My Friend is Drunk with Solar!

edcastrovalley

edcastrovalley

1 kW
Joined
Nov 4, 2010
Messages
325
Location
Castro Valley, CA
I have a coworker friend that has a small 3 bedroom home with a pool and hot tub in the backyard and has always complained of having power bills North of $450 per month. Of course I would like to brag and talk about my small 12vdc solar array and my generally low power bills (I don't have a pool or spa) and was only too glad to answer his occasional questions about it. Well he finally got tired of what he called "the abuse" and casually asked me where I got my panels. Then he did it. A week later I get a text picture of him with his truck loaded with 6 Sharp 250 watt panels in front of MY favorite solar store.

With these he uses the Enphase microinverters and he bought a bunch of unistrut and mounted them himself. But I guess he found the panels to be intoxicating and bought 6 more panels and inverters. He seems to be making more power than he uses. It will be interesting how it all turns out.
 

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Assuming he doesn't have a long commute, wait till he figures out that he can charge an EV with them and never have to stop at a gas station again. :mrgreen:
 
John in CR said:
Assuming he doesn't have a long commute, wait till he figures out that he can charge an EV with them and never have to stop at a gas station again. :mrgreen:
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It's funny you mentioned this because he has an older Gen I Prius that had a bad traction battery he got for $800 and I helped him find used battery modules and he replaced the bad ones. Now he's finding used Prius battery modules for free from this Prius battery rebuilder who's giving them away and he's thinking of paralleling a second pack to the original pack. He even asked me about finding a charger for his pack. The only problem is the Gen I priuses have like a 293 vdc battery pack which is getting pretty high. btw: He has about a 20 mile one way commute.

On top of that yesterday he told me "I'm thinking of buying 6 more panels". I'm not sure if he was kidding or not but I wouldn't be too surprised if he showed up with 6 more. Lol :lol:
 
Watch out - paralleling NiMH batteries (like those in the Prius) can result in exploding cells and fire - especially when the cells aren't well matched.
 
Advise him not to mess with Nickel based chemistry in parallel.

Nickel based chemistry is nothing like the ease of Lithium to manage. Major fire and/or explosion risk when setup in parallel. A friend added a lithium pack in parallel with his prius NiMH pack. It worked great for 2 days, then one night the NiMH pack erupted into flames and smoke and totaled the vehicle.

The mechanism that causes the issues is the voltage drop as the cell finishes charging. If it's in parallel with another voltage/current source that doesn't drop at the same time with it, it enters a feedback driven overcharge state until it vents or explodes.

Nickel has some quirky electrochemical behavior. Fantastic material in many ways for batteries, terrible in others.
 
Thanks LFP and PunxOr! I'll pass this information on to my bud today. He has a good number of spare modules already so I won't delay. He even gave me about 12 modules I was thinking of making an ebike battery out of but they're a little larger and heavier than my lipo so I'm not sure what I'll do with them.
 
It's a shame, because they seem like good quality cells and I'd be keen to find a use for them.

I'm sure there's a ton of info on replacing the prius pack with a larger one and making it a plug-in, but IIRC the motor is pretty weak. Maybe he'd be willing to consider a pure EV like a Leaf, Volt or similar?
 
Punx0r said:
It's a shame, because they seem like good quality cells and I'd be keen to find a use for them.

I'm sure there's a ton of info on replacing the prius pack with a larger one and making it a plug-in, but IIRC the motor is pretty weak. Maybe he'd be willing to consider a pure EV like a Leaf, Volt or similar?
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I passed on the warning about the battery and he said he would like to buy a used electric car and add more panels to the roof. So he's already thinking about it. :mrgreen:

Yes, these Prius batteries seem to last. I saw someone here on ES that made a ebike battery out of them so I might try that.
 
Well my friend has been bitten by the solar bug. He found an i phone ap where he can lay his phone on a panel and it will tell him in degrees the angle of the panel. Then he looked up the angle of the sun and found an angle of 28 degrees in July will give him maximum sun (and power). But thats at high noon. He found that by lowering the panels a few more degrees he harvests extra power over the entire day since the angle of the sun changes throughout the day (gets lower).
 
Well my friend has been bitten by the solar bug! He found an i phone ap where he can lay his phone on a panel and it will tell him in degrees the angle of the panel. Then he looked up the angle of the sun and found an angle of 28 degrees in July will give him maximum sun (and power). But thats at high noon. He found that by lowering the panels a few more degrees he harvests extra power over the entire day since the angle of the sun changes throughout the day as the sun gets lower.

He has now confided in me that he has slipped out and purchased 12 more panels of the 250 watt variety and 6 more microinverters. He placed 6 on the roof yesterday and showed me that he was exporting 2.5kwh after the pool, spa and house loads. And 6 more could show up soon.
 
edcastrovalley said:
Well my friend has been bitten by the solar bug. He found an i phone ap where he can lay his phone on a panel and it will tell him in degrees the angle of the panel. Then he looked up the angle of the sun and found an angle of 28 degrees in July will give him maximum sun (and power). But thats at high noon. He found that by lowering the panels a few more degrees he harvests extra power over the entire day since the angle of the sun changes throughout the day (gets lower).
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I wonder how come there isn't some technology that uses some type of dome for focusing the light from the sun from all angles and beaming that to a collector. (I mean a solid state, not one with mechanical mirrors or anything complicated like that). Is it possible?
 
cal3thousand said:
I wonder how come there isn't some technology that uses some type of dome for focusing the light from the sun from all angles and beaming that to a collector. (I mean a solid state, not one with mechanical mirrors or anything complicated like that). Is it possible?
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That's an interesting idea. Maybe like a prism that can adjust it's focus without the use of gears and motors? 8)
 
edcastrovalley said:
cal3thousand said:
I wonder how come there isn't some technology that uses some type of dome for focusing the light from the sun from all angles and beaming that to a collector. (I mean a solid state, not one with mechanical mirrors or anything complicated like that). Is it possible?
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That's an interesting idea. Maybe like a prism that can adjust it's focus without the use of gears and motors? 8)
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Yes! Now which of you geniuses out there will do it? :)
 
I can't think of anything that doesn't require some sort of mechanism to it, though you don't have to use any power that isnt' already up there being wasted anyway.

You could use some sort of "oil lens" that is set up to distort it's shape based on the light reflected off the solar below it, via some sort of fast-response heatpipe that runs from the solar panel, heated up by the panel's waste heat as the sun strikes it. Not sure how it would work, exactly, but I can imagine it should be possible without being too complicated.

Or the heatpipe would run from the panel up to a mechanism on the lens pivot point that moves the focal point of the lens to keep it on the heatpipe. That should be fairly simple.


Or use two heatpipes, one at each edge of the panel, and a "balance" mechanism that they both run to that forces the lens pivot to turn in response to a difference between them.
 
amberwolf said:
I can't think of anything that doesn't require some sort of mechanism to it, though you don't have to use any power that isnt' already up there being wasted anyway.

You could use some sort of "oil lens" that is set up to distort it's shape based on the light reflected off the solar below it, via some sort of fast-response heatpipe that runs from the solar panel, heated up by the panel's waste heat as the sun strikes it. Not sure how it would work, exactly, but I can imagine it should be possible without being too complicated.
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I was thinking of the movie Flubber with the rubbery guy except without the green tint. I know it's science fiction but maybe in the future there will be some semi-solid that can change shape based on some Solid Work drawings or Autocad. Who knows?
 
The closest stuff I know of right now is various bimetallic compounds / strips /etc., that either reform to an original shape at some temperature after deformation at a different temperature (but these don't "reset" except to the original shape so you'd have to have something else to force it back to the deformed shape), or that changes the "length" of one side vs the other faster at a higher temperature, like the coil in old thermostats, etc.

Those could be used to move the focal point of a solid lens.


But using some sort of "heatpipe" to change the amount of fluid in a fluid lens could change it's focal length or other shape based on how you design it's casing, and htat's closer to what you probably want. I'd guess it'd take a fair bit of experimentation to determine exactly how ot set it up, but you could probably do this with existing technology. For a start, jus tlook up "oil lens".
 
amberwolf said:
The closest stuff I know of right now is various bimetallic compounds / strips /etc., that either reform to an original shape at some temperature after deformation at a different temperature (but these don't "reset" except to the original shape so you'd have to have something else to force it back to the deformed shape), or that changes the "length" of one side vs the other faster at a higher temperature, like the coil in old thermostats, etc.

Those could be used to move the focal point of a solid lens.


But using some sort of "heatpipe" to change the amount of fluid in a fluid lens could change it's focal length or other shape based on how you design it's casing, and htat's closer to what you probably want. I'd guess it'd take a fair bit of experimentation to determine exactly how ot set it up, but you could probably do this with existing technology. For a start, jus tlook up "oil lens".
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I could see that working. Might be too expensive since solar panels are now less expensive but possible.

Another way might be to make a lens out of half a glass cylinder layed on it's side over a panel that could bend a light waves from any angle straight down onto the panel. No moving parts but again, could be expensive.
 
6 rows for 24 panels total! The panels are adjustable and can adjust up or down. He showed me a graph from today with a peak production of 4990 watts and today was mostly cloudy.
 

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Well we have a slight problem. My bud just got his first electric bill since enlarging his system from the original size of 1.5 kw to the current size of 6 kw. it seems that even though his meter "spins backwards", he didn't get any credit for his excess energy produced. Another words, he got billed for all his night time use which put him into the 3rd tier of PG&E's rate structure. At first I mentioned that the meter might not "spin backwards" as I had a feeling that one of the reason for PG&E's push to install their "smart meters" was to counteract problems like these. Well apparentally the meter spins backwards on the dial outside your house but not back at PG&E. :roll:

The only thing I could suggest to him is to look into pulling a permit for maybe a "future" system like his, then having it inspected, then have PG&E come out to install their E7 (I believe it is) meter. it's either that or build a big battery bank of somekind and draw off it at night. Does anyone else have a better idea that this? Any hints?

btw: He worked as an electrician for a number of years for our employer although he probably doesn't have a contractors license.

The funny part: After all the discussion I had with him about this he said "I want to buy 6 more panels"! I kid you not. :lol:
 
torker said:
With 6+kw sounds like time to go off grid. Set it up hybrid and run off batteries at night. This forum has a few solar gurus moderating.http://forum.solar-electric.com/forum.php
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Just got off vacation. Seems like I'm always busier on vacation.

Anyway, that's a nice forum there. Looks like it has lots of good info there. I think the guy using fork lift batteries sounds like a good idea.

I suggested that he could go off grid (or partially off grid) but my bud is talking to a solar contractor to help him with the process. He's complaining a liitle about the permit fees but he would be way ahead doing most of himself anyway.
 
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