That in and of itself is a form of repayment for me.
I started monitoring my home energy consumption more than 15 years ago using arduinos and TA sensors, data delivered to a raspberry PI over RF 868Mhz, then, after collecting data for a ouple of years, decided to add an initial home automation node, using arduinos, then added 6Kw of solare panels in 2016 when installing heat pumps. Our yeat PV production was slightly over our consumption (7MW over 6MV)
I then changed the TA meters to Modbus ones, started working from home, then we bought a PHEV car in 2019 and our home consumption shot to 10kWh/year
Last year I added a 10kWh Battery and this spring another 6kWh of photovoltaic production capability …
I recovered the first solar install in 4 years, and with current energy prices in Italy I expect to recover the battery in 7 years and the new panels in another 5. The money I am saving from the initial solar array install more than cover the cost of the new ones …
I was able to optimize my spend and customize my desgin and deployment because of the consumption data I collected during the years
For kicks in 2017 I did an analisys of whether it was worth installing a tesla battery, and it turned out at that time and with 2017 energy prices it was not worth it …
I dont have a pic of the distributor connected but its just screwed into the side of the case and the extruded aluminum angle I made the structure out of.
What do you mean by phase? I mean I only have single phase coming into the house. Does this act as a VFD of sorts and generate a second phase?
Though I do see the lack of ports on the back now so I’d have to rear mount it. That’d be a pain with my setup at the moment…
I like the idea but I’d want to use it for an alternative project. I didn’t know I could just build redundant 800W PSU’s for the price of a desktop PSU of equal power. Good to know.
120v as opposed to 240v ?
I used the European ‘notation’, sorry …
APC ATS PDUs are all rear things, but they cost way more:
We used one of these in a datacenter for years to power pfsense firewall boxes from mini-itx … The hardware in the mini-itx enclosure gave us more problems (exectly one ssd failed in 4 years over 5 machines) than power failures (none) …
Ah, so it supports 120 - 240V input. Using what I guess we would call North American ‘notation’ my supply is a split phase transformer where the neural leg cuts the secondary coil in half and is tied to ground.
In my electrical panel that gives me 120V & 240V though in an industrial area where 3 phase power is available the supply between any two legs would be ~208V.
Makes me giggle that residential areas have a slightly more efficient supply of power for high load DC conversion (any PC or server PSU).
Well the good news is my setup is going to be relocating semi-soon so I might just opt to put up with it temporarily. I need more space behind my rack.
Only very slightly. And their massive 3-phase air conditioning units are quite a bit more efficient than anything you can run on 240V, which is a much larger power draw.
Since when does a PDU have a front and a back? There are usually holes already for the ears to be mounted on either end you wish.
I’m working with a very confined space at the moment. I can’t have my power cables protruding out the front of the rack. Perhaps in the future it won’t be an issue but I’m well aware the mount is universal facing front or back.
Based on what I read it only comes with two molex connectors which isn’t adequate for my application.
@MadMatt Little update on this topic. I had to overhaul my backup power supply. I bought a pair of PDU’s and they seemed fantastic. Until we experienced the first severe brown-out I’ve seen in years…
What I ended up learning is my stack of UPS’s output a sine-wave that’s too crewed for the PDU’s to play nice with. They were not having it and were behaving VERY erratically even causing the UPS’s to power off which isn’t normal…
This is a pair of EATON 9PX1500RT’s that use Online Double-conversion instead of Line-Interactive and output true sinewave instead of simulated sinewave. With some minor modifications I was able to attach a few of the old battery packs and extend the internal 9Ah packs to 16.2Ah. (the old UPS’s used 7.2Ah packs) for a total of 32.4Ah redundant battery.
The PDU’s play much friendlier with these and I’m excited to have the ability to add up to 90Ah of battery to each UPS.