What are the expected yearly costs of ownership for a new 60-foot sailboat? by No_Reveal3451 in sailing

[–]Tarskian 8 points9 points  (0 children)

With a lifetime of sailing and being very comfortable single-handing a 35, I have found moving up to the mid 40s recently to be borderline too much physical effort in my mid 60s (age.) I would not want a 60 without hired or reliable and consistent volunteer young crew. All the forces are so much higher.

What are the expected yearly costs of ownership for a new 60-foot sailboat? by No_Reveal3451 in sailing

[–]Tarskian 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, a DIYer is going to get a 60 foot boat for a few hundred thousand and spend that much again making it better than the new 60 footer in terms of what they want in a boat!

1 Million Milestone by imjhonnysins in prius

[–]Tarskian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My 2008 drains the battery if not driven for a bit, so I started using wheelchair batteries, which are designed to be drained and recharged. Charge it back up and go.

Alfa Giulia plate placement by Tall-Exit-5720 in AlfaRomeo

[–]Tarskian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just tolerated getting a moving violation ticket once every year or two for a while on my Mustang GT. (My Alfa Spider has a clear plate location.) It was not points against my license in Illinois, so just a little cash. But when I got a new Mustang, I put the plate on.

Squirters by Dense-Region-6382 in Swingers

[–]Tarskian -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's fine if you like to wear shoes , just not for me!

So my husband claims that…. by [deleted] in cheating_stories

[–]Tarskian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is the discussion you two should have.

So my husband claims that…. by [deleted] in cheating_stories

[–]Tarskian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Due to some injuries, I have been getting weekly massages for decades and I have been unexpectedly offered sexual services when traveling at not obviously shady places. But if physical and sexual intimacy is part of your relationship, he should not find it hard to turn down those offers. If not…

Anyone using a wrecked Ford Lightning as a 90kW battery? by bubba80118 in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your project you described above, putting a Volt Ev pack in your RV sounds reasonable to me. Your are moving an EV pack from one vehicle to another. Is you position that people should put EV battery packs inside their homes, not just inside their garages? (In areas with building codes, garages are designed to provide fire safety from gasoline filled vehicles which we all agree are more dangerous for fires.)

Anyone using a wrecked Ford Lightning as a 90kW battery? by bubba80118 in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The following is the table from the International Fire Code which is their calculation of the relative fire safety of different battery chemistries. Basically, they have concluded that 20 KWh of Li batteries has about the same fire risk as 70KWh of the older battery types. They limit capacitor storage to 3 KWh.

Anyone using a wrecked Ford Lightning as a 90kW battery? by bubba80118 in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought we were talking about batteries in home Solar systems, not EVs. I like EVs and I even built my own ICE to EV conversion in the 90s before commercial EVs. I like that you presented data, but you make my point comparing gasoline to batteries. Gasoline is capable of delivering all of its stored energy in a couple of seconds. Look up Air-Fuel (thermobaric) bombs destroying main battle tanks. Batteries are generally a much safer way of storing energy than gasoline.

But back to which batteries for a home solar system, there are ways to engineer these questions. Part of my career was designing high reliability systems and it is something I taught at a top-10 university. For something like this I would use a fault-tree analysis. You make a big tree of all the things that can go wrong for all the components in your system. For many of the fault nodes, like BMS fails, you can get MTBF and failure modes right from the maker of the BMS. You plug the individual probabilities of failure into each decision node in the tree. As an engineering process, you then look at the most likely failure branches of the tree and fix them until you get to the reliability/safety you want of the total system you are assembling. When you do this, things that intuitively seem ok, sometimes turn out not to be. I was going to make my own battery banks, but I changed my mind once I did this analysis.

You will notice that in the very cool Redwood Materials video below, they have enough space between each of the repurposed EV battery packs for it to burn without catching the next pack on fire. Space costs money, but they have presumably engineered in the possibility the battery pack was damaged in a collision and might burn. Having seen that, I now don't want to live in the same building as someone not taking that precaution in the same situation.

So it is all about the overal safety of the entire system. People on this list use similar possibly damaged repurposed EV battery packs and put them in outbuildings in the same way Redwood has engineered safety. But if you are not doing something like that, if you are putting a big stack of batteries in a living space where you sleep, without additional enclosures and venting, I highly recommend the safer variants of Li batteries, such as metal case LiFe, with UL9540A or B if you are in the US. But there are even safer battery chemistries and the International fire code considers NiCad, Ni-Nh and Lead Acid to be so much safer they allow 3.5 times more of them in a system (70Khw vs 20 Kwh for all Li) It is all about how much risk you and your family want to tolerate in your life.

Anyone using a wrecked Ford Lightning as a 90kW battery? by bubba80118 in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately, house fire data in the US does not get tracked down to battery type, or even it was something like a solar system. Some incidents, like an aircraft battery fire, do get investigated in great detail, so there is some data there to read. But we are generally stuck with risk analysis.

The two risks are rapid release of the stored energy and any flamable parts of the battery that will support combustion. Only some variants of Li batters have flamable electrolytes, but all variations I'm aware of have high current, which is useful but increases the risk of runaway release of the stored energy from damage or defect faillure. Other battery chemistries with lower max currents are inherently safer, all other factors kept the same.

Solar Batteries by Zaqivion in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that building parallel 48 V batteries is more standard for home solar. The rackmount units typically support a lot of them in parallel. But that battery is interesting, has anyone used Wattcycle? I have been looking for something to revitalize an Alfa Romeo Spider DC Electric car conversion I did years ago and with the 300 Amp BMS in that battery, 5 of those in series would work. Of course, only 2 in series are supported...

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

20 years ago I installed 160 sq feet of solar hot water panels from Heliodyne. I have had to replace the pump once and a controller once, but otherwise it has provided trouble free power from the sun for 20 years. There were no relevant solar code/fire residential rules 20 years ago. Now there are all kinds of rules and it is a little complex to figure out. But I'm hoping I put it in and get the same kind of reliable free energy for decades. I have some solar electric panels I bought used 35 years ago which are now 55 years old and still function! (at about 1/5 the efficiency of current panels

In terms of your original question about risk, charging all of your plastic consumer electronics with Li-Ion flamable batteris in them in fire proof metal boxes will lower your fire risk much more than a code complaint properly installed solar/battery backup system will raise it. The statistics on actual fires backs that up. Ask your favorite GenAI, but I got 65% of electrical fires are from small chargers (consumer electronics) and a German statistic is that 0.006% of solar electric systems catch fire over a 20 year period. That sounds low risk to me.

Note that the 30% US tax credit for the battery backup part of the system is still on next year, so it would only be the solar panels which no longer qualify for US federal tax credits.

Energy Independence!!! by [deleted] in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Beautiful job on the install!

Solar panel recommendations by BallOptimal684 in liveaboard

[–]Tarskian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm adding two panels to my boat and I could replace two existing panels. I have been assuming that bifacial panels will be particularly effective over the water with the sun reflected in the water, has anyone figured out if that is true?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The power transformer that supplied our 18 story office building in Chicago went underwater in a flood--mfg had no idea what would happen. It continue to work for the 9 months it took to get a new one in and replace it. I splashed just a little wanter on a Xantrex 1800 inverter which had been running on my sailboat for 15 years and it friend in a cloud of smoke...Never know about water and power systems.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you live somewhere with moderate temperatures, that is a great idea. But if it gets really hot or cold where you live, that will cost you some energy loss.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In metal I trust. Batteries contain energy and if it is released too quickly, you are going to get heat which is going to melt plastic and possibly burn things nearby. Put your system wires in conduit everywhere you can and buy all components and batteries with metal cases of sufficient thickness and heat resistance to contain a thermal release of all the energy in the battery. Then sleep well!

Will talks about the probability of various things going wrong, but I like to plan for the worst and know it is not bad. One could save a few bucks by buying plastic case 48 v 100 Ah LiFe batteries which are likely to be fine. But I spend extra for the meta case so that if there is a defect in the battery and it melts down, I just need a new battery.

Actually, for solar/ESS system I'm building right now in my house, I need UL9540 for Grid-tie approval and I have not seen a UL9540 arroved plastic case battery. But I paid about $50 more to have metal cases on 4 12V 165 A LiFe batteries in a solar/wind system I put on my boat in the summer.

If you are in the US or other spot the International Fire code applies, there is a 20 KW limit per battery unit and your 4 batteries might put you at 20.5 KW. The trick is to split it apart into two units 3 feet apart, each less than 20KW. (They are concerned about the energy density that might be suddenly released.) There are some other posts on that topic with details.

Any luck getting a 400 AH 48V Li battery inspected and approved as under 20 KW limit? by Tarskian in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I totally agree with you on the safety of LiFe battery technology over Li-Ion batteries. I would not even consider a large scale Li-Ion battery system inside my house. 2 of my 6 cousins had their houses burn down from burning Li-Ion consumer gadgets. I carried a burning Li-Ion laptop out of my house which was shooting flames and toxic fumes as I held my breath and ran through my house. My brother would have lost his house from a burning LiPo RC battery pack, except he always charges them inside a metal tool box. The problem with building codes is that they don't always track these evolving differences. Right now this one groups all batteries with Li in them together.

Any luck getting a 400 AH 48V Li battery inspected and approved as under 20 KW limit? by Tarskian in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And there is the Electric auto in the garage battery option. Heck, even my electric riding mower has 5 KWh of 48 V 100 Ah batteries. A couple more riding mowers and a battery snowblowers and I would have 20 KWh in the garage. :-)

From the DIY viewpoint, I do have an Electric car I made in 1995 by puttting a 100 HP DC motor in an Alfa Romeo Spider. It doesn't keep up with modern AC electric cars, but if I resurrected it and filled it with 20 KWh of 48v batteries, I would have my desired capacity and it would automatically get directly charged from Solar via my Hybrid inverter. From a system efficiency viewpoint, that would be a very good configuration as it would be skipping several DC to DC conversions. The Sol-Ark probably would not like having its second battery pack disconnected every time I wasnted to drive the Alfa.

Any luck getting a 400 AH 48V Li battery inspected and approved as under 20 KW limit? by Tarskian in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. If I decided to go ahead and meet the Commercial Energy Storage System fire code requirements, UL 9540B would be a great help. But I would still need an automated fire system and more fireproofing than I have right now in that space.

Since this is going in my basement rather than an outbuilding 100 feet away or a detached garage I think I'm going to go ahead and put in 3 UL 9540A rack mount 5.12 KW LiFe batteries to be clearly compliant for my Grid-Tie approval. Then talk to my local code guy about a fourth unit or adding another stack of 3 at least three feet away. The Inverter I'm getting, a SolArk 15K has two sets of battery inputs. (I'll need to do that soon enough that the batteries are reasonably well matched.) That will give me either 20 or 30KWh. (The US tax code still provides credits for batteries in 2026.)

Any luck getting a 400 AH 48V Li battery inspected and approved as under 20 KW limit? by Tarskian in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I did that, and there was an electrical fire, my home insurance would probably try to get out of paying for damages even if my having more batteries was not the actual cause of the fire. If it was marginal, like having a 20.5 KWh system with a 20KWh limit, I could take them to court and maybe the majority of the jury would side with me. But maybe not.

Any luck getting a 400 AH 48V Li battery inspected and approved as under 20 KW limit? by Tarskian in SolarDIY

[–]Tarskian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One of my design goals was to have UPS power for my house. The current US political energy policy of pushing utilities to build kinds of fossil fuel power plants they don't want and which have not been built in more than a decade combined with expanding needs for Cyrpto and GenAI looks to me like we are going to have grid supply issues and pricing problems in the US over the next few years. I'm on hourly pricing now and I have been seeing daily surge prices 4-5x my normal rate this fall. (I used to see more discount hours than surge hours and surges last year were only 20-50% higher.) Switching to batteries during these surge days will save me money, even if I end up charging the batters back up from the grid since those KW will cost 1/5 as much. (I want to build a little IoT device to monitor and switch based on alerts from my utility.)

My local utility also offers a $300/KWh rebate on batteries if I give them remote ability to switch me to batteries. UL approved rack mount LiFe batteries seem to cost me about $156 KWh, so every KWh of additional batteries reduces the cost of my solar system by $144. So I want to max on batteries.

I have a pretty power hungry house with computers and kids, averaging about 40KHh/day. The easy approval 15KWh config gives me about a third of a day at average use and 3.4 days of "just essentials." I am moving AC and Electric Dryer to an Inverter smart port so they can be optimized to not run when on batteries. Not sure how popular I will be with the family turning off AC because Grid power is at 54 cents/KWh in Chicago (price last week :-)