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Thread: Very important news report on Solar Panel installs a must watch

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    Default Very important news report on Solar Panel installs a must watch




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    Are these the panels george purchased?

    Panel swap outs will be the next big business anyway.
    I didn't think much of the ABC report though
    Sponsored by the Coal Industry was it?
    Last edited by ol' boy; 28-05-19 at 07:13 PM.
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    nothing new there , those isolator faults are well known about. Besides that if one panel fails i wouldnt bother replacing the lot just replace the bad one. chances are the others will keep going

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    Quote Originally Posted by VroomVroom View Post
    nothing new there , those isolator faults are well known about. Besides that if one panel fails i wouldnt bother replacing the lot just replace the bad one. chances are the others will keep going
    Not far from where we live there is a house with that solar isolator as you can see it very clear . One day I saw the owners out the front talking to their neighbours so I approached them and told them about that Isolator and to get it replaced because they are Dangerous but for them they starting to talk to each other and virtually told me to go away like I was a Idiot. Now this happened many years ago when the last media was on these isolators but two year later the house caught fire and did not totally burn down but had extensive damage.
    Now during the Fire everyone came out when the Fire Brigade save the half the house, the police was there, and I saw possibly the center of where the fire was and that was the Solar Panels so I spoke the the Police and when the owner of the house saw me talking to the police he came to listen to what I said and got angry and denied that I spoke to him about the Isolator. Now the police said to me "sir we dont know what cases the Fire because" but I explained, I have been a License Electrician for 50 years and I Know CLEARLY the issue with these Solar Isolator. Anyhow weeks passed and a insurance investigator knocked on my door and spoke to him and wanted to see my Licence and I asked him WHY? and he said the Isolator is what cased the Fire and wanted to see my license as the owner of the House should have listen to me not fob me off as I had concerned about the safety of there House.
    Anyhow no doubt the Insurance Company tried not to pay for the Claim but they must have as the house was fixed up and sold 6 months later.

    I Hate giving free information yet people treat me like a idiot. Truck them.

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    I watched that yesterday. Came up on my feed 2 hours after it was uploaded.

    BFD!

    I have argued here or elsewhere that those Isolators are the more danger than any safety they provide which is why NONE of my systems have them and none ever will. They are a stupid idea dreamt up by saftey zealots who polish a seat in an office with their arse and wouldn't know a volt from an ohm and have certainly never tried to fight a fire or done anything hands on. Bet that statement gets a few people going, but only because of it's truthfulness.

    The fire departments of different states have been trying to have the things banned/ removed for years and I remember an interview with one guy who was a fire chief about a year ago saying the first thing he had done after his new solar system was approved was have that isolator removed. Made his system technically Illegal but if they wanted to do anything about it he would take it to court and show all the evidence of how dangerous the things were.

    As far as replacing all the panels, Something insurance does. Usually very difficult to find a replacement panel years down the track as Like cars they are making different models with different specs all the time. there is no reason technicaly you couldn't put in a larger output panel but the solar zealots want everything perfect so you can have one bad panel and the whole lot get replaced and wasted.
    Whenever I buy a system with odd number of panels I know this is what happened. Buy 2 odd systems and you have an even one or take one panel out and you can also be good. All I do is make sure the panels from 2 systems are the same output. Even that doesnt matter in practicality but nice to keep them all the same.

    The guy from LG is about as slippery as a $3 Note. He was coming on the wankpool forums at one stage defending his panels and talking endless sales Hype regarding the fact they have a 25 Yr warranty and that supposedly makes them better than every other panel. There were a lot of LG installers there that would also push these things endlessly and make out anyone who didn't buy them was an idiot. Bit of digging found pics on these guys sites and FB pages of them on Junket trips to China Courtesy of LG and some had been Multiple times.
    Yeah, a guarantee of unbiased advise there. In the end when they got resistance and people were saying they had good service with other brands these Cowboy hero's all had a Dummy spit and made a FB group and left wankpool like it was revenge for their every Bought and paid for word not being worshipped. Pack of sooks.

    As usual the report said what they wanted it to and no doubt LG had some finger in that pie.
    Makes me laugh that their Chinese made panels are held by many to be the holy grail when in several tests I have seen they are well down the list in some areas of performance.
    Of course Lucky Goldstar is renowned for Middle of the road to cheap crap products so why would anyone think ANY Of their products is something special? Clearly whoever thought of the 25yr warranty was a genius because SOOOO many people fall for that.

    Of course if a panel fails in even 15 years, where you going to find a replacement? LG says they keep stocks of old panels but is anyone really going to believe they keep them for 15 Yrs+. It's well known there are hundereds of thousands of panels out there being replaced right now for upgrades and physical damage, neither of which are warrantable and NONE of them are 15 yr's old and few are 10 YO so WTF the good of a 25Yr warranty is I have NFI. Most people in Oz move house well before than and many people take down working systems to upgrade to larger, more efficient systems. Who knows what panel output will be in another 10 years, maybe 500W panels so if power prices are where everyone expects and you have an EV you want to charge, Who the fk is going to hang onto 300w Panels when they an get 500's and save a fortune on power? The roi Could be 2 years by then so once again all these 10 yo panels will end up in the tip.

    With the current regulations and the way they are updated every 6 months to keep the industry ticking along, it's more than foreseeable they may ban replacing any part of a system. You can't replace an inverter on a system now even with a newer, more up to date one. WHOLE system has to be upgraded to meet the new and always changing " safety" regs. Would be believable if they made people take down the old systems but as they don't one can only wonder exactly how " Unsafe " they really are?

    The report was right in there is a LOT of waste going on. ALL my system is used and So far I have found 1 bad panel that had a Hot spot. Still did good power and I still use it but took it out of the array and it only powers the shed fan. One Dud so far out of 150+ panels I have bought.

    I put up another 2Kw of panels yesterday. Took me a while to figure out how to do it on my steeply pitched tin roof but finally solved the puzzle. Only problem is I ache today. They are powering the water heater in my greenhouse that keeps it warm at night given where I am can get to -5 which stuffs a lot of things.
    I put another 2.5 Kw up about 3 weeks ago and I'm looking to build an inverter to power my house water heater or at least a pre heater to save some current there. Don't need it in summer but right now I want all the power I can get.

    This next month is the lowest solar radiation but I have worked out the problem with making solar power goes a lot further than that.
    I have all my inverters way overclocked. I noticed that they still are making 80%+ plus power up to full power briefly because all the inverters have at least double their capacity in panels.
    Looking over the last few days I see the inverters are making good power but the generation in total KWH isn't keeping up. The 2V light in my head came on and I worked out why.
    In summer the things kick in around 7:30 am depending on what array it is. Now at least half are in shadow till 9 am or better. The same ones are finished doing anything wroth while by about 3PM where as in summer they are still kicking out KW till after 7:30 pm.

    It's not the generation on my overclocked setup that's the problem, it's the hours it's limited to running.

    I put another inverter on the 2.5kw system I installed the other day but it is marginal. I'm running into the problem of things cutting out on the High line voltage we have in the street . It's over spec at 2am or anytime really and during the day , especially mid day even now when everyone elses Solar kicks in, it's worse obviously. Putting on more generation isn't going to help that much because of this high voltage . Might do a bit in the run up and down but not a lot simply again because the days are so short. To combat the peak over voltages I have a voltage monitoring relay on the HWS. When the Voltage gets above a certain level, the water heater Kicks in. That 3.6 KW of draw takes the top off the voltage quite nicely. Trouble is the heater warms up and the relay kicks out and it's back to wasted power.
    I am trying a second version of this atm. I have another relay connected to a fan heater inside. When the voltage is High Kicks this in. Not really needed through the day so far but I figure If I heat soak the place it will radiate back at night. Other thing is another tank like in the greenhouse. Heats a drum of water to radiate heat back into the house at night. ATM the " waste" power isn't enough to make this really useful so I'd have to add more panels. As they are only really going to be needed 3 months of the year and the last 6 Months I had half the systems I had switched off and was still making more power than I could use even with the Big Ducted AC, think I'll just upgrade the panels I have rather than bother adding any more.


    Compounding the poor generation I'm getting atm this is the fact the weather for the last fortnight here has become over cast after about 1 PM so the hours of good generation are down to 2-3 at absolute best.

    There is a LOT that could be done with these used panels instead of dumping or " Recycling" them which is a cop out and good as just dumping them. If they were used on a ground mount system all safety concerns would be eliminated because if they did burn, which is a LOT more rare than the isolators going up regularly, then they can burn and there is nothing to damage and no danger. They could be used in the outback or sent OS for projects like powering Villages that my Nephew just won a big international award for. I'd really be surprised to find a PANEL on a ground mount that caught fire more than about 1 in 10K + . Get rid of those stupid Isolators and use a better solution in more logical position and fires would be very rare indeed.

    I have even got to stage where I am upgrading my used systems! Only thing I'm buying now is the 250w+ panels and getting rid of all my 190's of which there are Millions of out there. There are so many of these systems being replaced after 5-7 years one can now upgrade what was replaced for upgrades in the first place. So much for 25 yr warranties.

    I reckon my father is going to end up with about 50 190's on his big shed roof time I'm done. The 20 he has now that are wrong tilt, wrong orientation and shaded half the day are working very well for him. He was happy as last week when he got his bill and it was quarter of last years. Won't be so good this time round but overall he's miles ahead. Also working with a local business guy and going to put a stack of panels on his big shed. I have explained all the legalities and rules and regulations to him and he is about as worried and takes the same position as I do with them. His summation was "If anyone does come down here and see them which no inspector of any sort ever has in 25+years, All I have to do is disconnect them and they can stay there and the roof will leak less when it does rain."

    Realisticly, with a good check over and test which I give all the ones I buy, there is no reason except one why used panels couldn't be put back into service and of course like everything else that is related to anything green, the one reason is MONEY.

    It's ALWAYS all about the money and keeping the revenue for Big biz and Gubbermints ticking over.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr 672A View Post

    I Hate giving free information yet people treat me like a idiot. Truck them.
    The problem is the safety mentality that people that haven't a fking clue what is relevant hold in their brainwashed heads.

    The idiocy of having an isolator up on a roof where in the case of emergency you would have to get a ladder, if you had one, and get up there to shut off the system is totally ridiculous. Yet people argue about the safety of fire fighters etc not even realising that they won't go near the stupid things anyway, especially if a structure is already involved with a fire.

    When I spoke about this before, people went off their tits ( as they probably will now) when I said I had the isolators at ground level just inside the shed or under cover where anyone, like my wife and Daughter, could get to them easily if there was a problem. They go on and on with all sorts of fabricated concerns and scenarios that just are not realistic or the way things are done in practice by emergency services. My systems are technically Illegal because of that and the fact I have other protections built in.
    The only think that can burn between the panels and the breaker on the DC side is the wire and that won't sustain fire and I have very purposefully routed it with the idea of it WILL catch fire. I have it so it can burn up and it's not going to cause any problem. Will never do that BUT, worst case if it does, no problem.

    Of course the other fly in the ointment is the systems are set up so the power any DC cable is carrying is Far less than it's rating. I could leave the wires shorted forever and the panels simply cannot generate enough power in any given string to cause a problem. I actually test them this way to check for bad connections by putting on max load the string will carry at max PP.
    Did it yesterday and found a Hot connector which I didn't crimp properly. No worries, re do it, re test, never have to worry. Cable is 30A, string is carrying less than 10. Cable will heat up but it won't burn and the panels will fall right off their curve in a dead short anyway so won't put out nearly as much power. Any decently;y installed system will be the same and I would think there would not be a lot of systems carrying near 30A on the DC side anyway being most now are 5 / 6.6Kw.

    At VERY worst, these Isolators need to be mandated to be changed every 5 years at the most. Yes they may be fine when installed but 7-10 years later they are not what they were and that is exactly what is causing the problem.

    The one thing I do know is when Fire brigades are complaining about safety regs, there is a fair chance those regs are are wrong and need to be very seriously looked at especially when there is so much evidence that the thing that is supposed to keep things safe is far and away the most DANGEROUS component and weakest link of the whole system.

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    Quote Originally Posted by george65 View Post

    At VERY worst, these Isolators need to be mandated to be changed every 5 years at the most. Yes they may be fine when installed but 7-10 years later they are not what they were and that is exactly what is causing the problem.
    My system was done in the early days and they had no isolators at all on the panel but original installer that installed the system done a horribly job to a point that after one week I contacted the company and told them to removed the whole system otherwise you will find your company name on Current Affair.
    now the Man in the suit came out and I showed him the defects like the conduit going in the roof, that just lifted a tile up and cracked the ridge caps, most of the cables of the panel where not cable tie up the the frame ( those days a plastic cable ties was uses) and were left there on the tile itself, to save money from the Panels to the SMA inverters that had nothing to shut the system down, inside the roof (the Man in a suit refuse to go into the roof) they had the two cables (double insulated) stretched across the roof anything from the ceiling up 700MM off the ceiling just so to save money to use less cable.
    Any how I was sick those days just before my heart attack, they refuse to give my money back and after this I had the system ripped off the roof + everything else.
    after this I walking around the neighborhood because they did plenty of other houses at that time and even on the Street I spotted Defects like the Flexible Conduit not drilled through the tile they just lifted the tile and stuck in in there underneath, yeah you can see that from most house I expected. I knocked on the door and told the owners what the issue was and most but not all listen to me.
    Months later the company went belly up (they change the colours of the shirts only) and that was it.
    Now in my life I only allows two companies to do electrical work for me consider I have a electrical license and in both cases shoddy work was done and at least when I had a Split Air con fitted the BOSS walked in the roof and I show him the defect like have cable on top on the trusses (no Mechanical protection) not under the beam than could have been done easier.
    Anyhow back to the solar after the System went up as the rails were still there I made sure the Panels were Straight, Flexible conduit drilled on the high part of the tile, NEW LONGER Cable, and isolaters when a average person can get to them to shut the system down in emergency + another one 1M away from the SMA Inverter and thats it. Our system was horrible to look at because you can walk to the next street, look at our house from a distance and see the panel that like like the Titanic was sinking Again

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    I have found much the same. ONLY sparky I will let work on anything of mine is a mate. I know he's pedantic, I know he goes over the top rather than take a shortcut in anything he does.
    I have seen how he wired his own Place with 32? mm wire coming from the pole into a sub board in the shed then sub boards for the house and all the other sheds. The layout of the wiring is immaculate and neat as could be imagined. Spent a fortune on doing it all but is good as it gets.
    Only problem is now he wants more power than the transformer down the road will supply and power co want to charge him $54K to upgrade the thing that will service the whole street. Of course the thing is 50 yo and barely big enough to service the places that have now been built along the road with 40A services.

    He has a plan with several of his neighbours whom also want to upgrade their connections to all draw max power together and blow the snot out of the tranny and then the power co will have to install a new one. Just waiting for spring to do it.

    I do all my own stuff the same as my mate so I have no worries. So what if it takes longer or costs a bit more? I NEVER have to worry about any electrical problems. Anything important I wire up and leave unconnected till my mate checks it and then he or I hook it up. The usual thing I get from him is I went to too much trouble which means there is no way there will ever be a problem.
    I over wire and under rate the breakers on everything.

    Getting up in the roof of this place has been an eye opener as well. Clearly ship that was done when the place was built and passed was ridiculous. Things like you mentioned with cables lying round or under insulation, connections not in junction boxes etc. I'm an amateur and can spot this, how the hell did the pelicans that built the joint get away with it?
    Shed is about a 50 M cable run from the fuse box and only has 2.5MM cable for the power and 1.5 for the lights. Going to put 3 phase up there and see if I can get 8mm up there. I don't have any heavy loads i'm likely to run but better too much than too little....like it is now.

    All the solar I have done is laid out with the thought in mind in can burn and little to nothing will be affected. I was amazed to see on one of my inverters a 32A breaker specified for a unit that is 5Kw max, 4.6 Nom. Why in hell would you put a 32A breaker on something that should be flat out at 20A? Would be less because by the time the thing is pushing 5KW the voltage has climbed so the amps are going to be less. I put a 20 on it and had no problems with it tripping. If it goes over 20A something is wrong and I rather re set a breaker than have the thing staying engaged when there is a problem. I understand it's the wiring that's fused but still makes no sense to me.

    Found the same with the AC. Has it's own circuit massively over rated on the breakers. Downrated those 20A and after 2 summers and coming into the 2nd winter, start up currents still haven't tripped them. Why in hell they had such huge breakers that would have done no good at all I have no clue.

    My new greenhouse array worked well yesterday and hopefully better today. I set up 2 strings of 4 panels in the end going to one 3.6Kw element. Tested a singe string of 8 but of course the resistance was not well matched and splitting the array although still not perfect worked much better. I had the 100L water tank in teh greenhouse a bit over 32oC last night and pretty much all the afternoon was cloudy. Much sunnier today already and I hope I can get it up to 50o. Was getting 80 with the 2x5 Panel north facing array but this one being west doesn't come in till much later but does get about 90 min more sun in the afternoon before it shadows with the neighbours trees. The north 2.5 Boosted the house generation quite nicely.

    If I can keep the greenhouse above 15 in the mornings I'll be happy.
    Last summer I had 2 panels on the verandah roof in parallel hooked to a pair oc car radiator fans that sat over the manhole in the laundry blowing a tom of air up into the roof.
    Everything I read and mate who does Industrial AC said keeping the roof cooler makes a big difference to the house. I honestly couldn't tell as I run the AC anyway but I had the panels, I had the fans and I had a bit of fun setting them up and thinking I might be doing some good. I have a pair of panels in the shed window that blow a gale in there and the difference it makes to the non insulated shed is incredible. The roof is covered in panels but the fan changes it from an over into a nice place to be out the sun and the breeze itself is cooling as well.

    Not sure what I can do with the greenhouse panels come summer. I make more power than I can use already. Wish I could store the power or make heat and keep it till winter! :0)

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    My solar isolator is next to the inverter which is next to the DB. If I need to shut things off I'll do everything at once thanks. When my inverter was replaced under warranty they positioned it so I had to twist my hand to get to the isolator- they said they did it so I didn't have to repaint the wall - the inverter was a different size - I said, move it so I can get to my isolator, I'l repaint the fecking wall!
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    Quote Originally Posted by george65 View Post
    Only problem is now he wants more power than the transformer down the road will supply and power co want to charge him $54K to upgrade the thing that will service the whole street. Of course the thing is 50 yo and barely big enough to service the places that have now been built along the road with 40A services.

    He has a plan with several of his neighbours whom also want to upgrade their connections to all draw max power together and blow the snot out of the tranny and then the power co will have to install a new one. Just waiting for spring to do it.
    Funny thing is I have complained to Energex about under Voltage lowest being 210V phase to neutral or 380V between phases. It was found that to many single phase houses have air con and most of house are on one phase on the Kiosk tranny and its underrated so they have to do the right thing and upgrade the tranny to from 450 to 750KVA.
    We have 3 phase and it was unbalanced because the voltage went from 210 to 224V whilst you were checking in a second and you guesses it most single phase house were on the phase where it was 210V. What happened to the days were houses were put in a row in the A,B C, format

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr 672A View Post

    What happened to the days were houses were put in a row in the A,B C, format
    I thought that was the " Law" basically. I didn't even imagine they would be stupid enough to put them all on the one phase.
    This is one of those things where I look and say I'm just an amateur hacker but If I was wiring a street, it would be plainly obvious to me to rotate the load but some how the " Professionals" that is instilled into everyone are the ONLY people that know what they are doing and won't cause problems are the ones that Miss what a hacker would have thought painfully obvious and not even imagined to do any other way.

    To me not only is the mistake painfully obvious when it is made, but the power co must be able to see the loads are completely imbalanced and let that go on and don't correct the problem. It's incredible.

    My Voltage is miles out. I have a meter plugged into a power point here in my office I watch. Solar gets all the blame for the Line voltage being too high. This morning I got up at 3am and I happened to notice there wasn't a whole lot of sunlight outside. A Quick check of my meter showed 248.8V. Not at all unusual. Unless the hot water is kicked in which I have taken from the off peak and put on a Voltage monitoring relay that kicks in when the voltage goes high during the middle of the day, The voltage is ALWAYS Higher than it should be across all 3 phases. I have the loads split across the phases and changed them when I got here because all the main loads were on one phase and the other 2 had very light loading. Saw that the first power bill we got. I still have one phase costing much more than the other 2 because that phase has an electronic meter and I can't back feed that one with the solar.

    During the day my power is far more out of spec than it is in. I can have the line voltage in the house over spec when all my solar is turned off and I have some loads going if it's a good sunny day. When my systems are on, I have to run loads in the middle of the day to keep the inverters from shutting down when they see 260V. Even happening now in winter which is frustrating given one only has about half or less the hours to make power but are using more than they would otherwise given we are all electric and it's the only form of heating.

    Last winter I calculated that the lower temp of the water coming into the heater would use another 3-4 Kwh day just to get it up to the incoming temp it sees in summer. Putting up more Grid tie panels is not going to be the answer in itself because of the short time available to generate power and the high line voltage already.
    I'm thinking to put in a pre heater tank and run that independently. Hooking up panels direct is inefficient even if one does match the ohms of the panels to the element so I'm looking at building an MPPT controller to keep the panels at power point to get them on the efficiency curve.

    I'm really thinking the best way to go however is just crack on with the big # phase IMAG generator. Every day here almost for the last 3 weeks the weather comes over cloudy by lunchtime, early afternoon. NO rain for the water badly needed and no sun for the power I can well use. With teh genny I could fire it up during the cloudy times or in the late afternoon/ early evening to make up the shortfall of generation.

    I have a couple of engines and a 12Kw Motor but there are a couple of other engines I'm looking ATM, one being a Chinese Horizontal water cooled which would be great for the job and brilliant engines.

    The power Cos go on a lot about solar causing problems on the grid and it not being able to handle it which is all bullshit.
    It can't handle it because despite their collective $2.7BN profits they will make this financial year, they won't put the money back into the network and up date it.
    Another reason all this Green washing and climate change shits me to tears. It's moronic to be building big solar farms out in the boonies and spending more billions on transmission when there is endless rooftop real estate right where the power is needed and used. The power co's say the grid gets overloaded but that's 99% bullshit and only because they won't update it from 1950's technology. The tech is out there and used to better control the voltage and the flow of power so it's not at all a tech problem, it's a financial one. I have seen this discussed and the retort is it will cost Billuions to update the system yet they have billions to put in thse solar and wind farms that are a blight on the environment. Rooftops are not much good for anything else but PV now direct heating is not as viable any more so WTF not use it?
    Oh, money of course. Can't do anything that might lower the obscene Power co profits can we? Just make endless Bullshit excuses instead.
    The gotcha in their argument for rooftop PV in the grid being overloaded is in other places in the world like Canada, they encourage self generation and feedback and make it attractive for people to do so where as here it's all about making insulting BS excuses to protect their offensive profits and price gouging.
    The canadians are serious about protecting their environment and it shows in what they do rather than here it's all complete and utter crap to keep the profits flowing into Big biz and the tax revenue into the Gubbermint.

    Much better to build solar and wind farms the Gubbermint chips in heavily for anyway and sell people the power than let them make it themselves in an efficient generation and delivery manner.

    When they start doing something serious instead of making a whole joke of this Globull warming thing and putting money into making the grid reliable, I might take it a bit more seriously as well.

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    Quote Originally Posted by george65 View Post
    with cables lying round or under insulation,
    I noticed in the Bunnings ceiling insulation how-to they stated the cables should be above the insulation. Cables are double insulated and flame retardant?

    Quote Originally Posted by george65 View Post
    The gotcha in their argument for rooftop PV in the grid being overloaded is in other places in the world like Canada, they encourage self generation and feedback and make it attractive for people to do so where as here it's all about making insulting BS excuses to protect their offensive profits and price gouging.
    There is a great Utube by an American who put in, from memory, a 23KW system. His reasoning just about brought tears to this Australian's eyes - he got 1 for 1 for export but the export was credited for future use when the panels were covered in snow and his "infrastructure charge" was US$8.51/mth.
    I will try to find the link ...

    EDIT:
    Last edited by Guiseppe; 03-06-19 at 05:55 PM.
    If Australia is a democracy why, then, is voting compulsory?

    "What has changed between the arrival of the First Fleet and today?"
    "Wearing leg irons is now not required."

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    Quote Originally Posted by Guiseppe View Post
    I noticed in the Bunnings ceiling insulation how-to they stated the cables should be above the insulation. Cables are double insulated and flame retardant?
    I believe the idea is to keep the cables cool.
    there are different ratings for cables when they are covered or enclosed and when they are in free air. When they are enclosed their rating is a lot lower particularly over distance than in air.

    The insulation is designed not to sustain a fire but they will certainly start one and allow something else to catch. My ceiling is basically sealed bar some venting in the ridge capping for moisture but the amount of leaves up there blown in by the wind is significant.
    I always did think having wires enclosed in something that would burn was stupid. Should be something that can't burn at all like some sort of glass fibre or the like.



    His reasoning just about brought tears to this Australian's eyes - he got 1 for 1 for export but the export was credited for future use when the panels were covered in snow and his "infrastructure charge" was US$8.51/mth.
    Yep, have spoken to a number of Canadians that have a same/ Similar deal. They get a credit in summer that goes toward their winter usage. Have conversed with a guy that put in a big water wheel. When he generates in winter he gets 60? C per KWH but is only paying 13 or something for what he uses. They pay more in winter for what you feed back because there are fewer people generating and higher demand.
    Another guy was using solar and had panels at a 90 o angle in winter so the snow wouldn't cover them. He made big berms/ reflectors out of the snow with his tractor to direct the light back onto the panels and made them semi round to track the sun. He got well over rated output for his panels as the light levels with the reflecting snow and the cold made them over perform. He had some land and was setting up his own little solar farm with the help and blessing of the power co.
    In summer he tilted the panels up flat to make the most of the seasonal solar radiation.

    I have argued with more than one local brainwashed idiot that the FIT and the Usage charges should be more fair here. These people then go on with crap about the power cos having to make a profit and that would put them out of business. More holes in that ignorance than enough but the bottom line is these companies in the US and Canada are OVERPAYING surviving quite well. Not everyone is going to be able to generate more than they use. Businesses, Shops, manufacturing just to name a few would in the main be 100% users rather than suppliers and if it cuts infrastructure cost and actually does do something for the environment which they are fair dinkum about, then it works out well. Of course these people buying power are still paying less than we are.

    The mere fact power co's here are making $2.7Bn yr net profit tells you how corrupt and what BS power prices are here. I get pissed off any time they talk about lower power prices. There is Billions in margins to lower prices right now. If they haven't reduced them already, exactly what the Fk are they waiting for before they do?
    Oh yeah, that's right, the cheaper power from unreliables. If it's cheaper, when are they going to pass that along?

    Talking about it is an insult to ones intelligence but then again, the intelligence of the average sheeple out there is not at all high......

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    Note the comment at about 5:40.
    If Australia is a democracy why, then, is voting compulsory?

    "What has changed between the arrival of the First Fleet and today?"
    "Wearing leg irons is now not required."

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    Exactly why I would NEVER have an Isolator on my roof.
    They are far more danger than a safety measure and NONE of them are impervious to causing trouble in 7-10 years.

    The whole concept is moronic to me. The cable should be able to take the full load of the panels without problem and it would be easier and far better to do away with teh regulation for the Isolator and just spec the cable between the panels and Isolator had to be say 10mm or 4X current rating of the system Minimum. That way there can be no fire danger between the panels and the isolator on the ground and under some cover.

    As far as electrical problems between the panels and Isolator, what could there be? I'll guarantee fire fighters won't be going up there to turn off an isolator when the place is ablaze and if anything is shorting out, which if it's in conduit as it should be how could it? , it's going to ground itself normally anyway. If there was a structural collapse or something and you saw panels, then common sense would say be aware or just go cut the cables at the panel. It's DC so you could cut one with a pocket knife and have no problem.

    The other thing that gets me with these isolators is that on used systems I have bought, I have seen these isolators are only wired through one pole. OK, I realise they are snap action to prevent arcing but still seems wrong to me. I use Normal AC ganged pair breakers and wire both poles so they disconnect together. Yeah, had loads of people tell me how wrong this is but the fact is I have switched these things now dozens of times under full load and there is just no problem. Breaking both poles simultaneously eliminates any arcing more than a Heavy AC load would cause.

    Maybe they have changed the type of Isolator now to double pole but if they have not, some regulator person needs a smack in the face with a shovel straight off.

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