New Off Grid Inverter Charger

[ClassicCrazy]

Actually 2 weekends ago I got to sing the general ticket for a 7 year old, that was pretty cool!!

Also MidNite has its own amateur radio club now and most all of the engineers are now licensed. As has been pointed out RFI/EMI has and will always be one of our big concerns and we will do all we can do to make them as quite as possible

Ha ha - I bet you were singing as you signed the exam !

Yeah there are lots of hams out here - the original hackers hands on tinkerers do it  your self electronics geeks .
Larry WT9M

[dgd]

... I'll refer to boB as the lead Engineer since he is paid the least... His favorite mode is CW...while mobile! 

Now that conjures all sorts of weirdness.
He has an automatic Honda car and his left foot does a tap dance on a floor installed cw key....
Or he has a Classic with voice recognition firmware in  the Honda so as he sings... Doo Wah Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do, its converted to Aux1 relay pulses that do the keying...

dgd

[bailey]

Speaking of EMI issues, see the attached photo for the array component of a fun off-grid system we did a couple of years ago

Kirk Bailey
Abundant Solar, LLC.

[TomW]

Speaking of EMI issues, see the attached photo for the array component of a fun off-grid system we did a couple of years ago

Kirk Bailey
Abundant Solar, LLC.

At risk of going further off topic.

That sure looks like a great way to knock your production in the head. Looks like the equivalent of 10% or 15% shading?

Not sure why they did it? Hail?

Just curious.

Tom

[CDN-VT]

Speaking of EMI issues, see the attached photo for the array component of a fun off-grid system we did a couple of years ago

Kirk Bailey
Abundant Solar, LLC.

Must cut the harvest by 50% or more !

VT

[Halfcrazy]

... I'll refer to boB as the lead Engineer since he is paid the least... His favorite mode is CW...while mobile! 

Now that conjures all sorts of weirdness.
He has an automatic Honda car and his left foot does a tap dance on a floor installed cw key....
Or he has a Classic with voice recognition firmware in  the Honda so as he sings... Doo Wah Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do, its converted to Aux1 relay pulses that do the keying...

dgd

UG you just gave him some ideas 

[TomW]

Woohoo! Curious if CW would qualify as texting while driving in states where it is not only kind of dumb but illegal?

[niel]

i don't think they made a code key illegal. one does not have to look at it to bang out dots and dashes, but i wouldn't want to drive while doing it myself.
n3ghx

[dgd]

Maybe the new inverter could have a small speaker built in and a jack for a CW key. Then setup and configuartion info could be keyed in and the appropriate code returned via the speaker, all morse code of course.
What an excellent security feature
dgd

[bailey]

The shielded solar array was done for a local physicist and had a roughly 15% reduced solar harvest over a non-shielded equivalent (good guess Tom!)  The whole system including the array was built inside a single Faraday cage and the design also included both point and distributed low pass electrical filtering to slow down fast transient edges enough that they can be successfully clipped.

The motivation was to survive stuff like major solar flares (read up on the Carrington Event of 1859 for an example of the breed).  The owner made the case for the extra complexity by pointing out that depending on your assumptions, recent research puts the chances of him getting hit by something like this as significantly greater than the odds of him suffering a structure fire (according to NFPA statistics).  And yet, like most of us, he carries fire insurance for his home...

The project was interesting for both the electrical and mechanical challenges involved in putting it together.  I consider off-grid system design to be more "fun" than pure grid-tie, and this was even better!  One side effect of the project is that everyone that worked on it became significantly more motivated to at least add MidNite SPD's to our personal solar systems, even if none of us has yet gone whole Faraday hog

Kirk Bailey
Abundant Solar, LLC.

[niel]

bailey,
i doubt the screen spacing would need to be so closely spaced even for a carrington event. at what spacing would be best that one could get away with to allow for less shading is a good question though. my thoughts would be double the current spacing. another thing is you could go with smaller wires to also lessen the shading impact and it won't lessen the protection. we had a few good discussions years ago on naws about this stuff.

[CDN-VT]

The shielded solar array was done for a local physicist and had a roughly 15% reduced solar harvest over a non-shielded equivalent (good guess Tom!)  The whole system including the array was built inside a single Faraday cage and the design also included both point and distributed low pass electrical filtering to slow down fast transient edges enough that they can be successfully clipped.

The motivation was to survive stuff like major solar flares (read up on the Carrington Event of 1859 for an example of the breed).  The owner made the case for the extra complexity by pointing out that depending on your assumptions, recent research puts the chances of him getting hit by something like this as significantly greater than the odds of him suffering a structure fire (according to NFPA statistics).  And yet, like most of us, he carries fire insurance for his home...

The project was interesting for both the electrical and mechanical challenges involved in putting it together.  I consider off-grid system design to be more "fun" than pure grid-tie, and this was even better!  One side effect of the project is that everyone that worked on it became significantly more motivated to at least add MidNite SPD's to our personal solar systems, even if none of us has yet gone whole Faraday hog

Kirk Bailey
Abundant Solar, LLC.

@ Kirk Bailey

15% , wow bettery than I thought .
Good one .
Here U tube ,10 seg on emp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wf6NOtVNM4

VT

[bailey]

As far as the screen, the owner/physicist specified the material and spacing, with some give&take based on what was commercially available.

As you might guess the mechanical/materials issues were a big part of the challenge.  And we have learned a few things since it was installed, such as that small leaves like to get between the screen and the modules and the array thus requires periodic cleaning.

Fortunately, we had a very creative screen guy as a sub on the job and that made all the difference in the world.

Kirk Bailey
Abundant Solar, LLC.

[Westbranch]

was just looking at the  REDFLOW site and they now have several inverters that will work for their power 'cells',...   https://www.zcell.com/inverters.php

BUT no  MidNite in the list so far...

[mtdoc]

I realize this inverter is still a ways out from production but I sure hope it is available for the 2017 installation season.  I really want it for my new system install this summer.