Subjective listening impressions of alternate power (solar, generator, battery)

[acg]

@austinpop

 

I will be moving soon to off-grid for my office which also includes my playback system.  Different country and different mains issues but it will be solar into LiFePO4 batteries which feed voltage into the system via a 240V Victron inverter (Victron simply because Living Voice use them in their battery power systems, and because they are very good quality).  Following that inverter I have had a very knowledgeable and experienced fellow in this field wind an enormous balanced isolation transformer with an inductive AC filtering system which should improve sound quality above and beyond the already decent mains system I have here.

 

The first bits have been picked up by the courier today and if you like I can update you with what I end up with.

[acg]

Yeah, I would avoid the Powerwall too...they are not really designed for off-grid and here in Aus are one of the more expensive options.  There is a research facility here that for many years has stress tested a number of solar battery systems with interesting published results.

 

 

13 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

The problem is not the battery, but how you get it charged by the number of solar panels you can install on the property. And then thinking of the winter day and clouded days. This will probably NOT work on the clouded and/or winter days. You'd just need too many panels for that winter day, and in the summer you can't utilize them (your battery will be charged within a day and then what with the remainder).

 

Wind is a "must have" addition (also works at night, also - or especially - works on a clouded day, but no small wind generator will do what it promises in the first place. If you get 500KW out of one of them annually, you are lucky. Plus I don't think there's an awful lot of wind in Texas, and the 500KW is from a country like Holland (almost always windy).

 

 

Even cloudy days where I am in Aus will put quite a bit of energy into the batteries, and because our winters are mild we rarely heat the house anyway...maybe start a wood fire in the fireplace on the few coldest nights.

 

 

20 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Think about a USD 1000 per 1KW (Tesla's would be USD 500 or so), and that in my case e.g. 10 days would take 270KW = USD 270,000 to do it. And you'd need to charge them by the grid.

 

That is a lot of stored power Peter!  Maybe a generator would be a better solution for emergency use.

 

[acg]

We already have solar power and hot water on the house, but it is grid connected.  Peter, I can assure you that the amount of electricity generated on 40 degree C days is plenty even with the panels removed from their optimal temperature conditions.  Those hot days happen when the sun is closest to you i.e. summer which means you are already collecting far more solar radiation than when the sun is farther away and lower to the horizon in winter.  I would not worry about panel efficiency varying with temperature...that is a relatively solved problem.

 

Of more concern is the number of hours in a day that the panels generate viable electricity.  We have added 'extra' panels so that the solar inverter is 'maxed out' earlier in the day and later in the evening...this makes a significant difference in my experience.  

 

[acg]

Here is is a tidbit:

 

https://www.livingvoice.co.uk/lv-battery-power-supply.html