Probably a stupid idea

chuckp

chuckp

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Jul 29, 2018
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Ok here goes another probably stupid idea.

Thinking of building a battery house in the back yard under the solar pane arrays.
I'd want to house the Sofar ME3000PE AC coupled inverter etc out there so as to keep the dc cable runs from the batteries as short as possible.

So minor issue is running the cable from the inverter to the grid CT sensor that needs to be fitted on the grid tails at the meter, located at the front of the house.

Question is has anyone here done or knows of a way to send the CT sensor wireless maybe via wifi?
Not sure if it can be done or if there's a couple of magic boxes i can buy that would do it for me.

Other option would be to run the cable around the outside of the house but it would be a fairly long run approx 90M. Going through the house isn't really an option.

Thanks guys, don't know if this has been asked before or if I'm just being a bit of a knob asking a stupid question.
 
You could use 2 LoRA modules. The way you'd basically set it up is that once it gets a signal, it'd convert it to wifi pulses and received by the other one and returned back to signal.

LoRA modules are fairly inexpensive now and lots of examples out there. Adam Welch, Julian Ilett and 0033mer have made several videos about them.

Here's one from 0033mer:
This video will describe how to build a LoRa radio link using EBYTE's E32 915T30D radio modules. This link is transparent and will transmit keyboard data automatically from one module to the other....
Click to expand...
 
90 meter can be done via normal wifi too if you dont want to play around with Lora.
 
90 meter can be done via normal cat5too if you dont want to play around with WiFi
 
90m is via the wire run. I doubt it's 90m from the back of the house to the front of the house via radio signal. If so, he's got a looooooong house.

I would personally go with LoRa as it uses shorter wave length and can penetrate walls easier than 2.4Ghz wifi. It also uses a lot less power to run and doesn't require it to be connected/disconnected like wifi does. LoRa just broadcasts, end of story.

You can even make the receiver so that it will go to sleep for a period of time and wake up when it receives a LoRa signal. I believe Andreas Spiess has done this.
 
But lora demmands more knowledge from beginning. Energy used here i would say is negliable. You Will save more energy by getting proper Gear or Wire. Time is same thing ...

I would go Wire > wifi >> lora.

IF you have knowledge in lora or such things then great. IF not
.. how much is your time worth ;)
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys. 90M is the cable run if I do it wired. If Wi-Fi it's about 45M from the back yard to the front of the house. I think the LoRa route is probably a little bit above my knowledge level at the moment. I was hoping to find a couple of little magic boxes i could just plug in at each end and they would do the business. What about Powerline adaptors would they work?
 
Power to IP works great
 
chuckp said:
Thinking of building a battery house in the back yard under the solar pane arrays.
Click to expand...

Batteries like to be within a small temperature range. They do not like being cold, and can be dangerous if charged below freezing as the electrolyte can freeze. How do you plan on keeping the batteries warm in winter?
 
If all the equipment is in the same building, the inverters/chargers running should help keep the building toasty. Those things generate quite a bit of heat. If they can't provide enough, just a few resistive elements in the building will help as well. These could actually be turned on first if the room is low temps and allow the temps to rise to acceptable levels before charging begins.

Fortunately for Fl, I don't have to worry about such things :p
 
I thought the output from the CT is an analog voltage/current transfer, along the lines of 0-1V at the inverter.

I have looked at trying to remote the GTIL CT units and was looking at two voltage to current units, which convert the CT (with shunt if it does not have an internal reisitor) output voltage to a 4-20mA current and this can then be sent many 10's of meters and then at the other end convert the current back to a voltage and feed it into the unit.

Using these : https://www.amazon.com/4-20mA-Voltage-Current-Conversion-Arduino/dp/B01MCQMSSO

They are cheaper on eb and ali

The two pots are for the input zero and scale I think, slept a few times since.... I bought a few about 2 years ago and never got around to using them in a project.

Also, not sure how well they will work with 50Hz on a long line... think they should be ok.
 
w0067814 said:
chuckp said:
Thinking of building a battery house in the back yard under the solar pane arrays.
Click to expand...

Batteries like to be within a small temperature range. They do not like being cold, and can be dangerous if charged below freezing as the electrolyte can freeze. How do you plan on keeping the batteries warm in winter?
Click to expand...

Hi
I was thinking that the heat produced by the inverter and the BMS etc should be enough to keep the chill off. I would be building it from concrete blocks and it would also be well insulated with Kingspan or similar before boarding out.
I had also considered building it against the house and putting a vent through to a heated space behind it, with an intumescent air transfer grille.
 
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