The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications

[EdDee]

Hi Guys!!

I'm still around.... Strangely.... Still got all the hairy bits too... wonders never cease...

I have been a good little miscreant and locked myself away for the last 6 weeks, or was it 8... or 12... or 20?

Whatever...

But... You will be glad to know, particularly you, Glort, that I might have solved an interesting problem where it comes to micro solar power installations... You know, the one everybody asks about... The good ole cup full problem.... When the batteries are full (the cup), how do you actually know it? .... More importantly, as the batteries are filling and solar conditions change, ie solar incidence, clouds, charger load etc, how much power is actually available to be pushed into other things (the grog in the bottle)... Like winding some extra cold into the deep freeze, warming up some water in the good old boiler, pumping air into the compressor tank, turning on the pool pump for a bit longer.... (This does of course assume you are using some form of battery storage to run into the non sun  hours, but, it may just apply to other thingies as well...)

Well..... Look no further!! Eureka... I haf founded eet!!

The secret, me dear friends, is actually so exceedingly simple, I am surprised that it isn't touted as a mantra on all forums and made a prerequisite for all solar installations...

Would you like to know more?

If so, read on!

Oh.. and there aint much Lister involved in here, so please Mr Admin.... Forgive me!!

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The suspense........



The Solution:

What you will need -

A Sonoff POWR2 Power monitoring WiFi switch thingy
A Chinesium Grid Tie inverter - About 1Kw should suffice
A couple of Solar Panels that can be disconnected from your main array if you are over panelled, or a couple of unused that can be jammed in alongside your main array...

By now, you should have an inkling as to what we are going to do!

Tack the little gti onto your mains line through the Sonoff switch and hook up the panels... While sun is shining, the little gti will give all its getting to the grid....

Take a power reading from the sonoff, and jot it down... Alongside that, take power readings of what you're getting from your other solar bits and jot them down too...

Keep at it until you are thoroughly bored and have at least 10 or more simultaneous readings for everything... A few clouds pissing you around wont make a big difference, but fast moving clouds during readings stuff you around immensely.... How do I know this?

Once you have a few thousand....err.... hundred... Just a few readings, take an average of the individual groups, ie GTI1Kw, Gti600Va, Main array system.... (Make sure all batteries are accepting full charge of the sun, or your readings will be worth buggerall on them...again...how do I know?)

Now, here's where my eureka bit comes in... There's a pattern.... When the "monitoring" gti is putting out power, the other arrays will be doing same.... When the monitor puts out double its power, everything else will be capable of putting out the same proportionate increase....

Does it work?

YES!!

Now you may ask... WHY?

Well, being a skinflint stingy bastard, I want to get as much out of my panels as I can... Without wrecking my batteries or inverter(s)...

How to automate?

Sonoff wifi switches on any thing that can be turned on and off to use up available power -
Regular Sonoff basic units to turn on lights and small loads (or turn off small loads when there are power failures and the inverter is working its ass off)...
Sonoff TH10's on deep freeze, using the extra solar availability to pull temps down as much as possible using the temperature monitoring on it as a feedback..
Sonoff PowR2's for turning on larger loads and monitoring power consumption (Dishwasher, Washing Machines, Compressor etc....)
A Raspberry Pi to coordinate all this crap, with MQTT installed and a package called Node Red , which is a gui type ladder, type programming enviro...
And, for full in house control, drop the Tasmota firmware into your Sonoff switches to allow full intranet control without having to go through an external server...
And a wifi network to hang all of this onto... Bruce, you might have a problem here...
Emoncms running on the pi if you wanna log this junk and make a pretty lookatme page!

For a "live view" of it - Feel free to look at: http://www.digipoint.co.za:85/emoncms/dashboard/view&id=21 ... This is my "in house" page, so quite large, lots of data, will be slow on a remote view... Besides comments on how long it takes to load, they would be appreciated....

Keep it Sunning!!

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort...

"You don't need a couple of panels, I have used some Little cells from old solar lights." - I actually do.... The additional GT inverter also has mppt on it so I can follow the potential power output way more accurately.... Loading on a simple solar call current metering enviro doesn't slot it into the maximum available power scene.... This does of course require the main/other inverter(s) to be mppt as well...

"why not just monitor your battery Voltage" - Can do, but this is way more accurate.... Particularly if the charger has bulk/float voltages etc....

Also, this has been an exercise in getting the absolute most out of the panels as far as is possible, particularly in forecasting the max available loads that can be imposed - this method takes nice care of intermittent clouds and the like... Pushes out as much as it possibly can to alternative storage methods...

I could have probably gone a lot simpler with smaller standalone individual things, but the problem I foresaw with that was expansion... as you start putting on additional little bits, central control becomes a problem...

Re the ahdunno.... I have a pi hooked up... had the mqtt in... had the node red in the background... So I just used it!

Real pity Bruce isnt here anymore, I would have valued his insight... That man's far from being a fool! Shame on you, you crass ozzi twat!! Why'd you chase off one of the good guys? Good thing we're both thick skinned ignorant farts!! I might insult you!! Lol... Great to see you're still around!!

I might be interested in aqding a bang-bang circuit to this whole mess.... I have an element in the water heater that's sitting there doing nothing... I was thinking about Cap Disch powering it somehow.... I must scheme a bit more.... Unfortunately its around the 3kw range, a bit heavy for my inverter to run direcerterly.... also, being a scrapper boiler, its well and truly corroded into place, no hope of changing it!!

"Your control and monitoring is amazing though. " - Thanx for the comps!! Love you long time!!

"Trendy Modern home magazine as being the latest in Eco friendly save the planet energy management." - Hell no!! The bunny boys would go into cardiac arrest if they saw me recycling oil!!

"Keep posting mate, great to see you back and your always interesting creations. " - Thanx Boet!!  - That's the ZA equivalent of thank you my dear brother

I will try and post a bit more, but my bandwidth is well and truly limited at the mo!!

Hold thumbs

Cheers!

Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort,

Set up a tiny little panel (12v 1A) and some measuring kit.... Tried to see if there was a reasonable relationship between a non mppt and a mppt type enviro... Not quite chalk and cheese, but unless I manually regulated the output volts quite tediously on the mini panel and did the power calcs, I could not see a way to use the info as it stood... The "manual" mppt variance made a fair difference to available power.... (Did this just to put my own mind to rest and reinforce my 1kW GTI solar monitoring setup....)

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort...

Agreed re the panel happy place, it does make little difference as to where it is in the happy place for current, but bear in mind I'm looking at maxing the power out.... Now my strings are around 100v or so... Given that they can be anywhere pretty much 30v plus or minus with little change in current percentage wise, worst to best scenario is at around 10A per string, giving around 700W to 1.3kw per string... Major difference for me...

"I got some little Low voltage battery charging modules yesterday. Same thing, set a Digital readout for high and low and the switch accordingly.  I'm going to make a Voltage divider to run them off the panels and remove the relay to switch some Chunky Mosfets out of some solar inverters I have scrapped.  As long as you hold the panels in their happy place voltage envelope, all works well and one does not need to go to the Trouble of MPPT. " - Nice Idea!! I like it!! (can I steall that idea?

"Can store a LOT of energy in 1.5 ton of water even at low temp. "Agreed!! Good one!!

Oops - Sorry About that... Took the link down, Didn't think anybody was still looking at it!! - Here's another:http://www.digipoint.co.za:85/emoncms/dashboard/view&id=6

The cloned dashboard was just to test some stuff.... This is the active one currently...

Keep it shining!!

Cheers

Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort...

The deepfreeze is actually at around -40 or -50 at the bottom... I'm monitoring the top level, just below the lid, its a chest type freezer, so the bottom stuff is plenty cold...

I'm still running my original panel sets I put in last year or two ago... about 4.5kw in 350w panels and two little 250W toys as well... I've also just integrated the waste of time blow gennie into the system... 500W in a gale force, so it doesn't even factor into the system really....

I am switching stuff in and out.. Of the 3 washers that we use, 2 of them can be programmed and then turned hard off, they resume when powered up again... the third, no go... Also, the dishwasher fortunately doesnt mind being crashed during a cycle, it just carries on where it left off...

Cute stuff that I am doing is monitoring the power output of the GTI's with sonoffs... as soon as I go below about 250W output on my pip, I shut down the one GTI if the pip is running from battery/solar... I dont want to take a chance of backfeeding the inverter too heavily... Especially because both GTI's are on the output of the PIP.... When it's in bypass mode, I dont really care.... I've set it up this way to get the best out of all scenarios for my environment... Seems to be working quite well so far.... Let's see how long it takes to go bang...

My mid sized compressor is on a small 750W VFD... That I run ex PIP as well... The only difference is that I hacked the Sonoff Basic so that its purely a relay switch, no power out, that way I have tied it into the pressure sense circuit in series and all is roses....

Enough rambling... time to go finish up the flexi screw conveyor I'm putting together.... 100mm dia and the longest section of screw I have is around 40m.... Cutting them down and customising to use them to convey infill from under the house as we are excavating and enlarging basements....  I realllllly want my indoor shooting range!!

Send me a PM with your cel # and I will send you some whatsapp pics of the conveyor et al if you're interested....

Keep it digging....

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort...

"have about 40 of those toy 250W " - I wish.... Pack your spares up and send them this way...Lol

"Do you not have enough wind or is the output just too low ?".... I chose this spot that Im in because it has a bit of a "micro-micro Climate" - it is on the top of a hillock, with the result that the wind "deflects" and kinda ramps up about 20m above the pitch of the roof.... and its double storey to boot.... my wind mast is only about 9 to 10m from ground level, so it misses the bulk of the wind... plus the fact that its a max 500w output.... What they don't tell you is that the 500w is in about 300mph wind.... Live and learn I guess!!

Re the shooting range... the outdoor one is still there (read that as back yard with targets set up) .... But... I want an indoor range where I can set up a few favorite pistols and rifles and play around with loads, on the fly... I swage heads as well as cast, making my own moulds and press tools for them too... I enjoy the ballistics side of things immensely and love to spend hours...days weeks setting up "surgical accuracy" loads for my toys... My goodness... if I played with one toy a day, every day of the year, it would take me in the region of about 1.8years before I played with the first toy again.... Time to get rid of a few I reckon, not enough years left in me to play with them properly....

Ventilation will be a must - In fact the blowers etc are already on the rack, waiting for the rest to be done... Snyder's and the like, even though they are cased rounds, prefer the holy black to run properly... Martini's too...

Come to think of it, single cylinder disposable piston engines are probably my first passion in life.... I spent all of my money on guns, ammo and women... The rest I wasted!!

Enough rambling... Time to go put some more screw conveyor together... I'm only at my pc to print an outlet duct for the conveyor anyway... and to reply to you, of course!!

Keep it digging!!

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort...

The legislation here is a bit pathetic... Good in theory, but bad in practice... Not enough get up and go, nor skills and manpower to keep the peace, let alone police the regulations correctly... Unfortunately, there are so many differing opinions from station ro station as to how to apply the legislation, nobody, I'm sure, knows exactly what is going on....

Used sollies are not easy to come by, not that I've seen anyway... properties here have a fair amount of roofspace so the chaps simply add on and keep going by the looks of it.... Also, new are a tad dear to purchase, a bit, well almost, out of the reach of the average guy I think...

"I wish I could find a profitable use for all this power I'm making." - Jeez Louise!! I wish I was in that situation!! ... I would simply split H2O and dump the H... Can the O and use it on any combustible project I could think of!!

Ok, so have the Feds busted you on a "Breaking Bad" suspicion yet? Got a government residence post code yet? Feel free to send multiple gifts of solar panels whenever you get locked up and cant use them!!

Keep it shining!!

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort,

Compressing O2 shouldnt be too much of a problem, just make sure your compressor rings arent bypassing oil and you should be more than ok if you keep the pressures down to about 8bar max... Wouldn't want a diesel effect... O2 will obviosly cause a fair bit of corrosion if moisture is present too.... A mid pressure diaphragm compressor would be the answer for lowish pressures... A largish volume at lower pressures would be a nice safe way to go as opposed to 300atm 2gal jugs!!

Power wise we dont really use much daytime, solar pretty keep up with it on a medium bright day, we are pretty power efficient here... Dont let the rest of the clan hear that, they think we are power hogs the way I piss a blister some days!!! But seriously, we only use about 50kwh total per day, before you take off what solar harvests... Considering that is a house, a flat, paintball range, workshops x 3... its not bad at all...

"I reckon if you advertised free panels disposal You could get a container full a week. " - Not around here, for sure!!

Ooooooh.... 4kw GTI's.... Luuurvley!! Get a dozen and send the excess this way - Those are another thing I only see on the 2nd hand market as "Needs minor attention".... ie its totally buggered and the only attention its worth is stripping down for copper and ali!

On a slightly different note.... Had a lovely wake up this morning... Got up to the smell of pecan cake bread type things being baked... Threw some clothes on... tossed on the socks and safety boots... wandered through to the kitchen to a steaming cup of coffee... Awesome!! .... Sat there chatting to one of the daughters while she was baking... Had another cup of coffee... Had a smoke... Had another cup of coffee.... Decided it was time to pull outside to go prune some trees... Stood up... (Now bear in mind, a good hour to hour and a half has transpired by this time since I slipped on the safety shoes..... Stretched my legs out and flexed the toes just before I stood up.... WHAM!! ...Felt like some asshole poured hot sulphuric acid into a freshly bored hole in my rhs middle toe.... I immediately set about cursing, writhing and trying to loosen triple knotted laces simultaneously...

A bloody great big baboon spider decided he didn't like my little piggies wriggling around his nether regions!! When I eventually got him unlatched from my toe... No let me rephrase that... When he had had enough of squirting painful alkaloids into my toe, he withdrew back into the toe section of my shoe and refused to come out... A bit of gentle coaxing later, and he left his overnight residence... Picked him up and let him go outside... Its a good 8 hours later and my toes still feel like someone injected them with molten lead!! Soddit!!!!

Keep it squirming!!

Cheers
Ed

Oh, heres a pic of the b@#$tard,,,

[dax021]

Hey Ed, didn't you learn in the army, always shake your boots out before you put them on?  I still religiously shake mine out, 40 years after klaaring out.

[EdDee]

Hey Dax...

Yep, did that.... Been doing that since basics... This bastard must have gone to scouts and used all his knotting skills to stay put... He isn't the first one I've had resident, but he is the first resident to remain undiscovered until assault... Only other time I've had similar was a small mean little bastard of a rock scorpion that I sat on... In my car...

ouch....

Cheers
Ed

[dax021]

LOL, ja spiders can grip when they want to.

[dax021]

Hi Ed, you'll never guess what came out of my boot this morning.  This is the first day in about 50 that i have put shoes on, so he has made himself at home.  Luckily was dead and came out on the 1st shake

[dax021]

Hi Glort, when you send that container for Ed, better make sure there are some panels in there for me too

[dax021]

You have it good down under.  As Ed has mentioned, there are very few 2nd hand panels available in S.A.  Also, unless your panels are secured really well, they have a nasty habit of getting up and walking to the closest low income settlement.  My neighbour had his solar pump panels disappear in the middle of the night.  It would seem that they weren't happy with their position on top od a 5m pole, so they somehow sawed the pole down and walked away, never to be seen again.

[dieselspanner]

Hi Glort

Maybe you've got on to something big with  backyard solar

If you set up a small to medium sized solar farm in your back yard or up your Dads place, with 'repurposed ' equipment and get it checked and certificated by a qualified inspector you could apply to the local power company to be a registered suplier.

When they start to bleat about the age of your equipment you point out that it is completely safe and the proposed connection exceeds current safety regs by far.

It's slightly less efficient than current equipment, but continues to make an environmental contribution, rather than being a disposal issue.

You then play your hole card.

I know you despise the 'greenwashed' but they will be failing over themselves to support a bloke that is using perfectly serviceable kit to save the planet rather than burying in landfill to poison it.

A month or so jumping through bureaucratic hoops and being in the local media whilst pretending to be greenwashed yourself and you'll be making money for the rest of your life.

Just don't forget it was my idea and 10% of the profit isn't very much....

Cheers
Stef