Electronics & Energy ⁽⁵⁾

Notable events Mid-july, my Mazda MX-30, parked, got totaled by a Tesla driver (obstacle avoidance? go figure...). Replacement is my trusty Twizy. The twizy is not used to go for long drives and is slightly more efficient. This is a followup to the 2024 Energy Retrospective. Solar production is fairly similar to last year's. We reach 450kWh in June 26 where the maximum was 360kWh August 24. Mostly due to temperatures and intensive use of the air conditionning. The minimum monthly production during winter are now around 140kWh (up from…

Notable events May 9th, a first batch of 4 solar panel where installed on the first roof (instead of the floor) October 25th, a second batch of 4 solar panels where installed on the second roof (instead of the floor) During winter 2023-2024 I used the heatpump of the car. For 2024-2025, I stopped heating the car unless defrosting is necessary. Overall solar production Installation of the first batch of solar panel on the roof increased production drastically, as these were previously in the shade most of the day. The…

Here are the specs : Monitoring is done via Home Assistant running in a Docker container, itself running in an LXC container on Proxmox. Most sensors communicate in zigbee, including the Linky via a tiny self-powered module. To communicate with the solar inverter, a Solarman Integration via Wifi is used. The first 4x 435W string is installed on the roof, but the 6x 400W are still on the ground for now, as the hardest part is climbing on the roof with large fragile objects of 20 Kg each and not…

One of our US-48-500W died at work. Since Ubiquiti has bumped the price and shifted the range quite a lot, I decided to repair it to keep it as a spare. I first confirmed that the PSU was the culprit by powering the switch with my lab PSU. Using a meanwell PSU (RD-125-2448) providing both 24V and 48V rails ,we don't reach the original 500W of PoE power, but that's still enough for our needs (some phones, cameras, and access points). I didn't put much efforts into PSU placement in…

Summer 2023, I finaly decided to equip our house with a heat pump. When we first renovated it in 2016, this didn't fit in our budget but I always dreamt of having a heat pump (who doesn't?). Bellow are my calculation and considerations. Plus some conclusions and retrospective data once the installation was completed. It is a 3 story house built in 1947, all joined by open stairwells without doors. The first level is partially underground. It has been renovated to French standard RT2012 in 2016. If you aren't unfamiliar with…