The Quarky Engineer

Thanks to Eric, I now own a tractor. I also own a horse. I’m not sure where this is going. What is next?

I got the Enphase battery system finally up and running. I can configure it in a few different ways. The default setup is to take extra power from solar generation (during the day) and store that in the batteries and use it at night to power the house. You can configure how far down you want to let the batteries go in that scenario.

You can use the batteries for time of use offsets if you have variable time of day billing. If power is more expensive in the middle of the day but cheaper at night you can have the batteries charge at night and provide power during the day.

You can also configure them for emergency backup, and have them stay at 100% charge in case the power goes out. If there is a severe weather alert they automatically switch to backup mode until the event passes.

Lastly, and perhaps the most valuable, is the ability to integrate with a generator so when you are off-grid you can have the generator auto start and stop based on the battery level, which significantly extends the generator/battery lifecycle.

I tested the grid failure mode and it is very fast. I could not detect the switchover, and my inline conversion UPS did not trip during the transition. Good engineering on that part to go from Grid-NoGrid-Grid including synchronization without a hitch.

The trees along the driveway have a nice color today. I suspect the wind this evening will remove a lot of leaves from the trees.

New wheels for the Plaid. Meat!

Battery Install is complete (the hardware). Software config and commissioning next.

I have been working on my gate connectivity this last week. I have 4 conduits that go from the house to the gate, and they all go through 2 patch point along the way (they come up out of the ground). The first patch point is about 150ft from the house, the second is another 350ft, and the final leg to the gate is another 420ft. I have a 1000ft spool of 12x Single-Mode fiber in a shielded and armored buried cable that I need to pull, but that requires a few people to co-ordinate at each patch location.

Since I have plenty of conduit, I decided to enlist Eric Rosenberry to help me quickly pull a single CAT6A shielded cable. Given the distance, I would need some type of inline repeater to extend gigabit ethernet. I got a pair of POE powered inline repeaters that take POE in and push POE out, as well as act as a gig ethernet switch. With a POE switch at the house side I used the repeater at the first patch box, which is 150ft away, and that worked great. The repeater worked and the connection at the second junction box (another 350ft) worked. I tried to use another of the same POE repeaters at the second location, but it wasn’t able to get enough power to work over that long of a POE cable… and that remaining distance (420ft) is beyond the official gigabit ethernet spec. Since I had AC power at the mid location I installed a standard AC powered switch and to my surprise that worked fine even at that extended distance. I now have a wired gig ethernet connection to the gate to replace the 600-800mbit Nanobeam wireless link.

While Eric and I were pulling this CAT6A cable I decided to toss into the mix a cheap Amazon single mode preterminated fiber cable from. I got three cables, one 150ft, one 350ft, and one 425ft. All three were LC terminated, and using the 2mm supercheap casing. I taped the fiber to the end of the CAT6A while we were pulling, and at each junction location I used a small LC-to-LC adapter to connect to the next fiber. Given this kind of patch fiber is not intended to be pulled that far, both Eric and I expected it would get damaged or stretched along the way. The amount fo force for the last 420ft pull was pretty substantial, perhaps 100lbs or so. I was surprised to see that after I got an optic and a small SFP+ switch at the gate end I was able to negotiate and test a 10g connection back to the house. It worked great, no loss, and plenty of dBm. So 10G to the gate it is!

I will still pull the bigger permanent 12x single mode fiber with proper terminations, but it is nice to have a few backup options as well.

These Tesla’s pretty much all look the same, and I’m not usually a red car person… But this color does look snazzy after a little washup. Some new wheels and some tint will help for sure.