Well, I appreciate the advice thusfar, but that thread is getting built up quite a bit so to keep it "real" I start this one.
I have found out that all the guy wants is a regular house refrigerator and a toaster oven. Nothing else will run off an invertor. Lighting will all b e low voltage, stove and furnace off propane and A/C off a generator, maybe diesel, maybe something else. Maybe if I can get a really good A/C unit fo rm an older car it would work, just have to run the engine. Those old big c ars had one hell of an A/C system in them. The new ones are junk in compari son. Now you got an elcheapo cap tube and a weighed in charge. In the old d ays it had an accumulator and a thermostatically controlled expansion valve . Also those big long compressors were six cylinder ran by a swash plate. S uch a system would cool the whole thing. The only question is whether you w ant to run the engine. Or maybe do both. We're already going under the hod for an extra alternator, and I think that will be a rebuilt form about a 19
75 police car for the power. New alternators are not able to charge a dead battery, if you change it the instructions say right out to charge the batt ery first, don't just jump start it. The wimpy alternator cannot handle it.Someone said to get the real numbers. Well we are going to do that tomorrow . We are going to the DIY (Home Depot I think this time, they are all DIY t o me) and we will plug in a new refrigerator with my clamp on ammeter on it . the first order of business is to grab that meter and test it, see how ou t of calibration it is. I'll either calibrate it to a Fluke or have a corre ction factor to apply. Either way we will have real numbers. The way I see it, the cabinet is going to be warm so the power drain should be within a u seably measurable range. The only other thing I could do is to run it a whi le and cover the condenser with something to build up the heat. That would give us a real worst case scenario, like you are in the desert and it is 10
derive tomorrow. Everything in the system is going to be overbuilt.
Someone said don't count on the plate on the fridge ? I think I must agree. The one we saw is a full size but small unit. I mean it is not for a dorm or anything like that. What gets me is it says 160 watts on the back. Well I got this oceanfront property in Kansas... Not sure how I am going to effe ctively guess the starting draw, but I can just use other motors as a sort of "rule of thumb". And that will be handled like my ex boss used to handle parts - add a dollar and double it. Whatever everything says, we will doub le the capacity. That should mean enough reserve for those dark days as wel l as good charging current on the bright days. I also have to have a talk w ith him about the varying output of the PVs. Another thing to figure out is just where does he intend to go. I don't really need the address (there pr obably will not be one) but the latitude is important.
And then the charger. There is no way in hell we are getting a Tesla charge r for this thing. Oh ye of little faith, I can do this and do it with a SEP IC so that it will charge until the PVs are almost down to zero. If I just get the usual charger and it wants 120 volts it probably will just shut dow n if the voltage gets below about 100 volts. That makes it unsuitable. From what I've been reading the 240 volt charger will charge faster. Logically that indicates that the battery is not that picky about low charging curren t, but of course it takes longer to charge. What does he care if he's out d eer hunting or some shit ?
So, the way to proceed is once I got the numbers, size the PV and storage t o suit, and then some. Maybe the guy wants a stereo, he will want a PC, pro bably a laptop. That will bring on a new set of problems. You can get Hughe snet almost anywhere, the cheap plan which is pretty good is like $70 a mon th including equipment rental. The problem is every time he drives the thin g the dish will have to be re-aimed. I know you can get public wifi in may places but where he is going maybe not. Actually ATT has pissed us off and we are about to get Hughesnet - I think. Maybe I can talk to the installer about that. The only problem I have with Hughesnet is that they got this pr omotional rate, right ? Well they can't tell me what the rate is after the promotional period. They might reveal it because I'll say "OK then, so afte r each year I quit you, you come and get your MODEM and dish, and then come back and put it all back up, right ? But then we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
All the admonishments about building a charger seem to be about overchargin g. That is apparently the absolute worst thing you can do to these batterie s. Well I know how to prevent that. So let's have a little bit of a vote of confidence here. It simply is not that difficult.
So far, as far as I read the other thread, the only advice I am not taking is "DON'T". I have been told that about test equipment and a few other thin gs and each time I figured it out and met success. there is no reason I can 't do it again. This is something outside of my usual purview, and I WANT t o do it.
And no, I am not clueless. I am getting farther and farther away from cluel ess every day now. Everything I know I learned, why not this ?
Anyway, I am not pissed off that the thread went in all kinds of directions , this is Usenet and that is how it is. In fact this meandering into all ki nds of shit in threads can be useful. I have learned a few things from OT p osts here. This thread is here just to get the chaff out, well it's not rea lly chaff but it started to go off on tangents to the moon...
Anyway, more later. Tomorrow I will have some numbers.