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"Offensively cheap": Solar power is looking up (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/sustainabletech@lemmy.sdf.org
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Chinese-made panels on rooftops across the world are changing the facts of life for big utilities.

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[–] [S] 11 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I am getting real interested in micro-scale DIY solar, both plug-in units, and the whole "stick a panel and a powerbank in the back yard and schlep it back & forth with another powerbank, manually plugging them in to power my servers" model.

I've been progressively downsizing my self-hosting stack, it's now all "1-liter" PCs with 35-watt CPUs and a couple tiny ARM boxes... that's a start, but at my budget I would probably need power banks that can automatically switch to the grid once exhausted to start powering my setup from solar. Or DIY some kind of power-switching solution on a little box that monitors the charge status of the power bank.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    With your reliance on storage, I'm wondering if you have any concerns with the safety of your lithium power banks. The more I go into this the more I see that not only are not all LFP cells created equal, but substandard BMS is another possible risk. Lithium battery fires are no joke and the risk is high when these are in our living spaces.

    At one time I was set on building out a large commodity 48v rack of LFP batteries for "big and cheap" storage of my excess solar power (instead of exporting to grid), but the cheap batteries are a wildly different in safety with no apparent way to know if you're getting a good safe system or a time bomb waiting to happen.

    I've got 10KWh of high quality Enphase LFP batteries in use now, but scaling these expensive dedicated integrated solar batteries is very expensive.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    If you’ve got a shed at least 10-15 feet from the house that could be a storage solution. If it burns, it burns

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    For my region, that would be a decent solution, but I'm not able to build a shed for the rules where I live.

    In wildfire prone areas, a burning shed might be even a larger liability not only to the residence but also hundreds or thousands of homes in the area.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    I do have concerns, but right now I'm rolling the dice in a sense by sleeping and spending most of my day next to 265Wh of NMC cells and about 220Wh of LFP as "12V" drop-in replacements for lead-acid. The former is from a pretty reputable company, the latter is from a Chinese company which seems to be on the upper end of the manufacturing & testing scale, but my due diligence only went so far.

    These are very small sizes compared to a whole-house system or even one that could run my servers for 24 hours, but the NMC power bank could easily start a house on fire, and the LFP units could easily fill the room with highly toxic smoke. YOLO I guess, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on battery development, and very excited for sodium-ion to become widespread.

    (BTW, a big concern from LFP batteries in thermal runaway is that they can produce enough carbon monoxide to very quickly become life-threatening in enclosed areas... the risk of fire is less but the risk of being poisoned if there is an event is higher.)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    These are very small sizes compared to a whole-house system or even one that could run my servers for 24 hours, but the NMC power bank could easily start a house on fire,

    Can I ask if you've acquired a battery fire blanket or box that you could use in an emergency for your smaller packs?

    and the LFP units could easily fill the room with highly toxic smoke.

    This is my concern for my situation. Not only is the vapor produced highly toxic for inhalation, but also a very high concentration of hydrogen (35%-55%). I'd thought about trying to build in a ventilation system that I could engage, and then a follow-on detection system that could trigger the vent to run, but with that high a concentration of hydrogen, I'd be worried about the vent fan or relay igniting the hydrogen from a spark.

    So today, I too and using the YOLO method. I've purchased really high quality UL 9540A Compliant LFPs, but that only goes so far.

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