James Alun

Dogsbody.

Some days buildings maintenance/electrical. Some days admin, bookings, bit of finance. When we’re low on staff, emails and phones. A little bit of AV most weeks.

In a couple of months I’ll drop some of the maintenance and add a day in hr, I’m hoping to build some systems and procedures.

A/V and IT background.

Having lived in community quite a bit:

Label everything,
A place for everything,
You can't 'win',
Keep at it,
Grace is hard but necessary.

So I'm coming from a british perspective which is probably a bit different to those from the US. I'm also on r/fuckcars.

To start with, Britain has a passenger rail network. It's hampered by its age, suffered major reductions after the Beeching report, isn't fully electrified and has outdated rolling stock ( looking at you CrossCountry). Unlike 90+% of roads, it isn't subsidised by council tax. But it does move people around the country.

The USA was pretty much built on railroads, doesn't really seem to have them anymore. Most American cities used to have a tram network, now they're historical curiosities. To quote a certain youtuber, "American cities weren't built for cars, they were bulldozed for them".

All of that to say, it's really hard for individual US Americans to choose to go car free.

In my very much less than humble opinion, electric cars are a bit better for the environment than fossil fuel cars but not really that better for humans.

I have the privilege of being car free. I built an ebike which can get me to the local village and a bus network that can get me to the town and therefore the rail network.

Last weekend I went and bought a recurve bow and some arrows in the city using public transport. I also have access to a community car, which has been really helpful getting to medical appointments.

As for lithium based cars, some (maybe most) manufacturers are switching from using batteries that require cobalt and nickel to iron phosphate, reducing but not eliminating some of the worst environmental and human harm through mining.


Change is possible. I'll attach a few graphs from the UK electric grid.

When I read this post this morning, the majority of the UK's power was coming from lower carbon sources.

Turn on the cold tap, wait till it runs cold, fill glass.

...

I'll get my coat.

Was it a .308 musket?

Cos then the sound could get there first...

I would strongly recommend a decent password manager and if you don't like having a company involved then keepass is a good option.

Personally I use bitwarden (it can be self hosted) and have used Lastpass (not really recommended as their history isn't great.).

Yep, just remember to use the protective goop stuff on the aluminium cables to prevent corrosion.

I'm just now thinking that if you've got a disconnect on that line already, use that to change wire size.

So the setup would look like [controller]-[short section of 10g]-[disconnect]-[4g]-[battery array].

Are you going to use fuses in the links between the batteries in the array?

I'm not comfortable with the thought of hose clamps. What sorts of cable are you using? Copper, aluminium, CCA? Stranded or flexible?

Crinstam Camp wrote:

We have 4g connecting the 6 batteries together parallel with 4g to the inverter, coming off opposite ends of the bank. From the battery to the charge controller and from it to the panels is 10g. The 10g doesn't properly fit in the charge controller contacts, I trimmed a bit of the 10g off to make it work. That's why I was wondering about a proper end for them. If I could, I'd like to have 4g for it all but the end issue is the limiting factor.

You could run 4g for most of the run and crimp a ring connector onto it. For the last couple of inches, take the largest wire that will fit in the charge controller, crimp a ring terminal on to it, bolt them together and cover in heatshrink.

Crinstam Camp wrote:
As for the 12v vs 48  inverter cost... It's the main reason I don't want to switch to a 48v bank. We also have a 12v pump, car style 12v radio, 12v router and the power to the tracking mount controller is 12v.

How do I power all that stuff off a 48v bank?

Kinda depends on your power use. If it's an even split between ac and 12v, you could run a 24v system. Have half the bank power the inverter and half power the 12v stuff.


Sorry about getting your country wrong. My fault for firing off a quick comment in between jobs.

Crinstam Camp wrote:
Charge controller comes on perfectly fine and the two panels are putting out 325 to 330 watts.

That's more like it! 83-84% efficiency.

Crinstam Camp wrote:

So we'll be replacing all our disconnects... I'd gladly take suggestions keeping in mind we're broke lol

So,

1 - suggestions for disconnect switches that will handle this

2 - all the wires I have are too large for the contact points on the controller. Is there some type of screw-on or crimp-on end that will change large wires to tabs that will properly fit?

3 - separate but related, if I switch to a 48 volt battery bank, can I pull 12v off by hooking to just one battery in the bank?

1. Were your previous disconnects rated for DC? AC goes to 0v 50 or 60 times per second. This makes it much easier to break an arc that forms between the contact points. [ur=https://www.mouser.com/blog/which-switch-who-cares-if-its-ac-or-dcl]More info[/url]. Going to 2s2p might make it easier to find disconnects. I don't know anything about US suppliers.

2. Probably but supplies will be local specific.

3. Yes, but. This will put more strain on that 4th battery and so probably reduce its life. There are 48V inverters but I think that gets expensive.