Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[HairyMaclairy]

solar trackers.

I don't want to come off as snarky, I know I can be an ass sometimes...

System complexity, in my experience there are exactly two kinds of trackers; those being installed, and broken ones...

I have heard rumors of there being a brief intermediate state of "working tracker", but I have never encountered it in the wild.

no, not snarky at all.

there is a manual override mode. manually set it to  table mode or wjatever angle you want and lock it.

so fail safe = manual grunt. or just leave at optimum angle.

so when it does work its more efficient.

What’s the trade off between buying a tracker v buying two fixed panels and pointing  them in different directions.  I can see the tracker being useful if you have limited roof space, or you are a Mars rover   

[1714846786]

1714846786

[1714846786]

1714846786

[bitserve]

You are correct, it’s undersize.  But in economic terms, the grid is a much cheaper and bigger battery for normal everyday household consumption given current feed in tariffs.  

The battery is more about energy security.  Keep in mind most solar will be cut off when the grid goes down. People won’t be able to generate at all because the utility shuts down their solar remotely to stop them exporting.   The Tesla has a gateway to allow you to generate behind the battery.

Is that legal somehow? How does it work? Does it inject to a completely different line in your house or is able to somehow isolate from the grid so that no electricity is injected back?

Have you considered installing one of those cheap small aircon split unit (one with 1kw max) in at least one room, ie the bedroom, so in case of a blackout you have some air conditioning at least? Obviously your 7kw central unit is a no-go without the grid and that is probably the only thing missing in your nice setup.

The gateway sits between the battery/solar and the meter.  So the meter never sees electricity which is produced by the panels and stored by the battery or consumed by the house. In a power cut the gateway closes, and production can continue behind the gateway.  

It’s signed off by the installer and inspected by the utility so completely legal (although US may be different).

I don’t understand air conditioner ratings. Our main system is rated 1800 watt but pulls 6kw.  Wtf?  Can someone with more electrical knowledge than me explain how this works?

We have a few smaller splits but they aren’t that small. They will still pull 2 - 3kw each.

interesting, so it does the same that other systems could do, but it is legal. I would assume it is just that in your country you can do that, but you also mentioned that most systems can't generate during a blackout.. So I guess it is something about the Tesla, or the way it does... or just that they have certified that it is safe and other don't.

About the aircon... what do you mean pull? You mean you checked with a meter it does consume 6kw instead of 1.8kw?

If not, you need to consider that heat pumps have an efficiency of around 3.5x, which means that with a 1.8KW in electricity they could produce 6.3kw of heat. Your numbers might vary depending on specs and some other factors, etc... but somehow fit your figures.

If the 6kw figure is what you have metered it is consuming in electricity... then a picture of the spec label might help here.

2-3kw splits looks like way too much for a room. Now I am starting to think you refer to the output and not the electricity input. Unless your rooms are HUGE or you live in a ridiculously extreme climate place.

[jojo69]

There are lots of smart intertie setups, if they are not permitable in all jurisdictions that is just criminal

[vapourminer]

solar trackers.

I don't want to come off as snarky, I know I can be an ass sometimes...

System complexity, in my experience there are exactly two kinds of trackers; those being installed, and broken ones...

I have heard rumors of there being a brief intermediate state of "working tracker", but I have never encountered it in the wild.

no, not snarky at all.

there is a manual override mode. manually set it to  table mode or wjatever angle you want and lock it.

so fail safe = manual grunt. or just leave at optimum angle.

so when it does work its more efficient.

What’s the trade off between buying a tracker v buying two fixed panels and pointing  them in different directions.  I can see the tracker being useful if you have limited roof space, or you are a Mars rover   

3 axis tracking with fixed amount of panels vs what - 2 axis

simple math when all panels are direct on the sun all the time. even corrects for longitude. / seasons

EDIT  it uses GPS

[jojo69]

The best tracker setup I ever saw was at MCAGCC 29 P.

South facing slope, multiple long horizontal pipes oriented North South in bearings.  One large motor coupled to sprockets on each pipe with one looong chain pulled the angle on the entire array, super simple.

found it  34.189863, -116.091611  looks like they have added on in a big way




Actually...I take that back, I saw one better; this was a small pole mounted array a grower I knew was using to irrigate weed in NorCal.  It was a counterweight system.  the default angle was dawn.  Sun came up started pumping water to the crop, small amount of that was diverted to a bucket up on the pole.  As the bucket filled up it would tilt the array around to the West.  Sun goes down, pump quits, there is a small hole in the bucket, it leaks out over night and the array tilts back to dawn.

fucker had a plant at the base of the pole to use the leakage...fucking beautiful.

[lightfoot]

... somehow isolate from the grid...

OK, I'm going to just give up and be snarky, it is an AMAZING new technology



BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

THEY ARE CONTROLLED BY ROBOTS NOW!!!



living in the future man

That's funny... But what does the Tesla exactly do differently so that it is LEGAL to run an on-grid solar installation during a blackout while other systems do require to be automatically shut down on blackout? It's not that those could not have a relay to cut from the grid until the power comes back.

Probably it is fed by a breaker from the main box, and powers a second breaker panel downstream. In that sense it's just a big UPS, you hook your critical loads to the breakers attached to the unit, and when power goes out it continues to feed them.

Just like a big UPS.

For that no anti-islanding is needed. Sunny boy grid tie inverters are a different thing because they *can* backfeed the grid. Thus they need circuitry inside themselves to note when the grid is down and shut themselves off (usually because they suddenly see the 120 volts dropping like a rock as your little panels try to power the neighborhood. Not going to happen :-)

[HairyMaclairy]

The best tracker setup I everActually...I take that back, I saw one better; this was a small pole mounted array a grower I knew was using to irrigate weed in NorCal.  It was a counterweight system.  the default angle was dawn.  Sun came up started pumping water to the crop, small amount of that was diverted to a bucket up on the pole.  As the bucket filled up it would tilt the array around to the West.  Sun goes down, pump quits, there is a small hole in the bucket, it leaks out over night and the array tilts back to dawn.

fucker had a plant at the base of the pole to use the leakage...fucking beautiful.

That’s extraordinary. Only question is parasitic load of the pump versus gainz from tracking.

[Lambie Slayer]

“Let us rejoice that we are poor, And have no Bitcoin to keep: We do not need to bar the door Ere we can go to sleep.” -Robert Leighton

[Lambie Slayer]

Never a doubt that the Coronavirus is Bullish.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/29/we-need-a-fed-thats-going-to-be-a-leader-trump-calls-for-debt-refinancing-amid-coronavirus-fallout.html

"“Our Fed should start being a leader...We should have the lowest interest rates,” Trump said.

“And now we have this problem...You saw where Germany is lowering and also infusing a lot of money into their economy. I haven’t heard our Fed say they should do this,” the president added.

Trump also said the country should refinance its debt at the news conference Saturday from the White House, surrounded by health officials and Vice President Mike Pence."

[JSRAW]

“Let us rejoice that we are poor, And have no Bitcoin to keep: We do not need to bar the door Ere we can go to sleep.” -Robert Leighton

"The World is the problem; the atomic bomb is the solution. kill them all " The God of War, Mahatma Gandhi (Civilization V )

[Dunkelheit667]

The monthly update:



Not much to report, happy I bought one of the dips last month around 9480 USD. DCA is working fine at the moment.

Other than that... got my second flu or something like that this season, even though my hands are sore from all the washing. One of the disadvantages of working in an open plan office. Anyway, the administration already has a plan when the "new flu" finally reaches the city. Our desks and the single toilet for 50 peeps will then be cleaned more frequently. Probably all with the same wipe. When the time comes, I will put a note on my desk saying please do not clean.

I feel the urge for UVB and miss the green, will we have spring this year in March, please?

Gentlemen, have a great March, stay healthy, wash your hands and use (hand) lotion! #nohomo

PS: And no, not really afraid of the Wuflu, just amused about desperate measures to "stop" it.

[Lambie Slayer]

“Let us rejoice that we are poor, And have no Bitcoin to keep: We do not need to bar the door Ere we can go to sleep.” -Robert Leighton

"The World is the problem; the atomic bomb is the solution. kill them all " The God of War, Mahatma Gandhi (Civilization V )

“O Zeus, why is it you have given men clear ways of testing whether Bitcoin is counterfeit but, when it comes to men, the body carries no stamp of nature for distinguishing bad from good?” ― Euripides

 

[HairyMaclairy]

[jojo69]

SV pamp

[Biodom]

There are better one's today, but I am not buying.
If there was a FEDCOIN (that depends in price on the size of FED pumping), I would probably went long that one.

[jbreher]

the lithiums have made impressive strides in energy density, outpacing your Trojans by a fair bit

that said, and I am quite aware of the dangers inherent in H2SO4, if I had one of those power walls it would be installed in an airtight bunker some distance from the dwelling...

when lithium decides to do the bad, it is really bad

True. For a house system weight and energy density aren't as big a problem as in a car (where you have to like move it). So L16 or T105 batteries can get you a lot of power for a reasonable price without the major fire problem of lithiums.

As for hydrogen I've never seen issues with lead, however I guy I knew did blow the bed off his battery powered truck with flooded NiCD batteries. Those last forever but really can gas hydrogen on charge. Oh well.

100ah AGM batteries are quite nice as well but a bit more pricey per AH. Any way you go, you need to figure out how much power you need per day, then build your solar panels to put that much power back in 1/2 day (factoring in cloudy days) with a battery capacity of at least 3-4 times your load for rainy days and the like. Thus if you want to run the fridge (200 watts*24=4.8kw) some lights (about 1kw a day) and a toaster (1,500 watts for an hour a day) you're at 7kw. Thus a 28kw battery pack and 14kw of solar will do it. Assuming 5 hours of sun per day (and you factored in the 2x oversize for solar) and you're talking a ~2kw array and if the batteries are 48v then a 500ah battery pack or 16 T105's.

Takes more power than you think.

Thanks for the info. But you have a unit problem.

Watts != Watt-Hours

I hate screwing that up, but I think the math holds. watt hours is what everything should be measured in with watts alone just used for peak demand calculations.

Yeah, after interpolating to Watt-Hours where apparently intended, I didn't trigger on any math problems.

OTOH, a unit error is a math error.

Just the OCD engineering in me. Carry on...

Incidentally, someone else posted KW/h (literally KiloWatts per hour) where KWh (KiloWatt-Hours) was obviously intended. Units people, units. <<smh>> <g, d, &r>

[Biodom]

just for space exploration junkies...
https://spacenews.com/falcon-heavy-to-launch-nasa-psyche-asteroid-mission/

16 Psyche... 253 km in diameter, weight 2.4x10^16 tons (!), 90% metals, probably enough to eventually built a Dyson (RIP) sphere or maybe not...

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a11098/dyson-sphere/

Psyche value:
$700 quintillion ( $7X10^20 OR $93 billion per each current Earth inhabitant).

[xhomerx10]

There are 6 confirmed cases of covid-19 in my neck of the woods now - all imported - 3 from China and 3 from Iran.

[bitserve]

... somehow isolate from the grid...

OK, I'm going to just give up and be snarky, it is an AMAZING new technology



BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

THEY ARE CONTROLLED BY ROBOTS NOW!!!



living in the future man

That's funny... But what does the Tesla exactly do differently so that it is LEGAL to run an on-grid solar installation during a blackout while other systems do require to be automatically shut down on blackout? It's not that those could not have a relay to cut from the grid until the power comes back.

Probably it is fed by a breaker from the main box, and powers a second breaker panel downstream. In that sense it's just a big UPS, you hook your critical loads to the breakers attached to the unit, and when power goes out it continues to feed them.

Just like a big UPS.

For that no anti-islanding is needed. Sunny boy grid tie inverters are a different thing because they *can* backfeed the grid. Thus they need circuitry inside themselves to note when the grid is down and shut themselves off (usually because they suddenly see the 120 volts dropping like a rock as your little panels try to power the neighborhood. Not going to happen :-)

Nice. "anti-islanding"... that's the word I needed to search for more information. Yeah it is basically like you are describing. I guess it's not only a "tesla" feature, even though only a few hybrid inverters seem to support that configuration... which is weird because it is so simply but... Also I am not fully sure if that configuration is allowed in all countries. For example here there is a clear legal distinction between on-grid and off-grid systems, with different requisites.

Reducing the electricity bill is good but... (IMHO) the main advantage of having a solar installation is to have a fully sustainable (even if at reduced "service") home so a system with anti-islanding almost make no sense... Well, no more sense than any other 5-10% ROI investment that is...

Batteries like the tesla are way too expensive yet though. I wonder if they will reduce in price at the same rate than solar panels in the next few years.

[Biodom]

Bad economic numbers out of China (official numbers):

PMI 35.7 (down from 50 in january).
non-manufacturing 29.6 (down from 54 in January).
Only 43% of small companies reopened as of Feb 26.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/virus-hit-chinas-february-factory-activity-hits-record-014411209--finance.html

Bitmain actually fulfilled it's end of February obligations, surprisingly.