The Time Has Come .....I've gone solar

They are all 3 blades , I can hear only one which is approx 800 m from the house and only with strong winds leeward side, mainly outdoor. All those with the distance above 1 -1,2 km do not disturb us. Now the regulation changes in Poland and all new wind farms will keep the distance of 10 times the height of the wind turbine.

Moreover the strongest winds come in the winter and having 3 layers glass in windows we are just fine , in the summer we do not hear them, even windows open, the nights are quiet.
Finally I prefer a bit of noise instead of smoke from the chimney.
 
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Thank you for the reply.

One of my brothers with his citizens neighbors have been fighting for over twelve years because of wind turbines on their land. They are still actively fighting. They are doctors, lawyers, professional citizens from various high social status.
I could write few books but I won't.

Anyway the closest one they can ear it @ night during summertime with the window in their bedroom open. He can see a dozen or more of them. It goes without saying that they are not attractively friendly with the beautiful surroundings they live in...nice forests, mountains, postcards type.

Their homes have lost over a third of their real value. If you sell you lose, if you move you lose, if you stay you lose. If you are rich and that you love nature you move; they are not rich, and all the family and friends (tons of them) they are all living nearby...tight familles.

You can't fight a multi-billion Spanish company who make a deal with your own government.
They were promised jobs, ...all lies.
Money first, people's health last. The low frequencies are also affecting people living the closest to them. Some folks were slightly compensated financially, if the turbines are right on their properties, or they had to sell parcels of lands. The money is not worth it in comparison to your physical and mental health. It's a devil deal type of. C'est la vie.

Solar panels are quiet, I like it more.

* Nice lake where you live.
 
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Steve - thanks for starting this thread. It has been five years since the last update on this thread - so there should be a much larger set of solar PV audiophile users by now?

My SunPower system with Enphase micro-inverters was installed two years ago on a detached garage with a metal roof. All of the solar control panels attach to an electric subpanel in the garage. I'm uncertain about the connection to the grid - I have a buried line that runs from the transformer and meter on the utility pole. I assume it connects to the main 200 amp panel in the house, with another buried line connection to the subpanel and solar in the garage. I assume it is all original wiring from when the house was built in 1980. I'm the last house on the power line in a very rural area - not sure it that is good or bad.

I have twenty-eight 410 watt panels, rated at 11.48 kW maximum power and estimated annual generation of 17.5 kW hours. Like Steve, my actual power generation has been about 7% higher than the estimate, probably because of more sunny days than used in the weather model for the estimate. I really like the system monitoring tools that SunPower provides. I am worried about their recent bankruptcy and how that might affect my system monitoring tools and warranty in the future. I wanted the REC Alpha panels but there was a supply problem in 2022, so I ended up with SunPower.

Neither SunPower nor my installer noticed that one panel sometimes stops producing power due to high line voltage, so I need to monitor the system myself for any issues. When I asked SunPower to check on this they said: "the system encounters high voltages ranging from 250-262V from time to time", and the panel with the most sensitive micro-inverter shuts down, which apparently decreases the line voltage enough that the other panels continue to operate. I also asked my utility company to check on this and they said "the only times the voltage gets above 250 is when the solar is producing. Otherwise, the voltage is in a normal range of 246 to 249".

Solar PV in the US is 3x more expensive compared to Australia where installation is a much simpler process. We really need to improve the US permitting and grid connection/infrastructure process to reduce the installation cost.

I'm not using any power conditioning or filters, and this is the next issue I want to investigate in my system. For "critical" listening, I can power down everything in the house except for the router/wifi. I've compared the system on wall power versus battery power using EcoFlow and GrowWatt pure sine wave solar generators and did not notice any difference in the sound quality. Maybe I have really good line power, or maybe my line power and the AC inverters in my solar generators are equally noisy. :) Or my amplifiers are not sensitive to pwer noise (Boulder 866, AGD Duets, Pass INT-25, dartZeel 108 with darTZeel preamp running on battery).

Generating clean power seems like such a complicated process, and I'm not really sure where to start. I'm thinking about trying a PS Audio power plant as a first step. Or maybe I should replace my main panel. Or maybe I should just chillax and enjoy the music. :)
 
I never power anything down. I listen with the energy generated completely from my grid as I typically listen to my system only when the sun is shining as there is no noticeable noise in my system . I decided against wall batteries as I can only think of once in the past 5 years that I thought I should have them and that was a few months ago when there was a local fire at the base of the mountain a few mies from me and the power was turned off by SDGE for 12 hours.
 
Steve - thanks for starting this thread. It has been five years since the last update on this thread - so there should be a much larger set of solar PV audiophile users by now?

My SunPower system with Enphase micro-inverters was installed two years ago on a detached garage with a metal roof. All of the solar control panels attach to an electric subpanel in the garage. I'm uncertain about the connection to the grid - I have a buried line that runs from the transformer and meter on the utility pole. I assume it connects to the main 200 amp panel in the house, with another buried line connection to the subpanel and solar in the garage. I assume it is all original wiring from when the house was built in 1980. I'm the last house on the power line in a very rural area - not sure it that is good or bad.

I have twenty-eight 410 watt panels, rated at 11.48 kW maximum power and estimated annual generation of 17.5 kW hours. Like Steve, my actual power generation has been about 7% higher than the estimate, probably because of more sunny days than used in the weather model for the estimate. I really like the system monitoring tools that SunPower provides. I am worried about their recent bankruptcy and how that might affect my system monitoring tools and warranty in the future. I wanted the REC Alpha panels but there was a supply problem in 2022, so I ended up with SunPower.

Neither SunPower nor my installer noticed that one panel sometimes stops producing power due to high line voltage, so I need to monitor the system myself for any issues. When I asked SunPower to check on this they said: "the system encounters high voltages ranging from 250-262V from time to time", and the panel with the most sensitive micro-inverter shuts down, which apparently decreases the line voltage enough that the other panels continue to operate. I also asked my utility company to check on this and they said "the only times the voltage gets above 250 is when the solar is producing. Otherwise, the voltage is in a normal range of 246 to 249".

Solar PV in the US is 3x more expensive compared to Australia where installation is a much simpler process. We really need to improve the US permitting and grid connection/infrastructure process to reduce the installation cost.

I'm not using any power conditioning or filters, and this is the next issue I want to investigate in my system. For "critical" listening, I can power down everything in the house except for the router/wifi. I've compared the system on wall power versus battery power using EcoFlow and GrowWatt pure sine wave solar generators and did not notice any difference in the sound quality. Maybe I have really good line power, or maybe my line power and the AC inverters in my solar generators are equally noisy. :) Or my amplifiers are not sensitive to pwer noise (Boulder 866, AGD Duets, Pass INT-25, dartZeel 108 with darTZeel preamp running on battery).

Generating clean power seems like such a complicated process, and I'm not really sure where to start. I'm thinking about trying a PS Audio power plant as a first step. Or maybe I should replace my main panel. Or maybe I should just chillax and enjoy the music. :)
Do you have batteies? If you don't have batteries, your power is probably utility through a contactor with some PV blended in.

If you do have a battery, I would love to hear what happens when you tell the system to island and only use battery.

Those stand alone inverters are high frequency and probably low quality. The sine wave can severely distort and flat top if you overdrive them. Be cautious with high power amps. Oversize peak power by at least 300%.
 
Rex I have a few questions.
do the panels termed micro inverter output ac or dc ?
My guess is ac so how does one use batteries to store power
my thought is it then takes some ac power to covert to dc to charge batteries ?
Then it’s one large inverter ?
I’m not sure how this works I’ve never installed any or used them
 
Do you have batteies? If you don't have batteries, your power is probably utility through a contactor with some PV blended in.

If you do have a battery, I would love to hear what happens when you tell the system to island and only use battery.

Those stand alone inverters are high frequency and probably low quality. The sine wave can severely distort and flat top if you overdrive them. Be cautious with high power amps. Oversize peak power by at least 300%.
I do not have a whole house battery system. Like Steve, I decided it was not worth the cost. I have a bunch of camping equipment including two small solar generators (EcoFlow and Growwatt) so when I do lose utility power, I can get by fine for several days. So my solar PV is feeding into the grid, and I'm drawing power from the grid. I'm not sure how the "mixing" of the electrons from two sources happens or if my added solar from the microinverters is affecting the quality of the power feeding into my electrical panel. The solar PV does increase the line voltage slightly as I described above, so it does have some effect on line voltage, if that matters.

The question I still have - is the power coming through the transformer into my panel noisier than the power I get from the pure sine wave inverters in my EcoFlow and Growatt batteries? I did not notice a difference when I ran the system on the batteries. I'm guessing the PS Audio power plants might be less noisy than EcoFLow and Growatt, but

@Steve williams - I probably don't need to power down other appliances in the house, but I can if desired to be absolutely certain that my fridge etc is not adding any noise to my wall power.
 
Rex I have a few questions.
do the panels termed micro inverter output ac or dc ?
My guess is ac so how does one use batteries to store power
my thought is it then takes some ac power to covert to dc to charge batteries ?
Then it’s one large inverter ?
I’m not sure how this works I’ve never installed any or used them
It depends on your panels' microinverters and your battery system. My SunPower panels with Enphase microinverters output AC power, so there would be some power loss if I used these panels to charge a whole house battery backup system. But I believe you can find panels that will output DC power to charge your battery more efficiently. Energy Sage is a great source of information on the different technologies that are available.
 
Steve - thanks for starting this thread. It has been five years since the last update on this thread - so there should be a much larger set of solar PV audiophile users by now?

My SunPower system with Enphase micro-inverters was installed two years ago on a detached garage with a metal roof. All of the solar control panels attach to an electric subpanel in the garage. I'm uncertain about the connection to the grid - I have a buried line that runs from the transformer and meter on the utility pole. I assume it connects to the main 200 amp panel in the house, with another buried line connection to the subpanel and solar in the garage. I assume it is all original wiring from when the house was built in 1980. I'm the last house on the power line in a very rural area - not sure it that is good or bad.

I have twenty-eight 410 watt panels, rated at 11.48 kW maximum power and estimated annual generation of 17.5 kW hours. Like Steve, my actual power generation has been about 7% higher than the estimate, probably because of more sunny days than used in the weather model for the estimate. I really like the system monitoring tools that SunPower provides. I am worried about their recent bankruptcy and how that might affect my system monitoring tools and warranty in the future. I wanted the REC Alpha panels but there was a supply problem in 2022, so I ended up with SunPower.

Neither SunPower nor my installer noticed that one panel sometimes stops producing power due to high line voltage, so I need to monitor the system myself for any issues. When I asked SunPower to check on this they said: "the system encounters high voltages ranging from 250-262V from time to time", and the panel with the most sensitive micro-inverter shuts down, which apparently decreases the line voltage enough that the other panels continue to operate. I also asked my utility company to check on this and they said "the only times the voltage gets above 250 is when the solar is producing. Otherwise, the voltage is in a normal range of 246 to 249".

Solar PV in the US is 3x more expensive compared to Australia where installation is a much simpler process. We really need to improve the US permitting and grid connection/infrastructure process to reduce the installation cost.

I'm not using any power conditioning or filters, and this is the next issue I want to investigate in my system. For "critical" listening, I can power down everything in the house except for the router/wifi. I've compared the system on wall power versus battery power using EcoFlow and GrowWatt pure sine wave solar generators and did not notice any difference in the sound quality. Maybe I have really good line power, or maybe my line power and the AC inverters in my solar generators are equally noisy. :) Or my amplifiers are not sensitive to pwer noise (Boulder 866, AGD Duets, Pass INT-25, dartZeel 108 with darTZeel preamp running on battery).

Generating clean power seems like such a complicated process, and I'm not really sure where to start. I'm thinking about trying a PS Audio power plant as a first step. Or maybe I should replace my main panel. Or maybe I should just chillax and enjoy the music. :)
Many years ago, I owned the two box Mark Levinson 32 preamplifier that took the then heroic step of generating its own clean power. First, the incoming noisy AC was converted into DC, and then the DC was converted into pure AC by a bunch of inverters, and then presumably that got converted back into DC for use in the preamp circuitry. A crazy audiophile solution, but it did lead to some impressive specifications. I think the problem is that even if you do all these shenanigans, at the end of the day, it's not clear that gives you a line stage without colorations. The 32 used a lot of sophisticated op amps that come from the field of instrumentation, and that certainly gave it a certain sheen, as I recall. Its phono stage was completely trounced by my Audio Research Reference Phono stage.

I do have one of the smaller PS Audio converters. It seems to work fine, and I've avoided going whole hog for the PS 20. For one, my massive Audio Research 750SE's require more power than even the PS 20 can provide. ARC specifically recommends against using any conditioners, and the best approach is to plug them directly into a 20 amp line (or even better, a 30 amp line if you can manage that).

I haven't get taken the jump to solar, for the very real reason is that I am not sure how long I'll be at my current address. I'd like to say forever, as we really like our little town in a wine growing area of Santa Clara Valley, away from the concrete jungle of the Bay Area. I fear that plonking down 50 grand or whatever it costs to go solar would be a premonition of sorts that the Gods would see as a sign to make me move someplace else. A colleague at work who lived in San Jose went through the trouble of rigging his whole house with solar, only to then decide they needed a bigger place and they moved south, so his renters benefit from his solar installation. As the saying goes, man proposes, God disposes.

I found this interesting pic on Wikipedia from a 16th century medallion that has this inscribed it its original Latin: Homo Proponit Deus Disponit

1733878471155.png
 
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PV panels create DC, micro-inverters (one per PV panel) convert DC to AC the same as the alternative, a single whole house inverter. Micro-inverters are fine if you never want to do local battery storage because the inversion to AC down from the PV’s would then have to be inverted (again) back to DC to charge batteries. And there’s losses every time you invert. So the strategy with micro-inverters is always to feed your home and sell back to the grid from my understanding. If you have a single whole house inverter as we do, you then have the option to divert the DC from the PV’s to charge batteries or invert it to AC to use in your home or sell back to the grid. The micro-inverters also optimize the DC coming off the PV panels. Systems with whole house inverters can add per PV panel optimizers to help do the same thing. When the current is collected from all the PV panels and summed it needs a bit of management because all the panels are not outputting the exact same amount of energy at the same moment.

I don’t have anywhere near all the answers, but I hope that helped a bit, rather than make everything or confusing.

As I’ve spoke about earlier on the number of solar threads, it appears from my experience with our home solar system from an Audiophile standpoint, that solar energizes our HiFi just fine, and a single whole house inverter seems to offers no detriment sonically that I have heard.

I recommend looking into SolArk inverters.
 
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As I posted earlier I only listen to my system when the sun is shining. I’ve done this for 5 years and in my system all my energy comes off my roof and it sounds glorious.

My understanding is inverters have gotten better since I installed my system. I have 30 panels all with micro inverters and contrary to Rex hypotheses there is no noise.

There is no need to turn anything off when I listen

All my excess is returned to the grid for a credit. I have no need for wall batteries

At the Lampi event I had at my home in early November everyone who attended was quite surprised when I told them that 100% of the power was coming off my roof and confirmed that by showing them the mobile app stats
 
@DetroitVinylRob
Very accurate synopsis.

@Steve williams
I think you read my comments backwards. I believe good inverters output better power than the grid.
 
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Many years ago, I owned the two box Mark Levinson 32 preamplifier that took the then heroic step of generating its own clean power. First, the incoming noisy AC was converted into DC, and then the DC was converted into pure AC by a bunch of inverters, and then presumably that got converted back into DC for use in the preamp circuitry. A crazy audiophile solution, but it did lead to some impressive specifications. I think the problem is that even if you do all these shenanigans, at the end of the day, it's not clear that gives you a line stage without colorations. The 32 used a lot of sophisticated op amps that come from the field of instrumentation, and that certainly gave it a certain sheen, as I recall. Its phono stage was completely trounced by my Audio Research Reference Phono stage.

I do have one of the smaller PS Audio converters. It seems to work fine, and I've avoided going whole hog for the PS 20. For one, my massive Audio Research 750SE's require more power than even the PS 20 can provide. ARC specifically recommends against using any conditioners, and the best approach is to plug them directly into a 20 amp line (or even better, a 30 amp line if you can manage that).

I haven't get taken the jump to solar, for the very real reason is that I am not sure how long I'll be at my current address. I'd like to say forever, as we really like our little town in a wine growing area of Santa Clara Valley, away from the concrete jungle of the Bay Area. I fear that plonking down 50 grand or whatever it costs to go solar would be a premonition of sorts that the Gods would see as a sign to make me move someplace else. A colleague at work who lived in San Jose went through the trouble of rigging his whole house with solar, only to then decide they needed a bigger place and they moved south, so his renters benefit from his solar installation. As the saying goes, man proposes, God disposes.

I found this interesting pic on Wikipedia from a 16th century medallion that has this inscribed it its original Latin: Homo Proponit Deus Disponit

View attachment 141254
Just a thought about power conditioning if I may be so presumptuous, are you familiar with and have you read Shunyata Research‘s Caelin Gabriel - Dynamic Instantaneous Current Delivery DTCD ideas?

https://shunyata.com/technology/

Passive power conditioning in my experience has no downside, it’s both proven to be most effective in mains noise irradiation and unlimited on current draw, and offers the added very necessary audio parameter of apparently not limiting dynamics through this DTCD implementation. This serves not only the obvious needs of not truncating your relatively huge power amp dynamics, but I find in my listening room and to my ears that it has pronounced effect on even the winkiest power consumption devices, like a solidstate DAC, a tape player, or turntable. I actually found it most noticeably to enhance my 140w mono block OTL power amplifier dynamics without causing other limits. That may sound somewhat counterintuitive but nevertheless it is clearly audible. Full disclosure: I replaced my PS regenerative gear when I heard the difference.
 
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As I posted earlier I only listen to my system when the sun is shining. I’ve done this for 5 years and in my system all my energy comes off my roof and it sounds glorious.

My understanding is inverters have gotten better since I installed my system. I have 30 panels all with micro inverters and contrary to Rex hypotheses there is no noise.

There is no need to turn anything off when I listen

All my excess is returned to the grid for a credit. I have no need for wall batteries

At the Lampi event I had at my home in early November everyone who attended was quite surprised when I told them that 100% of the power was coming off my roof and confirmed that by showing them the mobile app stats
I wonder if you don't have noise from your solar. Maybe that Schnerzinger grid protector and EMI protector is reducing its impact.

Much noise is not apparent till its gone.
 

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