diy solar

diy solar

Off grid people ill-prepared

mvonw said:
I’ve got three backup generators, 5 spare panels, a brand new Sol Ark 12K sitting in a box as a spare, and a full 1000 gallon propane tank, and I still don’t feel prepared.

The medication is helping a little, however.
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Are they all stored in an EMP shelter?
 
mvonw said:
I’ve got three backup generators, 5 spare panels, a brand new Sol Ark 12K sitting in a box as a spare, and a full 1000 gallon propane tank, and I still don’t feel prepared.

The medication is helping a little, however.
Click to expand...
That's rather selfish. I feel we need to redistribute some of your wealth, thus I'm willing to accept the Sol Ark free of charge.
 
Mattb4 said:
not knowing why the lights come on when they flip a switch, why water flows when they turn on the faucet or why the sun rises in the morning.
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Our solar system right now is confined to our camp trailer, but this is my dream. To have the system sized such that I Don’t Have To Think About It. No more monitoring because it just works. But until I fully understand the system, how it works, what it’s capable of and our actual use through the seasons of the year 3 season use only), then monitoring is essential.
 
Watts Happening said:
That's rather selfish. I feel we need to redistribute some of your wealth, thus I'm willing to accept the Sol Ark free of charge.
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Yes, well I'm a selfish bastard, I grew up dirt poor, borrowing and working my way through two graduate degrees. Something about growing up really poor that motivates you never to go back to that.....;)
 
mvonw said:
Yes, well I'm a selfish bastard, I grew up dirt poor, borrowing and working my way through two graduate degrees. Something about growing up really poor that motivates you never to go back to that.....;)
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Grew up ridiculously poor myself and I agree with never going back to that. It's been my observation over many decades that some people are raised with a few advantages and complain because someone else has it better, while others take that leg up and build it into something more. Then some are born and raised poor and are bitter about it, while others consider themselves fortunate because they know people who have it even worse, and strive to make things better for themselves and their family. I've come to realize that growing up poor was a powerful motivator for me but there are plenty of motivated people from all walks of life.

signed,
Amateur cowboy philosopher
 
As a long time IT guy, you learn things about redundancies and MTBF num(lies)bers, and MTTR numbers. A lot of it is just plain math and statistics. The more stuff you have the more likely you are to have a failure. This is something that is sometimes difficult for smart people to grok. I've always looked for minimal redudancy and as low a MTTR as I can get. The other problem used to occur a lot with hard disks, and that is the cold spare issue. The problem is once components start failing that you've had in service for a long time, they tend to cascade. And then the final issue, which is the technology keeps improving, so if you buy too much, you load up on soon to be obsolete tech. If you are going to have spares, in most cases you may as well run them, and size your systems with overhead to handle failures, replacing and upgrading components as they fail.

From a pure disaster scenario, design your systems with easily replaceable components whenever possible. And in the case of DIY solar, make sure you have the basic tools you need to scab in something quickly.

YMMV.
 
Wealth is a tricky thing. The more I have, the more there is to maintain.

However there are advantages to having extras in case of failure, etc..

There are several forms of wealth I consider invaluable. The first is health. A second is knowledge.
 
EastTexCowboy said:
Grew up ridiculously poor myself and I agree with never going back to that. It's been my observation over many decades that some people are raised with a few advantages and complain because someone else has it better, while others take that leg up and build it into something more. Then some are born and raised poor and are bitter about it, while others consider themselves fortunate because they know people who have it even worse, and strive to make things better for themselves and their family. I've come to realize that growing up poor was a powerful motivator for me but there are plenty of motivated people from all walks of life.

signed,
Amateur cowboy philosopher
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In my case, I was fortunate in that I had parents that valued education and hard work, they were never successful in their business ventures but they always worked hard at it and never gave up and I think that is the trait that parents need to instill in kids these days. The truth is, that a lot of success is also luck, but you can't take advantage of that luck if you are not industrious.
 
ksmithaz1 said:
As a long time IT guy, you learn things about redundancies and MTBF num(lies)bers, and MTTR numbers. A lot of it is just plain math and statistics. The more stuff you have the more likely you are to have a failure. This is something that is sometimes difficult for smart people to grok. I've always looked for minimal redudancy and as low a MTTR as I can get. The other problem used to occur a lot with hard disks, and that is the cold spare issue. The problem is once components start failing that you've had in service for a long time, they tend to cascade. And then the final issue, which is the technology keeps improving, so if you buy too much, you load up on soon to be obsolete tech. If you are going to have spares, in most cases you may as well run them, and size your systems with overhead to handle failures, replacing and upgrading components as they fail.

From a pure disaster scenario, design your systems with easily replaceable components whenever possible. And in the case of DIY solar, make sure you have the basic tools you need to scab in something quickly.

YMMV.
Click to expand...
40 years for me on the IT part, but I had a different approach. Live redundancy where possible where failover systems kept the end user functioning and usually not even knowing there was a failure - servers, internet connections, etc. Hot swap hard drives with rebuild on the fly RAID. Multiple spares of just about everything that was critical to keeping that MTTR low. Routers, switches, workstations, printers, and pretty much everything else. It's expensive and yeah, we threw away some hardware or sold it at a loss. Part of the reason for this was almost all my clients were healthcare, including hospitals and ERs. They don't want to hear "sorry, but the radiology PACS server is down" when they have a stroke patient in the ER and need a stat CT. So the cost of the redundancy was actually just a one time insurance premium that proved itself well worth the cost when the inevitable failure came along. I know for a fact that it saved a few lives over the years. Then along came COVID and they were especially happy to have spares on site, because you damn sure couldn't get anything for a while.

I'm not saying I disagree with managing costs and efficiency, because I absolutely do agree. But it depends on the situation. My problem is that after years of doing that and now that I'm retired it's hard to shake it. I'm so accustomed to having a spare everything that I just kind of plan for it out of habit.
 
EastTexCowboy said:
40 years for me on the IT part, but I had a different approach. Live redundancy where possible where failover systems kept the end user functioning and usually not even knowing there was a failure - servers, internet connections, etc. Hot swap hard drives with rebuild on the fly RAID. Multiple spares of just about everything that was critical to keeping that MTTR low. Routers, switches, workstations, printers, and pretty much everything else. It's expensive and yeah, we threw away some hardware or sold it at a loss. Part of the reason for this was almost all my clients were healthcare, including hospitals and ERs. They don't want to hear "sorry, but the radiology PACS server is down" when they have a stroke patient in the ER and need a stat CT. So the cost of the redundancy was actually just a one time insurance premium that proved itself well worth the cost when the inevitable failure came along. I know for a fact that it saved a few lives over the years. Then along came COVID and they were especially happy to have spares on site, because you damn sure couldn't get anything for a while.

I'm not saying I disagree with managing costs and efficiency, because I absolutely do agree. But it depends on the situation. My problem is that after years of doing that and now that I'm retired it's hard to shake it. I'm so accustomed to having a spare everything that I just kind of plan for it out of habit.
Click to expand...
Great post. I guess it depends. Saving a life is one thing. Not being able to microwave a pizza is another, lol. Some people have medical devices, Cpaps, etc that their health depends upon. But much of our reliance on electricity is more habit than necessity, except perhaps food storage like freezers and fridges.
 
I've done very well for a high school diploma. Worked my ass off for a lot of years to get here. Made more than my share of bonehead mistakes too, but I learned something from every one. Of course some mistakes were too much fun to not repeat...just ask my second wife.
 
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