Shut Up and Take My Money | DLN Xtend 79

On this episode of DLN Xtend we discuss the big news from Pine64.

Welcome to episode 79 of DLN Xtend. DLN Xtend is a community powered podcast. We take conversations from the DLN Community from places like the DLN Discourse Forums, Telegram group, Discord server and more. We also take topics from other shows around the network to give our takes.

00:00 Introduction
06:30 Topic - Pine64 PinePhone Pro
33:20 Host Related Interest
39:49 Wrap Up

Main Topic Link

Wendy

Contact info
Matt (Twitter @MattDLN)
Wendy (Mastodon @WendyDLN)
Nate (Website CubicleNate.com)

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I’ve done a lot of research and work with portable solar stuff up to 90W and i’ve built batteries from 3rd-hand laptop cells in different configuarations as part of an eBike build. I’ve since moved on to lipos but it was a balancing/maintainence nightmare which taught me a lot.

I focus more on the nomadic side but wherever that crosses with what you’re doing @CubicleNate i’d be happy to help.

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I am about to pull the trigger on purchasing a vertical axis windmill. It is 9kw at max so I imagine I can probably get 2 to 4kw out of it, especially since we are getting into the winter months here where it is always seemingly windy. My issue, right now, is how to configure the grid tie along with the grid disconnect circuitry so that I don’t cause something catastrophic for anyone but especially me. :slight_smile:

I do need to probably find some kind of expert that knows what they are doing locally due to codes and restrictions. I really want to be able to turn my meter backwards and be a little more self-reliant rather than relying on others.

That said, I will let you know how it goes. I’ll get the windmill first because of the time of year, but next spring, I hope to adorn my vast amount of rooftop with panels to absorb the suns energy and use it for something other than to exercise my air conditioning.

From what little I know and different states/jurisdictions/companies may vary but I think you’re required to have an electrican do the grid hookup. It needs to be aware of things like a grid-down situation so it isn’t feeding power into fallen lines and it needs to supply the correct volts with a pure sine wave.

You’d want to talk to them about manual/auto failover if the grid goes down because that’s generally not something you get unless you pay for it.

An alternative way of going off-grid is turning off the mains at the fuse box or turning off a particular part of your house. Then you can supply power to that area by plugging your inverter into one of the sockets.

Just make sure to confirm power is out, that the invertor is fused appropriate to that run and that it’s unplugged before returning the mains.

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Right, I am NOT going to touch anything with the mains. They aren’t fused on the other side of the box, unless I disconnect it at the meter so I have NO problem, whatsoever to have a pro do that. The issue I am having is actually browsing my options. I’ll get there. My windmill is on its way. My issue there is the cleanest way to wire all the inverters together… or not. I am still looking at my options.

There is SO much information in all of this…

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