter here: