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Thread: Smart electrics ... solar and inverters

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    Smart electrics ... solar and inverters

    Tarrifs at the end of the day is what drives everything ... well in SA ... load shedding seems to make people move into silly spending sprees because of bad planning ... Hence the suddenl price hikes ... controlled by supply and demand

    Something I found very interesting while trolling the web.

    As we are all aware ... electricians are sort of "forced" into installing backup system which cannot cope with the total load ... so what happens ... the power drops and either the generator stalls or the inverter consumes the power in the batteries in a short period of time ... sometimes damaging the batteries or the inverter cuts out due to overload.

    We have all heard the same story ... "I will spwitch off the geyser ... kettle ... tumble drier ... toaster ... microwave etc etc etc" if the power switches off.

    How cool would it be if the system in your house of building was smart enough to controll via and app ... so you want to boil the kettle ... however the fridge and deep freeze are running ... but its a cool winters day ... so you dont need the fridge to run 24/7 ... just imagine how cool it would be if you could switch the load from the fridge freezer to the kettle by the swipe of a tab on your tablet mounted on the wall or your smart phone ... once the kettle boils ... it switches back to the fridge freezer ... or lets say you are in the lounge with the aircon running ...but decide it time to go to bed ... however the house is wired essential or non essential ... and your bedroom or lounge is non essential ... by using a smart system ... you wouldnt need essential and non essential loads ... but rather move the load to other circuits.


    I need to shut down my electrical bussiness (my 30 year goal is complete) find someone with money to invest and start a new exciting venture ... making smart homes complete with backup systems which dont rely on eeeeishkom ... and are super energy efficient.


    From load profiles I have done in houses ... 5-15 amps is about the average power consumed ... people have got smart and moved to gas stoves and geysers ... lighting is now LED
    with many varients of colour (warm... daylight and cool white and many in between) ...which has reduced the total load requirement from 60 amps as supplied back in the old days.

    The reality ... its time to get smart.
    Comments are based on opinion...not always facts....that's why people use an alias.

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    Justloadit (28-Mar-21)

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    Diamond Member Justloadit's Avatar
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    Hi Ians,

    If I was a 20 year old and a little electronics knowledge, I would dive into IOL - Internet Of Things
    The whole world is going to revolve around this. If you can master WiFi, web page hosting, and some simple micro controllers then you will be well on your way to success.

    The place to start maybe here Build a Home Automation System
    Start with the simple projects, and then make the system as a complete unit.
    Victor - Knowledge is a blessing or a curse, your current circumstances make you decide!
    Solar pumping, Solar Geyser & Solar Security lighting solutions - www.microsolve.co.za

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    Cut a long story short ... I have no choice ... customers want smarter compliant homes ... with high tech security ... lighting and CCTV ... Led lights adjustable to suit their mood ... backup systems which can be remotely controlled and adjusted as required ... depending on the location in the home ... reduced energy bills.

    It can all be achieved and some ... with the right team.
    Comments are based on opinion...not always facts....that's why people use an alias.

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    The biggest issue with this stuff at the moment is that it all passes through servers like Google / Amazon / China or whatever. The ideal is to have a local (household) network with a firewalled switch into the net.

    Now, a friend of mine who happens to be an electronics engineer has developed a Queue Control System using LoRa on Raspberry PI. When he showed me the system about a week ago I had the exact same thought as IAN in that if he were to adapt his LoRa network for the home automation market he would really be onto a good thing. We didn't speak a lot about home automation per se but we did speak about the issues related to alarm systems. ET transmitters and receivers have the entire market but they are a total pain. The current versions are an absolute pain to use because their interfaces are cryptic. Another issue with the ET system is that there is no feedback. I want a positive feedback that tells me on my remote that the receiver has turned the light on or off - this feedback does not exist at the moment.

    Him and his friend (who happens to be wealthy) have a new innovative electronics design / product business here in Cape Town and I wonder whether there would be synergy between IAN and them. With their IT / marketing and electronics skills and IAN's electrical knowledge the three of you could make a great team.

    I've done lots of electronic assembly work for him in the past. He would come to me with 5 pc boards to go in a box and I would design the laser cut / cast / 3D printed or whatever brackets to keep everything together. I would then assemble and wire the boxes. I did the button boxes for the Q control system last week and we did 40x Raspberry Pi based systems a while back. He also developed and manages a large national network of Raspberry PI IOT devices - I'm not going to go into the specifics of the market. The remote devices are extremely smart, they communicate realtime with the network via the cell network - the continually report their statuses and have fail safes built in to restart themselves if the lose comms. The guy is a Python / C genius.

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    Diamond Member Justloadit's Avatar
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    There is a fantastic low cost WiFi device called ESP8266 .
    Using the WiFi network and a bit of programming you can have control and feedback of your action from anywhere that has a internet connection.
    Victor - Knowledge is a blessing or a curse, your current circumstances make you decide!
    Solar pumping, Solar Geyser & Solar Security lighting solutions - www.microsolve.co.za

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    I know the device - they are really great. I think they went with LoRa for the range.

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