DIY Electric Energy (1) Battery Power
Currently a lot of people are talking about the energy crisis and the personal costs connected to it are significantly increasing. The next announced raise will be about 30% higher at 1st of December 2022.
That seems to be the right time to check how to produce electricity via photovoltaic energy is working in practice. In this and the followig articles, I will take you on my trip how’d installed it on my side — if you want to rebuild any of my creations, you do that on your own risk, as this is a documentation and not an instruction.
In the basement there was a kind of an uneasy feeling when I took on my safety googles after double and triple checking the cables from and to the batteries, metering the voltage, checking the correct connection to fuse and inverter and review anything in my mind that i probably could have missed. I was thinking about to toggle the fuse switch via stick in a safe distance. But somehow i took all my courage an switched it, with my bare hands. And then, nothing …
But first things first. Currently I am building up my own small balcony energy plant, that can be used in Germany to directly produce energy with low effort of governmental approval and it can easy reduce your cost, when you consume electricity. But what about, when it’s at night and you want that energy, which sun has send you before, right now? Or when the sun shines and you produce 600w, which is the maximum of the balcony power plant you are allowed to produce, but you just use only 150w for your fridge and the internet router. Then you are gifting the 450w you create to the energy provider, because you will not get paid for it. Do you want to give away the own created energy for free?
You may already know the answer, it’s about keeping the energy that you can consume it, when you need it — a battery bank.
Above you can see the picture of my basement and the creation — just few minutes after I turned on the “battery driven current generator”. It’s build of the following components
- Inverter Ective CSI 10 24V (1000w)
- Solar Charger Victron Smart Solar MPPT 100 | 30
- 2x LiFePo Batteries Power Queen 12.8V 50Ah
- 3x DC Fuses on DIN rail for 63A/50A/32A
- 16mm2 cables — different more to come
- a construction of 18mm MDF plates
- an used waterproof military box
that I found during my research. I am curious if they will do their job fine. I am not financed or biased by any of those manufacturers, so you can expect pure results.
The purpose of this part of the project is to have
- an own build DIY battery generator using common parts
- storing energy that comes from my solar panels and forward the energy to my electric consumers (fridge, computer etc.) when ever needed
- able to take the generator to some outdoor place and have electricity there (idea: small music PA system, fog hazer and light — let’s see if that works)
- use my current knowledge and gain lot more
- and last not least, how two document and publish it
As you now know some more details about it, I will let you know what happend after turning it on for the first time. There was a bit more than “nothing”. Because I just forgot to turn on the inverter itself. After the bleeping sound and some green indicator LED everything looked great. And as you can see above, the first thing that was connected was my 3d printers setup. It printed some small parts for the battery generator itself. But more on this later.
If you have any questions or ideas let me know. This project is work in progress and the first MVP is now able to run some electric things.
Create and keep creating!
PS: yes, the basement floor is nice, i like to build stuff there :)
