I am like, so ready for whole house water cooling. I'm sure you would have taken this route with the new house either way, but I'm glad you never gave up on the dream after all these years!
@@delightfulgenius4635 It's a runniggag. Previously Luke was his "Boyfriend". Now, since Jake spended so much time planning and supporting Linuses Houseupgrades and Serverstuff, Jake is his Wifes Husbands Boyfriend.
@@dazley8021 I’m assuming because he’s already on the payroll why not assign someone to help manage and plan such a huge project. Also they are making videos so it doubles as content for the channel so he’s still technically doing normal work for the channel in a sense
I love it how the solar guys, the people who do this for a living, EVERYDAY!!!is wearing harness and Linus is just up there with no concern for safety whatsoever. Linus is probably the greatest asset and the biggest liability to the company. Perfectly balanced as all things should be.
One time we were going through an L&I audit or something and the big boss walked out of the office, jumped on a four wheeler, and sped off through the yard at like 30 mph and peeled off down the road wide open throttle grabbing gears with no helmet. To us, that's just normal stuff, but the inspector just shook his head and scribbled some notes on his clipboard. I think the business actually got dinged for that.
4:43 I love it when a company is willing to spend the time to talk to you and give you advice even if they know they aren't going to be making money off of you.
that's how public relations works. in the end it all goes back to money. Conversating with a customer is virtually free and leaves a good impression on the customer.
I would say they will make money off of talking to Linus for sure. If I buy anything I always consider what Linus has purchased for his family. I'm sure bang for buck is considered but he generally gets the best stuff.
I have recorded data every minute from my solar panels into a MySQL database since 2012. Even here in Scandinavia I can see that they produce more electricity a cold May day than a hot July. I might get 5200w in peak early summer late spring but the heat sometimes limits them to 3800w if we have a heat wave. At a local trace school, they tested watercooled panels. (Think it was 5-10 years ago they tested) and they did get 20% more energy by cooling the panels. I did a few videos on my installation
This is an awesome example of what Linus was talking about during the WAN show. The contractors literally let him crawl up on their work space, offered to open up equipment, and handle the panels and all. That's what makes good content!
@@Ragnorok64 Harness and training is something Linus should look in to anyways. Not sure if you watch the WAN show, but the topic of doing a video on data centers came up, and the amount of access they NEED to make an interesting video came up in discussion.
The automation aspect from solar is great, you can set thresholds where if you’re not producing enough power you can turn off/down the AC, your pool pump for a time, turn off lights that we’re left on even decrease the charge rate on your electric car. It really comes into play when you way to be truly off grid and try to balance generation, charge and use.
Couldn't agree more! On the other hand you can potentially automate things like starting a washing maching when you are producing enough. I'm excited to see the potential that can be unlocked by this data.
@@dontaskdonttell6147 That's cool. Do you know what solution there is if it's winter for example so you don't produce enough for multiple days and it never starts automatically?
@@ghosthunter0950 Turn it on manually. But in all seriousness, you can have rules to run the machine on a different schedule in the winter, or have if run overnight if it hasn't run for an amount of time. It might be a bit of a niche requirement, because I suspect most people aren't going to want their smelly clothes sitting around unwashed until the sun comes out, but if someone wants to automate that, they could.
Yes they had and how they've used it, it would have done nothing in case of a fall. I'm quite shocked how badly they were secured. I am a rope technician in Germany and I've never seen worse protection against fall.
@@Studio23Media WTF that’s not how that works 😂. Those contractors have their own insurance in case they get hurt, it doesn’t fall on Linus. Some people won’t even hire you if you don’t have workers insurance
true. i would still pick only one top tier inverter. so there is only one piece that could break up that is easily exchanged. and with dust, when you hook up the pressure washer normally you rinse all panels at the same time. but I sacrifice some energy when transferring e in DC. would like to hear how much that system cost to calculate break even time. even linus overestimated IRL solar output. happens to everyone.
Tradies love to joke with each other like this all the time. Sparkies always see plumbers as the "dumber" trade and it's always seen as light hearted banter
Question - is this Linus's dream home? Is there anything he hasn't done that he would have wanted to (that was realistic?). I love these vids. So cool to see this stuff
For Home Assistant instead of controlling them on or off, you would want to use that information to control other devices depending on output, such as turning off devices when you have less power, or you can have the lights turn on when the outside luminosity goes down.
I wrote a script that used the output of my inverter to enable mining on my and the wife's PC only when the solar output was high enough support it without drawing from the grid.
Yes that’s correct. In this case irrelevant while the utility continues to pay out at the same rate as it charges. As grid stability becomes more of an issue they will incentivise this behaviour and it will be worthwhile.
Hey Linus, you might want to use a Water to coolant heat exchanger that can be added to your AC outdoor-unit. This allows you to heat the pool with excess heat that would normally get blasted into the atmosphere in the summer in addition to the solar panels which in my experience (live in Germany and have a medium sized pool myself) can lack a bit in heating power
That's pretty damn cool tech. I would guess the small efficiency loss from adding glycol and antifreeze and using a heat-exchanger would be totally worth it. You should be able to divert the flow to a heat pump so that you can heat your house 3-5 times more efficiently compared to traditional gas or electric heating. You can even get heat-pump based water heaters and clothes dryers. You could cut your energy consumption from heating your house, heating water, and drying your clothes by a factor of ~4!
@@DerXavia That's why it would need a heat exchanger. So you have a glycol loop going from the roof to the heat exchanger, and a pool water loop going from the pool to the heat exchanger. That's the simple version. If you have a variable refrigerant flow heat pump then you can have multiple places to send and receive heat from. So, pool, roof, domestic hot water, home heating (and cooling, actually - at night when you aren't getting solar electricity you can use rooftop panels to radiate heat more efficiently than dumping it into the air, depending on your setup. You can also heat your pool with heat from inside the house, which cools the house). Depending on your heating and cooling needs, you can also use large thermal masses, like a pool, or if it's really cold and you need to drain the pool, an insulated vessel with water or some other material, perhaps buried so you don't lose surface utility, as thermal storage for load shifting. So you could put heat into it when the sun is up and you have more available power, and draw it out at night for your home heating. Even a 2 metre cube of water can store 308 kWh (~ 1.051 million BTU) of heat through a 33°C (~60°F) temperature change, which is quite a lot of buffer range for a home system (assuming that you aren't doing, like driveway snowmelting or something, that takes a lot of heat).
I used to work in Health & Safety for a construction firm which works at height. (I was also the IT guy there for ages before and when the previous guy retired I got 'promoted', so had to do both; it didn't end well) The safety of Linus (and the contractors, to be fair) on the roof looked muchos dodgy. Muchos muchos dodgy. You're meant to be clipped via safety harness/lanyard to a fixed point at all times and he/they just.... weren't. Glad it went OK though. :)
@@danieljones9937 Yeah, despite seemingly low height, fall from such roof can still be fatal if you land wrong and possibly break your neck/spine/fracture the skull. I have heard stories about people who died exact this way. Well, even if you don't die from the fall the 27kg panel falling on top of you as a bonus might finish you off.
Having hass talk to each inverter is actually amazing, yes you won’t control the inverter with hass, but you are missing the main point of hass, having other automations key off other devices. Like when your solar output is at max, turn down the ac to help cool the house then taper off as the output drops, or having that data and pulling into something like grafana to dashboard and log your solar generation and compare to what the energy company says so you can call them on their bs
But why would you need a connection to each individual inverter? Total output is all you need for that. It only would be handy to see wether an individual panel is grossly underperforming and even that should be monitored via the box connecting them all.
@@Henk14789 there’s a comment by a Rolf Smit earlier which which I believe explains your query. In summary, if you have one inverter for all panels, your whole solar panel array is limited by the worst performing panel of the bunch. By having an inverter for each panel, each panel performs independently of other panels and insnt limited by another panel which may not be getting direct sunlight.
At the very start of the video when they were talking about water cooling for the house. My first thought was, Of course Linus would use watercooling for his house. He's probably gonna overclock the Furnace thermostats or something.
The home assistant coupling is extremely useful to turn on high power appliances, like the car charger, automatically. This is important when the 1 to 1 ratio of buying from and selling to the grid is dropped by regulations and when there is too much solar power delivered to the grid, which cant be used in your area, the voltage runs to high, causing your inverter to shut down for over voltage protection. With home assistant you can make sure to use the power instead.
there 100% is a DC regulator to prevent over voltage. even if you have power available it doesnt mean that it will just build up or sometin. higher voltage is something they thought about when the input changes randomly dependent on the weather and stuff. it should also kick in when there is enough voltage available and coexist with your wired-in electricity from transmission lines (some thingy thats lining up their AC with city power AC so they dont short each other)
@@pain2737 There is AC over voltage risk if too many people supply to the grid. The grid is not designed for large scale solar production in domestic areas. If many people supply to the grid instead of consuming from the grid the current gets to high which causes the voltage to rise. The over voltage protection will then shut down the transformer if it exceeds a certain limit and kick on ones the voltage drops below again, which basically is wasting energy. In the Netherlands this is a very common issue and, knowing the poor grid quality in Northern America, it wil likely also occur there at some point.
@@pain2737 Consider the local distributor, which is rated to supply (arbitrary chosen) 1000A to the connected households, what do you think if all in a sudden the neighborhood, which normally can consume a maximum of a 1000A now instead supplies 1100A? This causes the voltage to rise in the local distributor and hence, anywhere this grid line is connected to, aka the solar transformers. This causes over voltage protection to kick in within the transformer.
i would like to see a part 2 of this system when its fully functioning, particularly on the power production side, the water cooled vs the non water cooled panels on a sunny day.
Yeah, you'd definitely lose efficiency, but if you wanted a heated pool, I'd just hook it up to a resistive heater or something. Less efficiency, but also no hassle and means the house isn't losing efficiency in the winter
@@isaackvasager9957 I can't tell if you're joking, but you know you don't have to dump liquids directly into something, right? You can conduct heat just via contact for example a coil of copper tube which sits inside the filter.
@@vgamesx1 gotcha, that's a fair point. It was clear from the video that Linus plans to run the chlorinated water through the system directly...hence my reply.
Home Assistant both has an amazing Energy dashboard, but you also may want to do automations not to turn the solar on or off, but rather turning other stuff on or off based on solar output. E.g. if you are exporting excess energy to the grid, maybe make your airconditioning work a little harder as one example. I've actually got a dishwasher with wifi, so I could trigger it to start once enough solar power is available for it.
Exactly that is the beauty of home assistant all devices talk to it so it so all of your smart devices are just one big integrated system. You can control one device based off the data of another device. That said in Linus' situation is probably doesn't really matter with solar because he gets a 1:1 ratio net metering so there isn't really a intensive for him to use all of his solar power vs just selling it back to the grid and then buying the power back later. But for many people who don't have a 1:1 ratio or are running totally off grid it would beneficial to use as much of you solar power vs selling it back or throwing it away in the case of a off grid system. So charging an EV, or turning on the HVAC system are really easy things to throw power at.
The way the solar panel installer carries the panel up the ladder reminds me of my days of installing windows. That's how we sometimes had to carry glass panels, windows or sliding doors up to hard to reach spots.
NGL, Linus' house is basically exactly how I want to have my house laid out when I have one - hydronic heating, proper APs in every zone, fully sealed theater room, solar panels, and cameras everywhere.
Some info on per panel converters vs a converter for the whole array: - Per panel converters are more efficient because in setups with just one converter for all the panels, the worst performing panel will cause all other panels be limited by that performance. This can be very common is places where during the day panels can be overcast with shadow, while other panels might not be in the shadow. Therefore it is very common to see per panel converters in those situations. However if the amount of sun is almost equal across the day for all of the panels, a single converter is often way more economical. - Almost all combined converters can be connected to Home Assistant, not just per panel converters. - It is quite common to have converters that work with so called "strings" (arrays) of panels. Where a single converter can handle two sets of about 6 panels (sometimes 4 sets), this allows to combine the panels according to their estimated performance, making this more efficient without having to use per panel converters, and thus extremely economical.
I'm really surprised about those converters. Never heard about them. Always had the idea of the difficulty on sync multiple generators on the general electric distribution system, but meanwhile i suppose it got a lot easier on small scales with modern electronics. Maybe something like radio telescopes. The signal amplifiers became so “cheap” that now it's more economical to build an array of small telescopes than a big one. In the past, they had to go big because of the electronic equipment price.
@@xiro6 syncing of these micro inverters is only done when they are connected to the grid. Grid tie inverters have what is called islanding, where they don't turn on unless they see grid power first and when the grid goes down they shut down. It is a safety device for lineman when working on the system so they don't get electrocuted. The down fall is that they will not work for a stand alone system. So when you have a stand alone system you have to have different style inverters installed.
This is all true, but it's important to make a distinction between per-panel converters and per-panel inverters. Which, someone else should do, because I'm just learning solar myself, but I know the distinction is important and is something you have to decide when building a system.
Solar panels, whether normal ones or these water-cooled ones, are not mounted directly against the roofing material; there is a gap of a couple inches left, and wind can blow through there. So, in practice, putting any solar panels on the roof will make the attic more temperate, but the water cooling won't make it better by much.
My parents had solar heating (DYI) for their pool in San Fernando valley, Cal. The irony of that; during the summer there, heating the pool is really not needed. During winter no one wanted to use the pool when the solar heat would pay dividends. You do the math.
Epic games lacks so many features and brand recognition, that they have to show a competitors functional store in order to market the game (despite buying exclusive rights to the game no doubt)
I'd like to recommend finding a 'safe' area to do the specific outdoor-sy sections where jake was talking; the blurred background was honestly an eyesore. Even having the background in that exchange being the siding of the house would have worked out better IMO
Idiots, like there's no 2 trees alike. "I've seen that tree before and I know exactly where his house is". Want to know where he lives? Just follow him home.
I've got regular panels and yeah, on a really hot 40 degree summer day you can really see the system output degrade a bit. Really looking forward to see how effective the water cooling is. I'm liking this video topic aspect of energy systems / water cooling crossover.
Can we get a followup on this now the water's hooked up? will be great to see just how much 'heat' you're getting out of this thing. I'm currently planning a dual panel like this - predominantly due to lack of roof space for seperate pool heating and PV!
I just got solar installed on my home and it's pretty cool seeing your power independence. My home only uses typically between 1.4-1.6kWh of power and my panels produce nearly double. Kinda wish I could have gotten the water cooled ones though, those look freaking sick.
Get panel insurance man because when one panel goes wrong and needs replacing, the cost will negate every penny it will ever make in it's working life time. Then ideally, in future switch over to a better solution and retask your panels for something more efficient than general power. The problems are the carbon footprint on these things is huge, the efficiency drop off is rapid, and the operating costs are stellar. I hope you avoid these problems though I expect within a year or two you will get the same things I have here. Flimsy little bastards barely function now lol.
@@DailyCorvid carbon footprint is high, but not excessive. IPCC says it's about 50g/kWh. And wind turbine is around 12g, so is a nuclear power plant, and regarding hydro stations, it's about 19g (although the last one is very variable, as the trees you are flooding on might generate methane. Regarding nuclear power plants, it can go even lower then 12g (4g in France), as your uranium fuel production which is done by electricity, uses very low emission electricity. Anyway, even a 52g, solar is still very low compared to the 800-1000g for coal, and 400g for gas :)
@@glujaz The main issue I see with them is all the trash they create when they have to be decommissioned. They recycle a big part of the panels, but not everything. And the inverters eventually end up dying too, so that's more tech trash. If you have lithium batteries it's even worse as you have to change them every 10 years or so, and they are mostly not recycled at all for now. I believe that in the future solar energy will become cleaner, but for now it's still pretty dirty. It's only environmentally worth it if you live in a country that mostly uses coal or fuel for its electricity. If you live in Canada where 90% of the electricity is hydroelectric and the kWh is very cheap, I really don't see the point. Especially when you'll have your roof full of snow, your sky full of clouds and your days very short half the year (and, ironically, winter time is when you need the most electricity). 1.2 Kw for this entire installation is honestly garbage. Yes, it was not a sunny day, but it is what you'll get most of the time of the year. This barely powers a heater.
@@zephirus4483 My thoughts exactly. Outside of it being a cool tech feature, this doesn't make that much sense for his use case. As is typical with these sorts of videos, they only ever highlight the benefits and ignore the real downsides. It's going to take years and years for him to actually offset his carbon emissions from the production and installation of the panels. The panels aren't fully recycleable and create toxic waste when they're decommissioned. The carbon footprint of dealing with that waste is never accounted for and is somewhat unknown. Especially since he lives so far north, in Canada, and in such a rarely sunny environment, it is entirely possible that he'll never offset the emmissions from creating and then maintaining the panels. The cost saving aspect is really lon-term as well. An installation like that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. If you're selling back less than a dollar on average a day to the grid, it may take a decade or more for them to pay for themselves, before you even consider the cost of the maintenance. I really wish they would have adressed this in the video. But since it was sponsored by green tech, they probably couldn't. At least in the future i'd like to see them actually take a look at what the actual expected numbers will really be to know if this was a net positive or a net negative for the environment and for his wallet.
5:14 One thing that comes to mind for automation would be controlling your AC according to the current energy production. No sun? Turn off the AC automatically to save power, since you don't need it anyways. Also, (not finished with the video and not sure, if the cooling part is reversible) with some preparation you could deduct from the incoming data, if there's snow on the panels and reverse the heatpump for an automatic de-ice cycle...
Imagine hooking this system up to a heat pump. You could theoretically heat and cool everything in the house that needs to be heated or cooled just by exchanging heat with your giant water cooling loop. Pull heat out of your freezer and use it to heat your pool, or pull heat out of your solar panels and use it to heat your house. Imagine the efficiency!
Happy you went solar and shared it with your viewers Linus. It may convince some of them to follow you. I have had panels for 5 years and they are awesome.
0:53 they are actually pretty easy to build yourself too, also helps keep the cells cooler so they last a little longer. Cells now are getting around 22% efficiency and if you have money to burn like Linus there are technically even more efficient cells.
@@mikelisteral7863 compared to a less complicated but otherwise identical system, sure. Of course, all That does is recommend against unnecessary 'internet of things' nonsense. It's hard to get simpler than 'water pipe from where the heat is to where you want hot water' in terms of energy transfer. And when you're doing that anyway, may as well take the heat from somewhere you don't want it... such as, say, your Solar Panels... which cools them... upping their efficiency. And, as a counter point: the more modular something is, the less of it needs to be tossed and replaced when some part of it fails, significantly Reducing waste. And that's far from the only factors involved either, and they all have to be balanced against each other.
Would recommend keeping 2 panels for Inverter Battery connection so if there is blackout you can still work during night time . During Blackoutd direct Run from Solar during Day and same time charge the battery and at night use the battery power for Lights Fans and Sockets for Mobile Charging.
You'd want to scale loads with peak production. Start a washing cycle when the sun's out, heat or cool the house while it's free. That's why the data is important.
If he was completely off the grid, then yes, but since it gets sold back at the same rate he buys it then it's not an issue. In a sense the city grid is acting like a battery, maybe not physically but monetarily.
@@crazycarl509 if they have net billing in Canada, they won’t in a few years. The model doesn’t check out. Transport costs money and just dumping during the day isn’t sustainable.
@@--_DJ_-- of course you do! You can let the house get a few degrees warmer or colder, especially when you’re not there. Why not make the house 24 degrees when the sun is out, so it’s 22 when you get home and 17 when you go to bed (shit insulation but you get the idea).
Im in in solar industry, these panels will leak and hopefully the roof work is proper because it may cause leaks on the standoff penetrations. Also Enphase microinverters have a ton of line noise issues. The installed an Envoy S which should have been an Envoy Combiner box to resolve the line noise issues. They may need to install a in line noise filter which is 500$ just for the piece.
And you forgot a smol side of the dc and ac side of the inverters. Ac side to the supply hub should be a short cable, while the dc should be long, maybe high gage duo to no parasitic resistances like capacitiv or inductive, wich are experience in ac
Good on the guys for using FallPro properly. What I would have liked to have seen is a temporary roof edge clamp to secure the ladder in place at the top. I would also recommend they use a 'kicker rope' about 1/3 of the way up. The rope can be attached to anything handy and strong on the building or even to an anchor in the soil. These ladder safety features are even more important as they have a worker carrying a weight greater than 20kg (greater than the weight of an 18 liter water bottle). When carrying something like a bag of cement powder no one cares if you drop it. When carrying objects of great value workers tend to 'sacrifice themselves' to save the item.
I install solar for a living this definitely piqued my interest. The way the installer carried it up is the most common technique. My only criticism from the installers is it appears they started installing the modules from the top and made their way down. Typically you'd start from the bottom up that way you can set the upper row on the bottom row and ensure they are lined up and it just makes the install a whole lot easier. I'm surprised they didn't go with the enphase combiner box. It's essentially a sub panel with the envoy installed in it. It's great for applications where there isn't much room in the existing (MSP) and when there won't be a (MSP) main service panel upgrade. Either option is ok but in California with enphase systems you would typically do the combiner box and hang it up on a outside wall for fire department access. For the times we do install it in a garage we would run a shut off switch on a outside wall for it. It definitely varies city to city, they all have their own rules and regulations and code you have to meet
@@Rentorock Because "Pique" is a French word that the English took for some reason. Though it means something completely different in French, in the familiar language, you could say something like it's the action of "taking" something... Piqued my interest could mean you've got my interest, as in you "took" it, so I guess the Englishman of the time decided on that definition for that word.
having them attached to home automation would be amazing for me! we have lower feed in pay than the cost of electricity here. So being able to turn extra loads on when the sun is strong and back off when there is no sun automatically would be lifechanging!
@@darugdawg2453 Or to insulate yourself from grid price fluctuations. Here in Texas, we have less regulated power pricing than most places, and one upshot of the Feb. 2021 frozen grid disaster (unregulated power producers don't want to "waste" money on weather proofing, so shut down and just about crashed the entire grid) is spiking power costs, this year.
its nice to see a youtuber showing a house without saying the words *i bought this but i don't know what it is* or *i have one of these in my house but i'll probably never use it* or *i have this really expensive thing/art/furniture that i'll likely never use and don't really like but ya know....money!!!* its really refreshing.
Floridian here. Yes, black plastic "tubes" or a sheet of square tubes like you have are very common for solar heating. DIY solar water heating usually involves just using black garden hoses on a wooden frame painted black. We don't have much need for house heating down here.
Amazing how high the potential for Linus oopses here, and yet he lived through the whole thing and managed not to drop anything crazy expensive. Well done, sir!
Linus, thank you so much for investigating this! Hopefully, next week you'll look into a geothermal spa for your personal imax theatre. I've been really stuck on how to do it at my house.
@7:06 they're completely off on the temperature effects on efficiency. The 20% advertised is the peak efficiency, with heat losses reducing that. Cooling the panels minimizes loss and just gets you closer to the rated 20%. You cannot pass their peak efficiency rating.
Maybe the efficiency is not the right way to word it but you certainly increase voltage with decrease of temperature. That is why every panel has a temp coefficient rating to do your engineering calculations.
You mean just holding the rope isn't proper fall protection? :) Even one of the shots of the roofer the gentleman isn't properly tied off, he has way too much slack in his rope. Way to demonstrate proper safety LTT
Some home automation ideas: - dim lights and cut certain appliances to further reduce your dependance on the grid - have a real-time idea of how overcast or dark outside it is to adjust lighting scenes to reflect what is happening outside
@@darugdawg2453 Not in a house that size; many small cuts can add up. Also I was referring to aesthetics as well. I automate my lights from the moment I wake, to when I leave, depending on what time of day, and sometimes the activity. These small things make me happy.
I can see the home assistant automation being useful if you want certain things running when there is power to spare. Got solar panels at my place so I aim to run renders or my 3d printers middle of the day,
tbh I didnt like the extra aggregious blurring; hopefully they'll be better about their backing next time they have to shoot an off the cuff outdoors shot. May have looked better if it was done better to make it look more like a depth of field, but the blur was just a small bounding box that Jake kept escaping during that segment.
I noticed this as well. They really are not taking any chances in regards to security, and keeping the location of his house unknown to viewers. Sometimes I find it a bit annoying, esp if they are filming outside and everything but the person is blurred (idk why they didn't just shoot that somewhere else, but I'm not the production manager so I'm not one to criticize haha), but I totally understand the necessity and practicality of doing just that. Nobody wants to get doxxed at best, or burglarized or kidnapped at worst. I'm glad they have figured out a way to still do this content while keeping security a top priority 🙂
There are other considerations to putting inverters on each panel. One consideration is that it allows you to keep each panel at its Maximum Power Point (MPP), which the inverter can do by changing the "impedance" that the AC side sees the panel at. This is known as Maximum Power Point Tracking (MMPT). Basically, it allows you to keep maximum efficiency even if some panels in the rows are obstructed. It also can simplify distribution and connection to your home AC. There were a few other considerations that large solar installations have to consider, but I don't remember everything from my EE class. Placing inverters on each individual panel is more expensive as compared to some DC schemes, and it may not always be necessary, given the right environment.
Next time you need solar equipment for a project make sure to call Signature Solar. We’re based in Texas, from call in tech support to bench techs for ship in repairs. And great set-up, although I think you might like the ui of the Aptos micro inverters more. Just something to think about for future builds!
Would love to see a follow-up to this in a few months when the system is fully operational and you get some summer days. This would be cool if you end up close to grid-independent. Also would love to see how you track on RoI in the coming months.
Then you need tons of batteries to store energy to get you through the nights. I don't think there are good providers other than Tesla but Tesla's powerwalls probably aren't very compatible with solar from other companies.
The energy we use in British Columbia, the province (state if you like) we both live in, is hydro and already clean renewable. (Almost entirely, I say that because ocasionally we buy energy from out of province and the entire grid is connected across many states and provinces so dirty and clean power is actually rather mixed) I don't want to sh*t on it entirely or anything. But he not contributing clean energy to a dirty grid, is all
@@Sir.Craze- The whole point of the grid is that the power doesn't stay just in one region. So even just by generating his own power he's already contributing because it decreases the grid's dependency on dirty sources. Which is also kind of a bandaid for increasing power consumption - giving individual buildings their own power generation slows down the increasing demand on the grid.
@@CanIHasThisName ya, like I said in my second sentence. I'm saying morally he's not really in much a better place then he would have been knowing that his entire province is already producing a vast, vast majority of clean energy. The amount he's feeding back in is nominal compared to the system, so I don't really feel that factors. But, I'm not against solar or clean energy. It's good he's getting the word out there, I guess. This isn't something most anyone can aford. But still I'll give him credit. et's just not give ourselves so hard a slap on the back we hurt ourselves and can't keep moving forward
Did you see how crooked those roof mounts are? Looks like a perfect place for water to get in. I sure hope they seal with something more than hope it doesn't rain.
My buddy used black metal pipes on his garage to heat the water for his pool when he moved in like 12 years ago. Takes that idea to the next step, love it!
The different amount of options when it comes to automating and modernizing your home makes my head spin. I just hope if I ever have the money for such a house, I also have the money to make it somebody else's problem to figure out.
I’m so happy to see this channel do cool stuff I never thought of about a tech channel. It actually inspired me to get into software engineering :))) glad to know you all
speaking from experience and having 30 panels on my roof since 2008, you will want to put up pigeon protection. Have someone come in and put up a metal fence material (not plastic) around the edges of the panels to prevent pigeons from going underneath the panels. Its good preventative maintenance. Few years ago, we had to get our solar installers come in, take down all the panels (charged by the hour), to clean up underneath, get pest control to clean up, then put panels back up, which was around $5,000 Our fee was higher than average, because we have Sunpower panels, which is around 22% efficient, so there is a premium with everything
5:05 you could control the charging speed of your EV. I guess it doesn’t really matter in your case with input=output in terms of pricing. But here in Germany I can charge my EV with solar for ~10ct/kWh and without sun i pay >20ct/kWh so it’s basically double and in the long term that matters
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 e-Auto-Tarif für eine Ladestation zur richtigen Zeit gemacht, daher lade ich an der Station für ~20ct/kWh, mit Solarstrom dann eben nur für ~10ct/kWh. Der „normale“ Tarif ist glaube irgendwo bei 26ct/kWh, aber auch schon ewig alt der Vertrag
@@lhecker15 Ah, wusste nicht, dass hier der Fortschritt Einzug gefunden hat und man mittlerweile auch E-Auto Tarife buchen kann. Wegen deinem "normalen" Tarif würd ich dir empfehlen nochmal zu gucken, da für gewöhnlich alle paar Jahre eine Anpassung stattfindet und bei den aktuellen Preisen ist diese nicht ohne. Einige Anbieter haben, ohne da groß was draus zu machen, die Preise auf über 50 cent / kwh angezogen. Vorallem kleinere. Wir hatten Glück und haben letztes Jahr noch eine Verlängerung reingedrückt bekommen, sodass der "teurere" Vertrag bei den Stadtwerken, jetzt wahrscheinlich das billigste ist, was man jemals hätte bekommen können, mit Preisgarantie. Vertrag sollte in 2 Monaten Anlaufen. Haben uns damals drüber geärgert, dass wir nicht aus dem alten Vertrag raus konnten und uns eine Preiserhöhung auf 31 cent/kwh aufs Auge gedrückt wurde. Da kann ich heute nur drüber lachen.
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 grundsätzlich erstmal richtig, aber wir haben den Tarif irgendwie über eine Bürgerenergiegenossenschaft die dann bei den Stadtwerken beteiligt ist. So ganz habe ich das Konstrukt und den genauen Preis jetzt nicht im Kopf, aber ist definitiv deutlich unter 30ct/kWh. Ich komme aus der Strombranche und kenne teils Orte wo der Grundversorger der einzige ist der noch neue Kunden aufnimmt, diese zahlen dann zT >50ct/kWh, also wirklich krank.
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 was mit gerade noch zu den Tarifen einfällt: es gibt zB auch Wärmepumpentarife, die sind preislich ähnlich wie die für E-Autos, also da hat es sich in der Vergangenheit zumindest gelohnt sich da nochmal genauer mit seinem Anbieter zu beschäftigen. Die Tarife sind natürlich mittlerweile auch deutlich gestiegen…
dan's really smart at that stuff! He's an awesome & great guy to hang around with super smart!! i love all those inverters and outverters & stuff its pretty sick!
Add PC Building Simulator 2 to your wishlist here: www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/pc-building-simulator-2
Ok
i Will preorder when i get the money
what happen to the radiator behind the panel when temp drop too much
cool you can also install fortnite
Once everything is done please do a "MTV Cribs" full show of the house
I can't believe Linus would buy a house with such a blurry back yard.
Backyard comes pre-bokehed. Cameraman’s dream.
The high res texture pack hasn't been installed yet. That's coming in a future episode I bet.
It's like he was doing a zoom meeting from his backyard
His backyard is only DLSS 1.0
His backyard has TAA enabled
I am like, so ready for whole house water cooling. I'm sure you would have taken this route with the new house either way, but I'm glad you never gave up on the dream after all these years!
the sun is powerful
Antvenom!? That's a suprise
hello antman
:D
ah yes another episode of monetized BlurTV with some house content
Love how you guys protect the privacy of the trees by blurring them!!
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
Those trees were naked, how dare they?
They just turned the Draw distance setting down
Iv been playing GeoGuessr and people only need 1 tree to pinpoint the location. No joke.
@@xzaz2 That depends on the tree though.
I love watching linus and his husband upgrade their new house
I now dub thee: Jinus
@@Bubbachichi lake
@@delightfulgenius4635 It's a runniggag. Previously Luke was his "Boyfriend". Now, since Jake spended so much time planning and supporting Linuses Houseupgrades and Serverstuff, Jake is his Wifes Husbands Boyfriend.
@@delightfulgenius4635 That's the joke
@@delightfulgenius4635nope that's his husband. Linus flames harder than the Olympic torch
With everything Jake is contributing to the house, it feels like he’s going to live there to when it’s done.
legit was gonna say that haha, but fr why is HE so invested in this? is he gonna be Linus' personal assistent?
I think Linus and/or Yvonne has said that Jake will know this house better than either of them.
@@dazley8021 I’m assuming because he’s already on the payroll why not assign someone to help manage and plan such a huge project. Also they are making videos so it doubles as content for the channel so he’s still technically doing normal work for the channel in a sense
Ngl, I think Jake is always there because he thinks the project is fun. They both look like they're enjoying themselves.
Dennis and Ethan walked so Jake could run.
I love it how the solar guys, the people who do this for a living, EVERYDAY!!!is wearing harness and Linus is just up there with no concern for safety whatsoever. Linus is probably the greatest asset and the biggest liability to the company. Perfectly balanced as all things should be.
One time we were going through an L&I audit or something and the big boss walked out of the office, jumped on a four wheeler, and sped off through the yard at like 30 mph and peeled off down the road wide open throttle grabbing gears with no helmet. To us, that's just normal stuff, but the inspector just shook his head and scribbled some notes on his clipboard. I think the business actually got dinged for that.
Every contractors "favorite" kind of customer. The guy that wants to be involved with everything, and mess with all the parts before install.
And film the crew at work
They 100% most likely agreed to it before being contracted.
/s
"Hey how's this work? What do you think of this vs this?" Heh... I'm that guy lol
You forgot contractors love being filmed for social media platforms...lol
4:43 I love it when a company is willing to spend the time to talk to you and give you advice even if they know they aren't going to be making money off of you.
that's how public relations works. in the end it all goes back to money. Conversating with a customer is virtually free and leaves a good impression on the customer.
I would say they will make money off of talking to Linus for sure. If I buy anything I always consider what Linus has purchased for his family. I'm sure bang for buck is considered but he generally gets the best stuff.
I have recorded data every minute from my solar panels into a MySQL database since 2012. Even here in Scandinavia I can see that they produce more electricity a cold May day than a hot July. I might get 5200w in peak early summer late spring but the heat sometimes limits them to 3800w if we have a heat wave. At a local trace school, they tested watercooled panels. (Think it was 5-10 years ago they tested) and they did get 20% more energy by cooling the panels. I did a few videos on my installation
damn these check-my-channel bots are getting real advanced
mysql? naw
postgres on top babeeeeeey
The guys replying to this comment must have some inter cranial nerve damage. Nice information commenter
@Martin J. Do you get heat waves in Scandinavia? Any days over 35 or 40 °c?
@@namantherockstar I’ve seen you too many times man
This is an awesome example of what Linus was talking about during the WAN show. The contractors literally let him crawl up on their work space, offered to open up equipment, and handle the panels and all. That's what makes good content!
It probably helps that the work space is his house in this case. Being up there without a harness might not have been allowed in an industrial shoot.
A lot of contractors will do that with any property owner. They can't keep you from accessing any part of your property.
@@gothnate Exactly! And you have right check on their work.
@@Ragnorok64 if he is making money from the video, then it should be treated as a commercial activity.
@@Ragnorok64 Harness and training is something Linus should look in to anyways. Not sure if you watch the WAN show, but the topic of doing a video on data centers came up, and the amount of access they NEED to make an interesting video came up in discussion.
The automation aspect from solar is great, you can set thresholds where if you’re not producing enough power you can turn off/down the AC, your pool pump for a time, turn off lights that we’re left on even decrease the charge rate on your electric car. It really comes into play when you way to be truly off grid and try to balance generation, charge and use.
Couldn't agree more! On the other hand you can potentially automate things like starting a washing maching when you are producing enough. I'm excited to see the potential that can be unlocked by this data.
@@filipschlembach9388 that is already a thing
@@dontaskdonttell6147 That's cool. Do you know what solution there is if it's winter for example so you don't produce enough for multiple days and it never starts automatically?
@@ghosthunter0950 Turn it on manually. But in all seriousness, you can have rules to run the machine on a different schedule in the winter, or have if run overnight if it hasn't run for an amount of time. It might be a bit of a niche requirement, because I suspect most people aren't going to want their smelly clothes sitting around unwashed until the sun comes out, but if someone wants to automate that, they could.
A/C is worth every penny regardless of solar generation. Never turn it off/down
Source: I live in the desert
I love how Linus is on the roof just holding on to a rope instead of wearing a harness. The contractor guys had a harness.
Yes they had and how they've used it, it would have done nothing in case of a fall. I'm quite shocked how badly they were secured. I am a rope technician in Germany and I've never seen worse protection against fall.
@@maltero0074 At least it's something
@@Mrshotshell But that something gives you an Illusion of safety, wich is actually more dangerous.
@@Studio23Media WTF that’s not how that works 😂. Those contractors have their own insurance in case they get hurt, it doesn’t fall on Linus. Some people won’t even hire you if you don’t have workers insurance
I love how Jake is like the house project manager. It’s like he’s a part of the family with how amped he gets lol
Heh, amped
but he doesnt get to live in it xD
@@IrrationalCharm and only likely makes 1/10th of what Linus makes 🤣
@@RDR911 considering how many employees lmg has, making 10% of what Linus makes seems pretty great
Being able to see each panel's production will also allow you to know which ones need cleaning/dusting.
true. i would still pick only one top tier inverter. so there is only one piece that could break up that is easily exchanged. and with dust, when you hook up the pressure washer normally you rinse all panels at the same time. but I sacrifice some energy when transferring e in DC.
would like to hear how much that system cost to calculate break even time. even linus overestimated IRL solar output. happens to everyone.
I kinda loved the electricians answers. Straight forward, no bs to try and soothe a customer. Might hurt some peoples feelings but it is efficient
cant bs THE tech guru
Thats the trades for yah we're all like that LOL
bruh it's not that deep he was just joking with them
@@stickit2theman1 no yall arent
Tradies love to joke with each other like this all the time. Sparkies always see plumbers as the "dumber" trade and it's always seen as light hearted banter
Question - is this Linus's dream home? Is there anything he hasn't done that he would have wanted to (that was realistic?). I love these vids. So cool to see this stuff
No shot this is all he has plans for with this house, and that makes it super sick to watch, especially with Linus paint tips lol
I’m here 2 months later, the number of cool things he’s done certainly hasn’t ceased lol.
maybe a robot butler
or maid
For Home Assistant instead of controlling them on or off, you would want to use that information to control other devices depending on output, such as turning off devices when you have less power, or you can have the lights turn on when the outside luminosity goes down.
I wrote a script that used the output of my inverter to enable mining on my and the wife's PC only when the solar output was high enough support it without drawing from the grid.
Span smart electric panel can do that!
Yes that’s correct. In this case irrelevant while the utility continues to pay out at the same rate as it charges. As grid stability becomes more of an issue they will incentivise this behaviour and it will be worthwhile.
I would get smart pressure sensors too for the water lines. If you spring a leak, youll be able to find out when it happens and where.
A quite expensive light sensor
I watch all the tech vids, but I loooove the house tech videos even more!
Could be a whole new channel. If they had ⏲️
Agreed, love them to death. Honestly could watch them for hours.
@@jaredphillips889 Linustechhousetipsquickie
Silver Cymbal and LTT, what a crazy combo upgrade that can be! Linus ever made yourself a well?
✌🏻You are one of the best TH-cam channel that exist !
Hey Linus, you might want to use a Water to coolant heat exchanger that can be added to your AC outdoor-unit. This allows you to heat the pool with excess heat that would normally get blasted into the atmosphere in the summer in addition to the solar panels which in my experience (live in Germany and have a medium sized pool myself) can lack a bit in heating power
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
That's pretty damn cool tech. I would guess the small efficiency loss from adding glycol and antifreeze and using a heat-exchanger would be totally worth it. You should be able to divert the flow to a heat pump so that you can heat your house 3-5 times more efficiently compared to traditional gas or electric heating. You can even get heat-pump based water heaters and clothes dryers. You could cut your energy consumption from heating your house, heating water, and drying your clothes by a factor of ~4!
but you can't put anti freeze in your poolwater and its flowing through there.
@@DerXavia That's why it would need a heat exchanger. So you have a glycol loop going from the roof to the heat exchanger, and a pool water loop going from the pool to the heat exchanger. That's the simple version. If you have a variable refrigerant flow heat pump then you can have multiple places to send and receive heat from. So, pool, roof, domestic hot water, home heating (and cooling, actually - at night when you aren't getting solar electricity you can use rooftop panels to radiate heat more efficiently than dumping it into the air, depending on your setup. You can also heat your pool with heat from inside the house, which cools the house). Depending on your heating and cooling needs, you can also use large thermal masses, like a pool, or if it's really cold and you need to drain the pool, an insulated vessel with water or some other material, perhaps buried so you don't lose surface utility, as thermal storage for load shifting. So you could put heat into it when the sun is up and you have more available power, and draw it out at night for your home heating. Even a 2 metre cube of water can store 308 kWh (~ 1.051 million BTU) of heat through a 33°C (~60°F) temperature change, which is quite a lot of buffer range for a home system (assuming that you aren't doing, like driveway snowmelting or something, that takes a lot of heat).
"The power of the sun...in the palm of my hand."
Yoo
“Otto?”
I Love My Country 🌹
Yesss!!! I’m looking for this comment!!
@@bluespirit5101 It’s good to see you, dear boy.
I love the safety line and how it was securely fastened to Linus in case he took a tumble off the roof.
Tbf it seems like a steep roof
@@baseballjustin5 All the better to take a header off of. Especially since it is not a normal shingle roof but a "shake" type roof
I used to work in Health & Safety for a construction firm which works at height. (I was also the IT guy there for ages before and when the previous guy retired I got 'promoted', so had to do both; it didn't end well)
The safety of Linus (and the contractors, to be fair) on the roof looked muchos dodgy. Muchos muchos dodgy. You're meant to be clipped via safety harness/lanyard to a fixed point at all times and he/they just.... weren't.
Glad it went OK though. :)
@@danieljones9937 Yeah, despite seemingly low height, fall from such roof can still be fatal if you land wrong and possibly break your neck/spine/fracture the skull.
I have heard stories about people who died exact this way.
Well, even if you don't die from the fall the 27kg panel falling on top of you as a bonus might finish you off.
Yeah, I was waiting for Linus to drop himself there...
Having hass talk to each inverter is actually amazing, yes you won’t control the inverter with hass, but you are missing the main point of hass, having other automations key off other devices. Like when your solar output is at max, turn down the ac to help cool the house then taper off as the output drops, or having that data and pulling into something like grafana to dashboard and log your solar generation and compare to what the energy company says so you can call them on their bs
calling home assistant "hass" is just funny.
Watch hass control every inverter 🤪
But why would you need a connection to each individual inverter? Total output is all you need for that. It only would be handy to see wether an individual panel is grossly underperforming and even that should be monitored via the box connecting them all.
@@Henk14789 there’s a comment by a Rolf Smit earlier which which I believe explains your query. In summary, if you have one inverter for all panels, your whole solar panel array is limited by the worst performing panel of the bunch. By having an inverter for each panel, each panel performs independently of other panels and insnt limited by another panel which may not be getting direct sunlight.
@@Henk14789 Because it's cool 😎
I love how chill those contractors are. Canada is just built diff
"The power of the sun, -in the palm of my hand- on the roof my house"
Linus, 2022
@@namantherockstar grow up kid
I was hoping someone would make the connection
i have a long essay on solar panels/cells due today, incredible timing thank you linus
lmao
I Love My Country 🌹
yes
Linus will help you drop that mic on your essay.
Oh look the gd (not a furry) guy
Linus' house gets more awesome with every update
That's basically how updates work.
At the very start of the video when they were talking about water cooling for the house. My first thought was, Of course Linus would use watercooling for his house. He's probably gonna overclock the Furnace thermostats or something.
when you have a way to tax deduct every possible "upgrade" for videos, definitely utilize it!
His ego
@@aurathedraak7909 if i did as much as linus has ide have an ego as well. dudes kinda chad doing shit he loves.
The home assistant coupling is extremely useful to turn on high power appliances, like the car charger, automatically. This is important when the 1 to 1 ratio of buying from and selling to the grid is dropped by regulations and when there is too much solar power delivered to the grid, which cant be used in your area, the voltage runs to high, causing your inverter to shut down for over voltage protection. With home assistant you can make sure to use the power instead.
there 100% is a DC regulator to prevent over voltage. even if you have power available it doesnt mean that it will just build up or sometin. higher voltage is something they thought about when the input changes randomly dependent on the weather and stuff. it should also kick in when there is enough voltage available and coexist with your wired-in electricity from transmission lines (some thingy thats lining up their AC with city power AC so they dont short each other)
@@pain2737 There is AC over voltage risk if too many people supply to the grid. The grid is not designed for large scale solar production in domestic areas. If many people supply to the grid instead of consuming from the grid the current gets to high which causes the voltage to rise. The over voltage protection will then shut down the transformer if it exceeds a certain limit and kick on ones the voltage drops below again, which basically is wasting energy. In the Netherlands this is a very common issue and, knowing the poor grid quality in Northern America, it wil likely also occur there at some point.
@@GZuid_mannetje it doesnt make sense that there would be such an issue
@@pain2737 Consider the local distributor, which is rated to supply (arbitrary chosen) 1000A to the connected households, what do you think if all in a sudden the neighborhood, which normally can consume a maximum of a 1000A now instead supplies 1100A? This causes the voltage to rise in the local distributor and hence, anywhere this grid line is connected to, aka the solar transformers. This causes over voltage protection to kick in within the transformer.
@@GZuid_mannetje current doesnt matter cuz I = R/U
These home improvement videos and the server and networking ones are my absolute favorite!
Same I don't always visit the channel but when its a home improvement video I 100% know I'm going to watch it.
Agreed, that and the intel extreme upgrades
i would like to see a part 2 of this system when its fully functioning, particularly on the power production side, the water cooled vs the non water cooled panels on a sunny day.
Personally, if I had the cash, I would go the glycol route. The lack of yearly drain/fill cycles would be worth it
Yes i was really surprised you use water for it. Here in Europe Glycol is standard for Solar systems
Yeah, you'd definitely lose efficiency, but if you wanted a heated pool, I'd just hook it up to a resistive heater or something. Less efficiency, but also no hassle and means the house isn't losing efficiency in the winter
Glycol isn't the best to swim in.
@@isaackvasager9957 I can't tell if you're joking, but you know you don't have to dump liquids directly into something, right? You can conduct heat just via contact for example a coil of copper tube which sits inside the filter.
@@vgamesx1 gotcha, that's a fair point. It was clear from the video that Linus plans to run the chlorinated water through the system directly...hence my reply.
Thank you guys for using gaussian blur instead of mosaic, it's so less distracting and nice to the eyes :)
I love solar energy videos, nice one Linus!
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
That's gonna be a sick house, hope we'll get a full tour with technical details when it's done ! Love from France.
that will probably be a 24h video.
Home Assistant both has an amazing Energy dashboard, but you also may want to do automations not to turn the solar on or off, but rather turning other stuff on or off based on solar output. E.g. if you are exporting excess energy to the grid, maybe make your airconditioning work a little harder as one example. I've actually got a dishwasher with wifi, so I could trigger it to start once enough solar power is available for it.
Or turn on hot water heater and raise the hot water temp and store the energy there etc.
Exactly that is the beauty of home assistant all devices talk to it so it so all of your smart devices are just one big integrated system. You can control one device based off the data of another device. That said in Linus' situation is probably doesn't really matter with solar because he gets a 1:1 ratio net metering so there isn't really a intensive for him to use all of his solar power vs just selling it back to the grid and then buying the power back later. But for many people who don't have a 1:1 ratio or are running totally off grid it would beneficial to use as much of you solar power vs selling it back or throwing it away in the case of a off grid system. So charging an EV, or turning on the HVAC system are really easy things to throw power at.
Yeah, in some places in Finland you get 10% back if you produce energy to the grid so it's really important to use everything
The way the solar panel installer carries the panel up the ladder reminds me of my days of installing windows. That's how we sometimes had to carry glass panels, windows or sliding doors up to hard to reach spots.
How long before Linus' new house gains sentience and he has to build something equally as silly to stop it?
Sounds like a solid excuse for an LTT Kaiju.
I give it 2 years, with most that being the house learning about the" wonderful" place we call the world
Stop... it?
House Tech Tips
it would sabotage itself well before it accomplished its goal
NGL, Linus' house is basically exactly how I want to have my house laid out when I have one - hydronic heating, proper APs in every zone, fully sealed theater room, solar panels, and cameras everywhere.
Now to solve the only pitfall, where do I get the money for it?
especially cameras in the bathroom and toilet?
What are APs?
@@namesurname624 access points
@@tiernancusack8915 saving and taking out loans, and one of the benefit of being married. Having your significant others helping you out.
0:18 Water cooling and water heating are the same thing. It just depends on which end of the loop you are on.
Thermal regulation loop
I kept expecting them to make that point, with how they doing the "Water cooled" "well no really" bit.
If you don't have in-floor heating, I'm curious if the water loop could be used by a heat pump to try and boost efficeincy in the winter.
"You point the sun at it."
LTT space megastructures coming soon.
Interstellar techtips corporation
Embrace the Linus Sphere
Some info on per panel converters vs a converter for the whole array:
- Per panel converters are more efficient because in setups with just one converter for all the panels, the worst performing panel will cause all other panels be limited by that performance. This can be very common is places where during the day panels can be overcast with shadow, while other panels might not be in the shadow. Therefore it is very common to see per panel converters in those situations. However if the amount of sun is almost equal across the day for all of the panels, a single converter is often way more economical.
- Almost all combined converters can be connected to Home Assistant, not just per panel converters.
- It is quite common to have converters that work with so called "strings" (arrays) of panels. Where a single converter can handle two sets of about 6 panels (sometimes 4 sets), this allows to combine the panels according to their estimated performance, making this more efficient without having to use per panel converters, and thus extremely economical.
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
I'm really surprised about those converters. Never heard about them. Always had the idea of the difficulty on sync multiple generators on the general electric distribution system, but meanwhile i suppose it got a lot easier on small scales with modern electronics.
Maybe something like radio telescopes. The signal amplifiers became so “cheap” that now it's more economical to build an array of small telescopes than a big one. In the past, they had to go big because of the electronic equipment price.
@@xiro6 syncing of these micro inverters is only done when they are connected to the grid. Grid tie inverters have what is called islanding, where they don't turn on unless they see grid power first and when the grid goes down they shut down. It is a safety device for lineman when working on the system so they don't get electrocuted. The down fall is that they will not work for a stand alone system. So when you have a stand alone system you have to have different style inverters installed.
@@bohner83 Oh, thanks, looks even more interesting, I will have to take a look, it triggered my curiosity,
This is all true, but it's important to make a distinction between per-panel converters and per-panel inverters. Which, someone else should do, because I'm just learning solar myself, but I know the distinction is important and is something you have to decide when building a system.
The cooled panels must help keep the house cooler, keeping that heat out of the attic and lowering AC costs
Even non-cooled panels take a serious hit from the sun. So yes, they really do.
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
@@mikelisteral7863 This literally does not apply here
Yes, but the savings is miniscule.
Solar panels, whether normal ones or these water-cooled ones, are not mounted directly against the roofing material; there is a gap of a couple inches left, and wind can blow through there. So, in practice, putting any solar panels on the roof will make the attic more temperate, but the water cooling won't make it better by much.
My parents had solar heating (DYI) for their pool in San Fernando valley, Cal.
The irony of that; during the summer there, heating the pool is really not needed.
During winter no one wanted to use the pool when the solar heat would pay dividends.
You do the math.
I guess since he's in Canada his pool may need some heating ; )
I love that this episode is sponsored by Epic, yet they show the Steam store page of PC building simulator. :D
Epic games lacks so many features and brand recognition, that they have to show a competitors functional store in order to market the game (despite buying exclusive rights to the game no doubt)
@@NickYea They didn't buy exclusive rights to the game, they bought the developers because they were part of Mediatonic (the Fall Guys people).
I'd like to recommend finding a 'safe' area to do the specific outdoor-sy sections where jake was talking; the blurred background was honestly an eyesore. Even having the background in that exchange being the siding of the house would have worked out better IMO
THIS, like they couldn't have just turned around?
Idiots, like there's no 2 trees alike. "I've seen that tree before and I know exactly where his house is". Want to know where he lives? Just follow him home.
Absolutely... But an after thought maybe?
I've got regular panels and yeah, on a really hot 40 degree summer day you can really see the system output degrade a bit. Really looking forward to see how effective the water cooling is. I'm liking this video topic aspect of energy systems / water cooling crossover.
Can we get a followup on this now the water's hooked up? will be great to see just how much 'heat' you're getting out of this thing. I'm currently planning a dual panel like this - predominantly due to lack of roof space for seperate pool heating and PV!
I just got solar installed on my home and it's pretty cool seeing your power independence. My home only uses typically between 1.4-1.6kWh of power and my panels produce nearly double. Kinda wish I could have gotten the water cooled ones though, those look freaking sick.
Get panel insurance man because when one panel goes wrong and needs replacing, the cost will negate every penny it will ever make in it's working life time. Then ideally, in future switch over to a better solution and retask your panels for something more efficient than general power.
The problems are the carbon footprint on these things is huge, the efficiency drop off is rapid, and the operating costs are stellar. I hope you avoid these problems though I expect within a year or two you will get the same things I have here. Flimsy little bastards barely function now lol.
@@DailyCorvid panel insurance is a thing?????????!!!
@@DailyCorvid carbon footprint is high, but not excessive. IPCC says it's about 50g/kWh. And wind turbine is around 12g, so is a nuclear power plant, and regarding hydro stations, it's about 19g (although the last one is very variable, as the trees you are flooding on might generate methane.
Regarding nuclear power plants, it can go even lower then 12g (4g in France), as your uranium fuel production which is done by electricity, uses very low emission electricity.
Anyway, even a 52g, solar is still very low compared to the 800-1000g for coal, and 400g for gas :)
@@glujaz The main issue I see with them is all the trash they create when they have to be decommissioned. They recycle a big part of the panels, but not everything. And the inverters eventually end up dying too, so that's more tech trash. If you have lithium batteries it's even worse as you have to change them every 10 years or so, and they are mostly not recycled at all for now.
I believe that in the future solar energy will become cleaner, but for now it's still pretty dirty. It's only environmentally worth it if you live in a country that mostly uses coal or fuel for its electricity. If you live in Canada where 90% of the electricity is hydroelectric and the kWh is very cheap, I really don't see the point. Especially when you'll have your roof full of snow, your sky full of clouds and your days very short half the year (and, ironically, winter time is when you need the most electricity).
1.2 Kw for this entire installation is honestly garbage. Yes, it was not a sunny day, but it is what you'll get most of the time of the year. This barely powers a heater.
@@zephirus4483 My thoughts exactly. Outside of it being a cool tech feature, this doesn't make that much sense for his use case. As is typical with these sorts of videos, they only ever highlight the benefits and ignore the real downsides.
It's going to take years and years for him to actually offset his carbon emissions from the production and installation of the panels. The panels aren't fully recycleable and create toxic waste when they're decommissioned. The carbon footprint of dealing with that waste is never accounted for and is somewhat unknown. Especially since he lives so far north, in Canada, and in such a rarely sunny environment, it is entirely possible that he'll never offset the emmissions from creating and then maintaining the panels.
The cost saving aspect is really lon-term as well. An installation like that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. If you're selling back less than a dollar on average a day to the grid, it may take a decade or more for them to pay for themselves, before you even consider the cost of the maintenance.
I really wish they would have adressed this in the video. But since it was sponsored by green tech, they probably couldn't. At least in the future i'd like to see them actually take a look at what the actual expected numbers will really be to know if this was a net positive or a net negative for the environment and for his wallet.
5:14 One thing that comes to mind for automation would be controlling your AC according to the current energy production. No sun? Turn off the AC automatically to save power, since you don't need it anyways. Also, (not finished with the video and not sure, if the cooling part is reversible) with some preparation you could deduct from the incoming data, if there's snow on the panels and reverse the heatpump for an automatic de-ice cycle...
the thermostat already turns off the AC if there is no sun and you don't need it
Imagine hooking this system up to a heat pump. You could theoretically heat and cool everything in the house that needs to be heated or cooled just by exchanging heat with your giant water cooling loop. Pull heat out of your freezer and use it to heat your pool, or pull heat out of your solar panels and use it to heat your house. Imagine the efficiency!
Happy you went solar and shared it with your viewers Linus. It may convince some of them to follow you. I have had panels for 5 years and they are awesome.
0:53 they are actually pretty easy to build yourself too, also helps keep the cells cooler so they last a little longer.
Cells now are getting around 22% efficiency and if you have money to burn like Linus there are technically even more efficient cells.
I wonder if RGB solar panel would improve efficiency, in the same way it gives you extra FPS
At least they'd be useful at night for annoying your neighbors
I mean, _technically_ sunlight is full RGB (white) and it produces more electricity than if it was single-color, sooo... 🧠
Bruh, on legion 7 you got lower fps if you turned on RGB lighting, idk if they already fixed it or not, it used to be the case last year.
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
@@mikelisteral7863 compared to a less complicated but otherwise identical system, sure. Of course, all That does is recommend against unnecessary 'internet of things' nonsense. It's hard to get simpler than 'water pipe from where the heat is to where you want hot water' in terms of energy transfer. And when you're doing that anyway, may as well take the heat from somewhere you don't want it... such as, say, your Solar Panels... which cools them... upping their efficiency.
And, as a counter point: the more modular something is, the less of it needs to be tossed and replaced when some part of it fails, significantly Reducing waste.
And that's far from the only factors involved either, and they all have to be balanced against each other.
10:17 gave me flashbacks to those first-gen "portrait modes" on smartphone-cameras a few years back... Good times
Would recommend keeping 2 panels for Inverter Battery connection so if there is blackout you can still work during night time . During Blackoutd direct Run from Solar during Day and same time charge the battery and at night use the battery power for Lights Fans and Sockets for Mobile Charging.
This is epic. I really wanna see the power output difference between the cooled and the non-cooled panels in the summer! Please keep us updated!
You'd want to scale loads with peak production. Start a washing cycle when the sun's out, heat or cool the house while it's free. That's why the data is important.
If he was completely off the grid, then yes, but since it gets sold back at the same rate he buys it then it's not an issue. In a sense the city grid is acting like a battery, maybe not physically but monetarily.
With net billing it really doesn't matter, it's like having an infinite sized battery connected.
I agree with some of that, but you don't really get to choose when you heat or cool your house.
@@crazycarl509 if they have net billing in Canada, they won’t in a few years. The model doesn’t check out. Transport costs money and just dumping during the day isn’t sustainable.
@@--_DJ_-- of course you do! You can let the house get a few degrees warmer or colder, especially when you’re not there. Why not make the house 24 degrees when the sun is out, so it’s 22 when you get home and 17 when you go to bed (shit insulation but you get the idea).
Im in in solar industry, these panels will leak and hopefully the roof work is proper because it may cause leaks on the standoff penetrations. Also Enphase microinverters have a ton of line noise issues. The installed an Envoy S which should have been an Envoy Combiner box to resolve the line noise issues. They may need to install a in line noise filter which is 500$ just for the piece.
What sort of environments did you deploy the spring panels in? they might work fine for linus as he's in a more calmer climate.
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
Yea they need the combiner box and enpower switch so they can add batteries later on... And a line filter.
And you forgot a smol side of the dc and ac side of the inverters. Ac side to the supply hub should be a short cable, while the dc should be long, maybe high gage duo to no parasitic resistances like capacitiv or inductive, wich are experience in ac
*there are a lot of competing solar industries*
Good on the guys for using FallPro properly. What I would have liked to have seen is a temporary roof edge clamp to secure the ladder in place at the top.
I would also recommend they use a 'kicker rope' about 1/3 of the way up. The rope can be attached to anything handy and strong on the building or even to an anchor in the soil.
These ladder safety features are even more important as they have a worker carrying a weight greater than 20kg (greater than the weight of an 18 liter water bottle).
When carrying something like a bag of cement powder no one cares if you drop it. When carrying objects of great value workers tend to 'sacrifice themselves' to save the item.
I install solar for a living this definitely piqued my interest. The way the installer carried it up is the most common technique. My only criticism from the installers is it appears they started installing the modules from the top and made their way down. Typically you'd start from the bottom up that way you can set the upper row on the bottom row and ensure they are lined up and it just makes the install a whole lot easier. I'm surprised they didn't go with the enphase combiner box. It's essentially a sub panel with the envoy installed in it. It's great for applications where there isn't much room in the existing (MSP) and when there won't be a (MSP) main service panel upgrade. Either option is ok but in California with enphase systems you would typically do the combiner box and hang it up on a outside wall for fire department access. For the times we do install it in a garage we would run a shut off switch on a outside wall for it. It definitely varies city to city, they all have their own rules and regulations and code you have to meet
Only when you weigh more than the panel :)
It's "piqued my interest*. I know, weird.
Even with all that piping? I presume they zig zagged up and down each row
Maybe they started from the top cause they already did the other side ?
@@Rentorock Because "Pique" is a French word that the English took for some reason. Though it means something completely different in French, in the familiar language, you could say something like it's the action of "taking" something... Piqued my interest could mean you've got my interest, as in you "took" it, so I guess the Englishman of the time decided on that definition for that word.
having them attached to home automation would be amazing for me! we have lower feed in pay than the cost of electricity here. So being able to turn extra loads on when the sun is strong and back off when there is no sun automatically would be lifechanging!
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
I wish these panels are cheap. Nowadays it's cheaper to get electricity from the grid. More like virtue signalling
@@darugdawg2453 Or to insulate yourself from grid price fluctuations. Here in Texas, we have less regulated power pricing than most places, and one upshot of the Feb. 2021 frozen grid disaster (unregulated power producers don't want to "waste" money on weather proofing, so shut down and just about crashed the entire grid) is spiking power costs, this year.
"we watercooled a solar panel"
the newest development of the watercooling saga
Next up: RGB solar panels.
its nice to see a youtuber showing a house without saying the words *i bought this but i don't know what it is* or *i have one of these in my house but i'll probably never use it* or *i have this really expensive thing/art/furniture that i'll likely never use and don't really like but ya know....money!!!*
its really refreshing.
Jake’s expertise continue to impress me. Enjoy seeing him on camera a lot, it’s clear how much LTT depends on his knowledge!
1:13 I wouldnt say "Infinitely renewable", since sun has expiration date too but it sure gonna outlive humanity.
"The power of the sun in the palm of my hand" Linus Sebastian
Floridian here. Yes, black plastic "tubes" or a sheet of square tubes like you have are very common for solar heating. DIY solar water heating usually involves just using black garden hoses on a wooden frame painted black. We don't have much need for house heating down here.
Amazing how high the potential for Linus oopses here, and yet he lived through the whole thing and managed not to drop anything crazy expensive. Well done, sir!
Linus, thank you so much for investigating this! Hopefully, next week you'll look into a geothermal spa for your personal imax theatre. I've been really stuck on how to do it at my house.
"Im not a plumber, I'm an electrician" that's probably the best reply to that question you could give
00:30 Linus: "photovoltaic cells"
Subtitles: "photo VoLTE excels" 😂
@7:06 they're completely off on the temperature effects on efficiency. The 20% advertised is the peak efficiency, with heat losses reducing that. Cooling the panels minimizes loss and just gets you closer to the rated 20%. You cannot pass their peak efficiency rating.
Maybe the efficiency is not the right way to word it but you certainly increase voltage with decrease of temperature. That is why every panel has a temp coefficient rating to do your engineering calculations.
Enphase is sooooo good
I love how the installers are all following good OHS with harnesses, and then Linus is up there with nothing. Same with the Ubiquiti satellite video
You mean just holding the rope isn't proper fall protection? :)
Even one of the shots of the roofer the gentleman isn't properly tied off, he has way too much slack in his rope.
Way to demonstrate proper safety LTT
Yeah that guy just casually carrying that panel up to roof looks totally 100% legal
@@jokuemt actually that is legal hahaha
Some home automation ideas:
- dim lights and cut certain appliances to further reduce your dependance on the grid
- have a real-time idea of how overcast or dark outside it is to adjust lighting scenes to reflect what is happening outside
Led lights barely eats electricity lol
@@darugdawg2453 Not in a house that size; many small cuts can add up. Also I was referring to aesthetics as well. I automate my lights from the moment I wake, to when I leave, depending on what time of day, and sometimes the activity. These small things make me happy.
I can see the home assistant automation being useful if you want certain things running when there is power to spare. Got solar panels at my place so I aim to run renders or my 3d printers middle of the day,
Kudos on the blurring, gotta love when editors n the like respect privacy! this house is gettin seriously advanced haha can't wait to see whats next
tbh I didnt like the extra aggregious blurring; hopefully they'll be better about their backing next time they have to shoot an off the cuff outdoors shot. May have looked better if it was done better to make it look more like a depth of field, but the blur was just a small bounding box that Jake kept escaping during that segment.
Blurring bushes or fences seems like overkill.
@@forcews People have located things using a flag in a field, so I'm not surprised they're being extra cautious
Linus's address was leaked before so they're not taking any chances this time around.
Yeah he was the one who leaked it on a WAN show lol
props to the editors blurring the shit out of anything identifiable.
I noticed this as well. They really are not taking any chances in regards to security, and keeping the location of his house unknown to viewers. Sometimes I find it a bit annoying, esp if they are filming outside and everything but the person is blurred (idk why they didn't just shoot that somewhere else, but I'm not the production manager so I'm not one to criticize haha), but I totally understand the necessity and practicality of doing just that. Nobody wants to get doxxed at best, or burglarized or kidnapped at worst. I'm glad they have figured out a way to still do this content while keeping security a top priority 🙂
I have successfully unblurred some trees using the latest technology in forensic software. I now know what some of the trees are in Linus' back yard!
@@ssl3546 He has also previously leaked salaries, their twitter password and a bunch of upcoming videos (at the time).
@@alexanderlee5180 I was wondering the same thing. Like couldn't you have filmed else where or just turned around?
There are other considerations to putting inverters on each panel. One consideration is that it allows you to keep each panel at its Maximum Power Point (MPP), which the inverter can do by changing the "impedance" that the AC side sees the panel at. This is known as Maximum Power Point Tracking (MMPT). Basically, it allows you to keep maximum efficiency even if some panels in the rows are obstructed. It also can simplify distribution and connection to your home AC. There were a few other considerations that large solar installations have to consider, but I don't remember everything from my EE class. Placing inverters on each individual panel is more expensive as compared to some DC schemes, and it may not always be necessary, given the right environment.
im loving this series. also its near to my house so i get to see it happen in person
I love everything Linus is doing with his house.
13:12 „Thanks again Epic Games for sponsoring this video“
*Shows Steam*
This should be n1 comment. Everyone noticed it!
Next time you need solar equipment for a project make sure to call Signature Solar. We’re based in Texas, from call in tech support to bench techs for ship in repairs. And great set-up, although I think you might like the ui of the Aptos micro inverters more. Just something to think about for future builds!
Would love to see a follow-up to this in a few months when the system is fully operational and you get some summer days. This would be cool if you end up close to grid-independent. Also would love to see how you track on RoI in the coming months.
Then you need tons of batteries to store energy to get you through the nights. I don't think there are good providers other than Tesla but Tesla's powerwalls probably aren't very compatible with solar from other companies.
@@oMega-sm1eg other companies have done solar panels, Tesla didn’t invent solar power storage or batteries
usually it takes 5-10 years to pay off the system
It must feel so great to think that you are running on your own generated clean power and contributing to the grid as well.
The energy we use in British Columbia, the province (state if you like) we both live in, is hydro and already clean renewable.
(Almost entirely, I say that because ocasionally we buy energy from out of province and the entire grid is connected across many states and provinces so dirty and clean power is actually rather mixed)
I don't want to sh*t on it entirely or anything. But he not contributing clean energy to a dirty grid, is all
@@Sir.Craze- Yeah BC's power production is something like 90% hydro, and 5% is other renewables
@@Sir.Craze- The whole point of the grid is that the power doesn't stay just in one region. So even just by generating his own power he's already contributing because it decreases the grid's dependency on dirty sources. Which is also kind of a bandaid for increasing power consumption - giving individual buildings their own power generation slows down the increasing demand on the grid.
@@CanIHasThisName ya, like I said in my second sentence.
I'm saying morally he's not really in much a better place then he would have been knowing that his entire province is already producing a vast, vast majority of clean energy. The amount he's feeding back in is nominal compared to the system, so I don't really feel that factors.
But, I'm not against solar or clean energy. It's good he's getting the word out there, I guess. This isn't something most anyone can aford. But still I'll give him credit.
et's just not give ourselves so hard a slap on the back we hurt ourselves and can't keep moving forward
Did you see how crooked those roof mounts are? Looks like a perfect place for water to get in. I sure hope they seal with something more than hope it doesn't rain.
Caulk fixes everything.
My buddy used black metal pipes on his garage to heat the water for his pool when he moved in like 12 years ago. Takes that idea to the next step, love it!
Linus really aces all his videos perfectly well.
Linus, You've got me hooked on your home improvement videos
"The power of the sun in the palm of my hands" title opportunity missed.
"Otto..."
I Love My Country 🌹
I would recommend turning on Anti alliasing for the backyard
The different amount of options when it comes to automating and modernizing your home makes my head spin.
I just hope if I ever have the money for such a house, I also have the money to make it somebody else's problem to figure out.
As someone who’s going to school to become an electrical engineer, I’m glad that I finally understand everything in an LTT video.
I’m so happy to see this channel do cool stuff I never thought of about a tech channel. It actually inspired me to get into software engineering :))) glad to know you all
the more complicated something is the more maintenance and energy it requires (wastes)
speaking from experience and having 30 panels on my roof since 2008, you will want to put up pigeon protection. Have someone come in and put up a metal fence material (not plastic) around the edges of the panels to prevent pigeons from going underneath the panels.
Its good preventative maintenance.
Few years ago, we had to get our solar installers come in, take down all the panels (charged by the hour), to clean up underneath, get pest control to clean up, then put panels back up, which was around $5,000
Our fee was higher than average, because we have Sunpower panels, which is around 22% efficient, so there is a premium with everything
The power of the sun...in the hands of me and multiple others, this thing is damn heavy
5:05 you could control the charging speed of your EV. I guess it doesn’t really matter in your case with input=output in terms of pricing. But here in Germany I can charge my EV with solar for ~10ct/kWh and without sun i pay >20ct/kWh so it’s basically double and in the long term that matters
You pay under 30ct/kwh in Germany? Bruder, wo wohnst du? Wir haben noch nen Vertrag von vor 3 Jahren und zahlen da schon 29 cent pro kwh.
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 e-Auto-Tarif für eine Ladestation zur richtigen Zeit gemacht, daher lade ich an der Station für ~20ct/kWh, mit Solarstrom dann eben nur für ~10ct/kWh. Der „normale“ Tarif ist glaube irgendwo bei 26ct/kWh, aber auch schon ewig alt der Vertrag
@@lhecker15 Ah, wusste nicht, dass hier der Fortschritt Einzug gefunden hat und man mittlerweile auch E-Auto Tarife buchen kann. Wegen deinem "normalen" Tarif würd ich dir empfehlen nochmal zu gucken, da für gewöhnlich alle paar Jahre eine Anpassung stattfindet und bei den aktuellen Preisen ist diese nicht ohne. Einige Anbieter haben, ohne da groß was draus zu machen, die Preise auf über 50 cent / kwh angezogen. Vorallem kleinere. Wir hatten Glück und haben letztes Jahr noch eine Verlängerung reingedrückt bekommen, sodass der "teurere" Vertrag bei den Stadtwerken, jetzt wahrscheinlich das billigste ist, was man jemals hätte bekommen können, mit Preisgarantie. Vertrag sollte in 2 Monaten Anlaufen. Haben uns damals drüber geärgert, dass wir nicht aus dem alten Vertrag raus konnten und uns eine Preiserhöhung auf 31 cent/kwh aufs Auge gedrückt wurde. Da kann ich heute nur drüber lachen.
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 grundsätzlich erstmal richtig, aber wir haben den Tarif irgendwie über eine Bürgerenergiegenossenschaft die dann bei den Stadtwerken beteiligt ist. So ganz habe ich das Konstrukt und den genauen Preis jetzt nicht im Kopf, aber ist definitiv deutlich unter 30ct/kWh. Ich komme aus der Strombranche und kenne teils Orte wo der Grundversorger der einzige ist der noch neue Kunden aufnimmt, diese zahlen dann zT >50ct/kWh, also wirklich krank.
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 was mit gerade noch zu den Tarifen einfällt: es gibt zB auch Wärmepumpentarife, die sind preislich ähnlich wie die für E-Autos, also da hat es sich in der Vergangenheit zumindest gelohnt sich da nochmal genauer mit seinem Anbieter zu beschäftigen. Die Tarife sind natürlich mittlerweile auch deutlich gestiegen…
had this exact idea for solar panels being cooled by water to increase efficiency and longevity / to heat water somewhat
dan's really smart at that stuff! He's an awesome & great guy to hang around with super smart!! i love all those inverters and outverters & stuff its pretty sick!