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Comment by blacksmith_tb | Hacker News Reader

Sounds great, but are there actual businesses who will come to your home and do an install, or do you need to to become a mad-scientist electrician and DIY? I got quotes on getting an LG system a few years ago and it was 4X these prices (also for me a problem is that my 'ancient' panels from 2013 use a single inverter instead of microinverters, so if I touch the system I have to replace it all). I keep hoping there will be a bunch of small businesses electrifying everything, I'd love to see - good, practical, safe - EV conversions driving around too, but it just doesn't seem to be materializing.

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All of the quotes and interactions I had with the local solar installers were reminiscent of the used car lot if not outright fraud. I was able to do what was permissible myself and a regular licensed electrician did the rest. The equipment is UL listed. There was some learning curve but I found the diysolarforum.com to be a pretty good resource to learn what I didn't know. I ran the whole setup standalone for about 6 months before switching the house over to it. The only problem that happened was a loose battery cable connection which the BMS and inverter alerted to and handled correctly.

What voltage are you running your solar strings at? I was wondering what would happen if the loose cable was a cable from the solar panels instead of the low voltage battery.

The panel strings are at ~500v so there are safety, fusing and grounding considerations. Pretty common electrical equipment and cable is rated for use at 600v. There are special locking water resistant connectors for solar panels called MC4.

Are the hybrid inverters you are using be able to detect arc faults (in series) from the strings? Running 500V DC is probably by far the most dangerous thing in your setup, fortunately your solar panels are mounted on the groud.

If you want a DIY-friendly option, it's best to look towards DC optimizers. They are installed on each panel and they provide a steady 48V output. They also do MPPT tracking on the panel level, so you get the best possible performance if you have some shading.

Unlike microinverters that are notoriously unreliable, DC optimizers so far have excellent long-term reliability.

Are you suggesting using a DC Optimizer from your solar panels to charge 48V batteries directly? This would be interesting. It's the first I've heard of optimizers being used for anything other than prior to an inverter.

You absolutely can do that. You still need a charging controller and a BMS, obviously. But you can avoid the AC round-tripping.

Nice, the 48V batteries I have already have BMS's...any suggestion for a nominal 48V DC optimizer and charge controller?

Tigo is known to work. I've heard that SolarEdge DC Optimizers don't work without a SolarEdge inverter connected to them.

This approach may vary by country. Not a single sparky in Australia will sign off on someone else's solar/battery install.

Isn't there a distinction between the house wiring and the solar/battery stuff?

P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie.

> P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie.

When I moved into a new house in Australia I asked the real estate agent if I could extend the fence, and he said I'd need a cheapie to do that.

I said ok but scratched my head as to why it needs to be cheap, only to find out later what he actually said was chippy, slang for a carpenter.

Yeah, it's all fun and games until you're at Macca's and someone says, "Oi, can you pass me a chippy?" and they get real confused when you go find a carpenter.

Maccas is nz, maccies is Aus

It's definitely Maccas in AU. Maccies must be a UK thing.

Chippies are also known as "wood butchers" apparently. Amused me ;)

Next you’ll need a roofie

Why, though? Is there some kind of requirement that only fully trained carpenters can build fences?

Just about everything in Australia needs a license to do. Even down to network cabling.

The rule is - if it's going inside the wall, only a licenced electrician can do it. Yes it also extends to things like speaker or HDMI cables. It's mad.

Mad, indeed. It's hard to imagine those rules are followed, especially for speaker wires and HDMI cables.

HDMI cables? Sounds like protectionism. Invent rules to make yourself more work.

Aren't there power delivery versions of HDMI?

I can understand requiring a license for any power wires behind walls.

I could also see the possibility that it's just an old law that doesn't consider data-only cables which don't have the safety issues that wires carrying power do.

It's definitely an old law that never took data cables into account, but the current interpretation is that any cable that carries electrical current has to be installed and certified by an electrician.

While HDMI can provide a tiny bit of power and there are active cables for signal boosting, HDMI was never meant for power delivery. You might be mixing it with HDMI with Ethetnet.

Sparky=electrician is common in the US too. I had previously thought of it as meaning a radio operator e.g. on a ship.

in Spain we call them “chispas”, which literally means sparks. An electrician is someone who knows the home electrical wiring stuff, while a chispas is someone who is skilled in repairing home appliances.

We use sparky in the UK for an electrician too.

> P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie.

I'm surprised to find out it's aussie slang; I always thought it was slang local to South Africa :-/

We say the chippie in the UK too.

We also use sparkie for electrician.

It's local to UK and more recent British colonies

ZA and AUS included. USA less so.

In the US, sparky is common slang electrician among the trades, but far loss-so for end customers who are looking to hire one.

It will, but I suspect this will get a lot easier everywhere as more of the problem gets packaged as units that you can just buy off the shelf (and the prices of such units come down).

I'm currently in a pickle in this regard, as my new house has solar on Net Metering, but no ATS or battery. While its nice to only pay the base connection fee, I still go dark when the line power does.

I'd love to add at the very least an ATS to keep my fridge and freezer going when the power goes out during the day, if not a battery but I have little to no documentation on the existing solar install, so i'm reaching out to the county to see if permits have any info. Fun times!

> All of the quotes and interactions I had with the local solar installers were reminiscent of the used car lot if not outright fraud.

I had exactly the same experience. They absolutely would not tell me the actual system cost, only how much I would save on my current bill per month. It felt exactly like a car salesman only talking about monthly payments, and it was horrible.

Yup. I’ve (US) also talked to a few local ones to just see if they had a couple panels I could buy off them for close to wholesale for a personal project - which if they were actually involved in installation would be trivial - and just got blank stares.

They were clearly just doing lead generation for some other company they had no direct connection with, and didn’t even have any idea who to talk to that could even answer my question.

I had way better luck just looking online and paying shipping, which is absurd given how they were presenting themselves.

So not even as good as a used car salesman on an actual car lot, more like door to door used car salesman.

These companies are the equivalent of people who received a free product to review and then post a referral link for it in the details. Of course, they glow about how amazing the product is and how you should drop everything and buy it.

Yeah. Talked to a couple of solar companies. They were utterly focused on costs vs utility costs and very opaque about how that was being modeled. And it was based on the rules back then--which of course could not hold. Net metering is a huge subsidy that is already being walked back.

The true value of solar or wind is the cost of the fuel it saves. Nothing more. Even if his numbers come true there's a big problem--bad weather could deplete your batteries. You want to turn to the electric company in that case? You are once again in the situation that the value is only the fuel.

I think solar credits works into things too. People trying to get a long-term revenue stream.

> do you need to to become a mad-scientist electrician and DIY?

I did my own a couple years ago, and it worked quite well on the first go. I got someone else to build the LiFePo4 battery pack (16 CATL cells for 48v with a JK BMS).

It was fairly easy to build. Mount panels on the roof, and wire everything (PV, battery, grid electricity if you want it, and the output) to the inverter. I added some extra steps to monitor usage and output, and a smart MCB. I also have a small shop that I can feed from solar power if the battery is almost charged and the sunset time hasn't reached yet.

See if you quotation is to export electricity to the grid. Those kinds of setups usually require a certified company to do the installation (to make sure the inverter syncs with the grid), but for off-grid setups, you can definitely DIY.

If your setup burns your house down, will insurance cover it?

You do not necessarily have to become all these things. There are whole communities around this sort of a thing - Will Prowse's DiY Solar Forum (https://diysolarforum.com/) is an awesome source for learning as an example.

The setup you describe - lacking microinverters - I think there are options there short of wholesale replacement [disclaimer: I, too, am a self-taught in this field, and so am likely wrong in non-trivial ways]

> but are there actual businesses who will come to your home and do an install, or do you need to to become a mad-scientist electrician and DIY?

A lot of the costs of a real install come from the permitting, doing proper upgrades (you might need a new electrical panel), the warranty, the labor, and other costs.

Every time I browse the DIY solar forums it feels like I see 1 person doing things by code for every 10 people cutting corners or playing loose with the rules. YMMV, but take the DIY cost estimates with a huge grain of salt.

If you're in the US, I don't think you need to pull a permit if it's not on your house. So you could build a small installation in your backyard and hook it up without too much trouble.

This channel on youtube is an excellent resource and explains everything for anyone one who is a DIYer.

https://www.youtube.com/@WillProwse

Make sure you have a good understanding of what your insurance company will and won't cover for DIY projects. Insurance companies can be skittish about unlicensed electrical work.

For something like this, a worst case scenario is an electrical fire during a drought or a kid gets electrocuted. If you do the work yourself, you're likely on the hook if something goes wrong, even if it's due to a faulty part and you have an umbrella policy that covers liability.

You might need to DIY, but "mad scientist" is doing a lot of work in your statement that I don't think applies. You just need to follow some very-thoroughly-detailed online tutorials. It's one of those things like baking, where as long as you're good at faithfully following directions, everything turns out great.

> I keep hoping there will be a bunch of small businesses electrifying everything

There are a few of these per large city; but they serve companies with large budgets for "becoming carbon negative", not residences trying to do things cost-effectively to lower their electric bills.

I really like the baking analogy! I've installed a set of 10 PV panels with full electric installation including optimizers myself, and in fact the hardest part is finding out which mechanical adaptor parts fits your type of roof, which screws to use etc. The rest is following recipes indeed.

Some people cold knocked on my dad's door and 3 weeks later he's got a wall of batteries in the garage. Rural Australia.

So yeah, there are businesses that'll do it.

In place where I live you do that and they will rip you off good time.

Better to DIY or at least do really good market research first.

Australia has become SO competitive for solar and battery installation you can actually be fairly safe nowadays just picking any old supplier that has >4.7* on google and there'll almost definitely be <10% price difference (that's the WA experience anyway).

Going with a door knocking sales rep for home batteries would be madness in most countries but chances are pretty good that in Australia you would get a perfectly decent product.

Despite what you get in Australia being pretty reliable, it's too expensive to justify quite yet. My 8kW solar is connected to a Fronius inverter, but until I find a less expensive option I can justify adding a battery.

A 13kWh system is over $AUD10k, and the ROI is on par with the expected lifespan of the battery.

If sodium cells can bring the price down to $AUD100 it would indeed be a massive game changer.

Yep I agree - I will, however, be happy to install a battery if it doesn't save me money but does represent a carbon price of about $100/tonne

If you’re in NSW there’s a state government subsidy of $2800 later this year for home batteries.

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