Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

  • Hacker News
  • How much of this is human-created?
  • I would definitely burn the house down.
  • $5000 for the solar panel system, but how much is the roof to put them on?
    by M95D
  • please disclose when you automatically attach referral codes/referrers to your links... I know you mention one explicitly in the page, but clicking on the ecodirect link redirects and inserts your blog as a referrer in the GET params without disclaiming.
  • I would highly recommend https://diysolarforum.com/ and Will Prowse on YouTube. Thats how I made my solar/battery system. And it passed city inspection.
  • A whole Solar System for just $5000? Is Pluto included?
  • No, the fine print says: “Planets only. Minor planets and planetoids are not included but can be added for additional charge.”
  • It sounds reasonable to me. I priced out a DIY setup when I bought my house a few months ago, and I came up with ~$6000. I priced new panels and what I would consider more reliable batteries which accounts for the cost difference.
  • No, they moved that to a subscription model. It costs more in the long run, but you immediately gain access to all the latest dwarf planets as they are discovered.
  • This is freqently, dangerously, wrong- and is missing critical information.

    I saw no discussion of: * C rate * fuse selection * inverter precharge (capacitive loads) * cell level monitoring not all batteries are series compatible. * fail modes

    But, in a sentence: No more than 100Ah and 12v for your first build.

    Theres a million more things- like terminal preperation, torque specs, fire precations.

  • And some AI will probably come along and scrape that.

    I didn't see the specifics of the problems but I had a very strong feeling that there's no planning for safe failure.

  • Mostly missed a proper discussion of grouping batteries (parallel & series). Battery University has this page on the basics:

    https://www.batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-302-series-and-...

    Also, physical safety could do with more discussion. How to prevent random falling objects from short-circuiting terminals (battery boxes & co!), what happens when wires are pulled on, where to locate batteries in/next to a building, etc.

    Also: article focusses on the energy-independence aspect. But starts with the emergency-backup aspect. These are 2 different scenarios with very different requirements! (although the described setup would surely cover their emergency case)

    Still: imho a decent read on considerations for a DIY solar setup.

  • They way that site automatically updates the hash, makes it super annoying to use the back button. Every section on the site changes it. User hostile.
  • Especially as browser History API allows you to change the hash without making new history entries.