Solar Sunday Experiments 33: Moving the solar panels for December, testing OKMO's 12v 100ah battery

[@donloughrey1615]

Happy Thanksgiving. Love the Tam.

[@RinoaL]

Thanks! It’s nice to hear someone calling it a Tam. I think the only good berets come from scotland, well besides what Jamie Hyneman wears, ill make an exception for him. I dont like the french ones though.

[@donloughrey1615]

@@RinoaL You wear it well.

[@windsnexus9064]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who sees you have impeccable fashion!

[@XianHaos]

That beret is serving looks.

[@momomunsta8887]

Love the hat and jacket! Cool look, might have to steal your fashion.. 😅

[@RinoaL]

The beret is from Fabhatrix in scotland if you want one! Also Thais just mentioned the jacket was from Gap several years ago

[@The_Last_Post]

Rin, do you ever still mess around with 18650’s?? I have a pile of them sitting about but they seem redundant now LiFePo4 is on the scene

[@RinoaL]

I don't tbh, they don't hold much power and it's a hassle to put enough together to do anything with. I've decided to recycle the majority of the ones I have.

[@soyboypersonalfinance1138]

@@RinoaL🪦

[@MrUrangatan]

Level 1 Techs in the video ftw :)

[@RinoaL]

I like Wendel a lot lol

[@Flojoe6274]

Happy Thanksgiving 🎉🎉!

[@poland153]

sssssolar sssssunday yyyyyyyyyeah!!!! man i cant get enough of those photons

[@RinoaL]

I do really enjoy making these, even though their quality has gone down due to me being busy with work. I feel like I'm about to upload some really big videos incorporating the last 20 episodes of content into larger videos on my Rinoa's Big Projects channel.

[@poland153]

a ring of batteries always sharing a load, and then you come in and pick one up to take home for entertainment goodness. primo

[@DaliwolfBacon]

To make the buildings you manage off grid-ish...how many panels and batteries will you need? I would like to put solar panels on my garage facing south as a battery backup. I have to look into this more. I am in Wisconsin, so we don't get a lot of light in the winter.

[@RinoaL]

I feel I will start by making a dedicated always-inverter 120v circuit in one of the buildings then grow from there. I’d actually need like 50 panels to do all five buildings but thats pretty big. The biggest building would be easy in winter due to the boiler being gas, but the air conditioners are three phase behemoths.

[@DaliwolfBacon]

@@RinoaL I am hoping that we can get enough power to handle our fridge and freezer if the power goes off for a day or two. I think there are websites that help you determine what is needed for such things, and I will seek them out. Good luck with your project. I actually like the battery reviews LOL! I really like your Frankenputer too. That cracked me up! I got a few of those ;)

[@RinoaL]

@@DaliwolfBacon Oh that'd be easy tbh. My 30w panel makes 160wh sitting in our apartment window each day, my 350w of solar at the workshop makes like 1.5kwh a day. You can kinda see the math from there

[@elizabethjohnston585]

What gaming do you do? Love the builds, appreciate the reviews.

[@RinoaL]

Biggest game has been FFXIV since 2010 for me. I also have Planet crafter I enjoy playing. The rest is Ps1 and Ps2 and N64 games. Although I did toy with PSP for a time. I really like consoles but older consoles. I dont want something that is internet connected. My every-year vintage games I play are A Bug’s Life, Jersey Devil, Einhänder, Mega Man Legends on PS1, Rocket Power Beach Bandits, several ATV games, and Rollercoaster theme park on PS2. Then we have GOG for older PC games but I still limit myself to only $30 a year for purchasing myself a game. Oh and Sushi Ben in vr! That was my 2024 purchase. My 2023 purchase was The Firmament which was fun but my PC sucks at running it

[@benneilsen2915]

Rinoa, what are your thoughts on Factorio?

[@RinoaL]

Never played it. I did more of Yogscast technical minecraft mods and planet crafter

[@DodgyFPV]

Thinking about power saving it won't be much I don't think if it would be worth it or not, you can buy an power adapter to use a standard PSU so you can use one PSU to power the board and the gpu?

[@RinoaL]

In a previous video I showed how I had to remove the adapter mod I had done because my 430w psu doesnt have enough of that 430 watts allocated to the 12v rail. Ends up having brownouts because some of that 430w is the minus rail and 3.3v and 5v which arent used at all. Instead of replacing the whole power supply I just went back to having two for the time being

[@DodgyFPV]

@RinoaL Fair enough. Didn't see that one.

[@RinoaL]

@@DodgyFPV I figure I'll probably come across a 600w PSU someday, so no sense in buying one now.

[@hardymichael533]

Good 👍 😊eco flow delta pro 3 system check it out

[@SawdustSoftwareSiliconChippy]

There’s no reason to apologize for battery reviews. You have the opportune to assess, as little or no significant financial cost to yourself, which we, your viewers, do not. However, I have 1 criticism. The solar charging, though less than ideal, is dependent on the vagaries of the weather. Thus, the test subjects (batteries), are not being compared with a standard. I have 2 ideas that may address that; 1: Wall/Grid powered charger (an opportune to asses chargers, maybe?). 2: A dedicated solar cell sensor (or photo-resistor/diode/transistor etc), to compare the light intensity with time, against the battery’s charge (the solar sensor effectively providing a power correction factor). I thought your repositioning of the solar panels, parallel to the brick wall, is a good idea. Though I also suggest, moving the panels further away from the shadows, and tilting on the edge of the build’s wall. My not be 45°, though enough for a free (no cost) increase of output. 20l buckets, filled with water/sand/junk, could make good anchors/mounts, for a chassis supporting the panels, at a suite angle, and prevent all, but the most severe storms, moving the panels. Again, another enjoyable and informative, presentation.

[@RinoaL]

Hrmm, yeah I agree entirely. Wattcycle sent me a nice little 20A charger i've been using, but it feels a bit slow, and I almost feel dishonest using grid power so I've only done like 250wh with that. You've given me motivation to make the charging more uniform as well. Maybe when I switch over my system to charge the 48V 100AH battery, and have a step-down converter to charge the 12v Batteries, I can begin setting them to charge at a constant current. I think then I also will select a nice array of incandescent light bulbs or something uniform to be my discharge tests.

[@SawdustSoftwareSiliconChippy]

@@RinoaL The Post Apocalyptic Inventor, used/build a matrix of incandescent lamps, simply for load testing. A dummy load with optical output 😄 Though boring, building a database/spreadsheet of the batteries' performance (will you need a data logger?) over a full charge-discharge cycle, could yield interesting results. Especially if that includes several cycles for each battery (amount of capacity decay, real vs advertised capacity, and maybe % of full charge, after a month of storage). A database like that, would have value, potentially, significant commercial value (sales impact). I'm looking forward, to more of your presentations, and discoveries. 👍

[@mannyfragoza9652]

Maybe it's me, but your wires to your charge controller look a little undersized unless they are solid copper.

[@RinoaL]

They are solid, but they are also under-sized. Im not really in a position to buy wire so I just double up and sometimes 4x copper wire I find in buildings

[@mannyfragoza9652]

@@RinoaL oh you doubled the wire ok sounds safe enough

[@RinoaL]

I figure I'll double it again when I rip out more wire haha

[@mannyfragoza9652]

@@RinoaL Ive been looking at a similar Charge Controller by the same company They have some really good prices for used

[@RinoaL]

Yeah? good to know!

[@zakksrage]

It would 35% better to have them laid on the that edge of the building wall so they lay at a angle to catch all of the low horizon sun all day versus only getting a few percent of direct sun

[@RinoaL]

Yeah but we get really bad gusts of wind so I have to worry about them being flipped over and getting broken

[@Evokvn]

First

[@davef.2329]

You're cool! Thanks for the videos and be well.