Solar power for hifi

[richard260]

I just had this thought.You know how people use power conditioners or get wiring done from fuse box straight to there hifi . Theres always this talk about dirty power or noisy power on the grid with all stuff going on it.Well it dawned on me how would you go if your house had solar panels and your hifi was running of just the solar.Techicaly speaking you have isolated your gear from the grid so it should benefit your gear.Am I right in this thinking. Was just a thought. What are thoughts on that

[proftournesol]

Yes, my stereo always sounds better during the day when it's powered by the inverter.

[alittlewino]

hmm, must check out but has some logic as one would think that it is the cleanest most direct and shortest route for power filtered clean by the inverter

[Monkeyboi]

IMO you can never be assured your power will be 100% clean even during the day when using a grid connected system.

The only way you could possibly get a clean and interference free a.c. supply would be to have a stand alone system installed, and even then the purity of the supply would be determined by the inverter and influenced by other applicances that load that supply.

Cheers,

Alan R.

[Sub Sonic]

Try it with a 12 volt battery and a good quality pure sine wave inverter :-)

SS

[Guest guru]

i investigated this some time ago and in order to get the quality of inverters [uS military spec used for diplomatic installations] and the output required along with the efficency and battery storage i was looking at 10-12 k. great gear and the short loan time i had of them was a hoot but as others have pointed out in other threads, what a ripoff when you look a a chinese inverter from jaycar that works fine for your fridge in the simpson desert when you feel like a cold one and don't have to fire up the class a monoblocks around the campfire.

[proftournesol]

According to the ATA, a good quality domestic inverter will output a sine wave with <5% THD. Perhaps we've identified a market for an 'audiophile-grade' inverter, it would use NOS valves of course

[davidsss]

Ooh, a valve inverter, I'd like one of them. Maybe we could also get one of those Frankenstein things with the electricity arcing around, sounds like fun.

 

DS

[Guest guru]

According to the ATA, a good quality domestic inverter will output a sine wave with <5% THD. Perhaps we've identified a market for an 'audiophile-grade' inverter, it would use NOS valves of course

i was talking less than 0.5 percent THD .no tubes, 1800 watts output, hush hush specs, these weren't 4 wheel off road camping shite, i don't know why i bother trying , i may as well buy 500 watt class d amps and be happy to run the flag up the pole and proclaim a new dawn of revelation.

[LogicprObe]

hmm, must check out but has some logic as one would think that it is the cleanest most direct and shortest route for power filtered clean by the inverter

 

Only if it's a good inverter.

The square wave jobs won't do.

[alittlewino]

Only if it's a good inverter.

The square wave jobs won't do.

must admit hadn't come across the thought that modern domestic inverters mated to PV would output square rather than sine waves??

which would they be?

got me looking - from Wikki the font of all truth

Pure sine wave

A pure sine wave inverter produces a nearly perfect sine wave output (less than 3% total harmonic distortion) that is essentially the same as utility-supplied grid power. Thus it is compatible with all AC electronic devices. This is the type used in grid-tie inverters. Its design is more complex, and costs more per unit power.

edit

Square wave

The square wave output has a high harmonic content, not suitable for certain AC loads such as motors or transformers. Square wave units were the pioneers of inverter development.

 

think I won't worry

Edited January 5, 2013 by alittlewino

[ochremoon]

As I'm off grid, I've been running my gear off a stand alone setup for over a decade, using an aussie-built Selectronic sine wave inverter. It sounds fine but I have to switch off the fridge to avoid thumps through the speakers when it cuts in! When the batteries are low after a cloudy spell in the depths of winter, I run the system off a generator which outputs a 240V sine wave. Surprisingly, this doesn't sound any different to me, apart from the background roar of the gennie, easily fixed with a turn of the volume knob.

To be purist you need a supply dedicated to the audio gear, i.e. separate from the mains supply,so you don't have any degradation from other appliances using the same circuit. This means a large deep cycle battery in addition to an inverter. The batteries don't come cheap and last about 10 - 15 years if nursed.

If I was on the grid I wouldn't bother with this, but I'd probably look into a power regenerator.

[Peta]

I have both an inverter for 240 volt power and 12 and 5 V DC setup. 12 V DC does a great job of powering a NAS. 5 V powers the Squeezebox Touch (SBT) and a couple of network devices. I have two 40W amorphous silicon panels that sit on top of a north facing pergola that generate 12V (nominal) through a maximum power point tracking battery charger. Most of the storage is in 12V batteries and the Inverter takes its power from them (4x26 Amp hours). The 5 volt is a specialist one that is designed for high drain and deep cycle charging and discharge and is marketed as an emergency power source for phones. The device has two USB 5V outputs and 12 adaptors, including the correct size for the SBT. I use a DC/DC converter from 12 to 6 V to charge this battery. The 5V battery lasts a whole day without going below 5V and recharges overnight.

 

The inverter is a normal everyday 1kW sine wave inverter form Jaycar. I use a power conditioner between the inverter and the hi-fi gear. I once used a UPS which regenerates power (ie it has its own inverter) in place of the passive power conditioner but it was fairly pointless and only consumed standby power. One think it did was to provide higher transient power for extremely loud music. Running class D power amps means that there is never a problem even when you get huge bass spikes in movies. The Inverter can handle spikes of 2kW or more.

 

Overall, I get a normal day's listening out of the 80W of panels and have only twice had to use a mains charger to refresh the batteries after overcast winter days. The panels are good at generating in overcast or hazy conditions and perform well in very hot weather, unlike the other types of silicon.

 

Sound quality? Noticeably improved and it is mostly because of providing DC to the SBT. I sometimes think that the sound quality is more consistent than it used to be with none of those odd episodes of the sound going muddy and scratchiness in the midrange that used to notice.

 

Why did I do it? Well, I measured the mains voltage over a week after noticing that a lot of light globes had been blowing and computer power supplies blew up. Voltage varied between 225 and 272 over that period with a large number of fluctuations. These numbers are considered acceptable by the electricity provider but I am not so sure that it is good for relatively expensive equipment to have to handle this level of variation. I also think it is nice to be guilt free when listening to music!

[Dr Good Vibe]

Already run gear off 12V have done for years power pack or panels.

[Catostylus]

Voltage varied between 225 and 272 over that period with a large number of fluctuations. These numbers are considered acceptable by the electricity provider.......

 

272 volts is in excess of the standard of 230v -6% +10%. How can your supplier possibly justify this as acceptable?

[Peta]

272 volts is in excess of the standard of 230v -6% +10%. How can your supplier possibly justify this as acceptable?

Not sure I can justify their judgement on this at all - quite the opposite. Nonetheless they claim that for short periods it is acceptable and within their terms of supply.

[Monkeyboi]

The problem with supplier's using the term "acceptable and within their terms of supply" is that even a short duration increase in mains voltage for say 10 minutes can blow the crap out of some equipment.  In many cases unless you can conclusively prove beyond any doubt that the mains was excessively high voltage most electricity suppliers don't give a toss.  After all it isn't their CEOs very expensive high-end audio system that's getting blown up.  Just to add insult to injury, some manufacturers won't honour warranty repair costs if it has been diagnosed the applicance has been connected to a supply that had a voltage outside of the operating tolerances of the device.  This also includes supply voltages that went too low.  Perhaps not a big deal with the average bit of audio kit, but many motors can prematurely fail if run from too low a supply voltage for too long.

 

I suppose there is some merit in a good switchmode PSU which can be designed to be very tolerant of changes to supply voltage, albeit they are generally built to a price rather than for performance and mostly considered a no no for quality audio. 

 

I currently live in the metropolitan area of a capital city and I frequently observe significant fluctuations in mains voltage (anything up to +/- 15v of the nominal 230v supply is typical) as measured by the supply meter in the switchboard.  This level of variance can be observed over periods of less than 1 minute (not hours) and it isn't just limited to one phase either.    With the prospect of moving to a rural area, I'm thinking I might have to budget in to the cost of relocating some form of mains line conditioning / regulation equipment.  If the mains supply isn't stable in the city I don't suspect it's going to be any better in rural areas.

 

Cheers,

Alan R.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Monkeyboi

[niss_man]

Not sure I can justify their judgement on this at all - quite the opposite. Nonetheless they claim that for short periods it is acceptable and within their terms of supply.

   I just found this interesting pdf which confirms this. Interesting point on pg 12 "Low voltage network" it says the 216V-253V is measured as a 10 minute "average".

 

Regards

 

Simon

ENOS_Oct2011.pdf

[Catostylus]

But is it permitted by AS 60038?

[rawl99]

As a further conversation starter on solar power in relation to HiFi, I offer the following experience.

The following quote was written by another party present at the same time as I was.

"Hi Guys

Here’s a little tale from last night, four QAC guys got together as they do, myself being one of them! Now I’d been to this member’s house about 6-8 weeks earlier and he has a both musical and dynamic setup. Now we were pulling bit in and out so the sound was obviously going to fluctuate but from memory the whole first 2-3 hours just didn’t hit the highs of my previous visit.

Now our host isn’t a man to accept average or even good and he was quietly getting irate at this dilemma. The topic came up and the other guys were saying “well it’s not as good a sound as our last visit three weeks ago†… so the question was raised “so what’s different/changed since thenâ€. Well in fact the main system hadn’t actually been switched on since then. But hey, we’d already been running 2-3 hours so everything would have been warmed up by then? Our host left the room and we continued talking – zap – listen to that. Hey, slowly over a minute or so – whoosh – everything came into focus – the magic had reappeared in the audio – beautiful.

Our host returned – hey - sit down and listen to this! A smile appeared on his face – “okay – what did you just do …†Well, the one thing that had happened over the last three week was the installation of a solar panel system on the roof. Although it wouldn’t have been working at 11:00 pm and would have been sat “off-line†it was still on. He’d simply turned off the inverter – doh.

So, although not “ticking over†the inverter must have been turning out a hell of a lot of “hash/interference†through the power supply blah, blah blah – no we couldn’t really come up with a positive reason. But back and forth we went – inverter on – crap sound – inverter off – magic sound – off – crap – on – magic.

So for those with solar, it might be worth a try. Play a few of your favourite tracks – go turn your solar off – come back and replay then. It’d be interesting to “hear†if you get a similar improvement"

So in light ( intended!) of this experience I decided to chat with a few others and suggest that they try this out and see what their experiences were.

Over the last couple of months all of the folks that I have asked to try this out have had the same experience as described above.

One gent I discussed it with has noticed 2 interesting things.

With the solar connected, the tv picture is sharper than without.

With the solar connected his 2 ch drops its guts.

So, opposite outcome for 2 different aspects.

He has also discussed this with some friends and they have had the same experiences when trying this experiment with their grid-tie systems.

The aspect with the audio that seems to get hurt by the solar is that of the liquidity, beauty, flow, life, or organic sense of emotional engagement with the music (pick your preferred word).

With the inverter switched off the music has the same sense of life as live music does.

With the inverter connected (ac side), this sense of life disappears and it becomes a bland cutout of a live performance.

This very consistently repeatable and was observed by all people present that night, and also n subsequent follow-up experiments.

One thing I must throw out there.

If a system does not have this sense of 'life' that I talk of then I strongly suspect that solar on/off may produce no appreciable difference. Ie You can't lose what you haven't got.

Some systems have it, many don't.

And price point, interestingly enough, from my observations, is NOT a determining factor.

And please don't come back with the " if the power supply was properly designed then this wouldn't happen because it would filter all the mains noise out"

Experiences??

Cheers

Rawl

[proftournesol]

Rawl do you know what brand of inverter it was?

[Soundscape]

Hmmm, interesting. Will try that out. I wonder how it can affect incoming power if, like all grid interactive systems, it is on its own circuit/meter? Maybe if the inverter is installed close to the switchboard or other cable runs, it is radiating electromagnetic energy strong enough to affect the other circuits?

Edited October 6, 2013 by rehabitat

[rawl99]

Rawl do you know what brand of inverter it was?

5kW Xantrex.

Very good quality inverter from all accounts.

The other folks I have chatted with have had a mixed bag of brands from what I could ascertain.

Rawl

[rawl99]

Hmmm, interesting. Will try that out. I wonder how it can affect incoming power if, like all grid interactive systems, it is on its own circuit/meter? Maybe if the inverter is installed close to the switchboard or other cable runs, it is radiating electromagnetic energy strong enough to affect the other circuits?

It still connects directly back to the supply on the grid side of the meter so is in effect a purely parallel 'load' to the house.

Whatever noise is generated from this parallel load will be 100% coupled to the mains in the house.

With regards your last point, I had also been wondering whether it is aerial RF coupling or noise being spat back out up the line from the inverter unit.

A combination of both methinks.

I had an email interchange with Russel Story from Stones Sound Studio and he has had significant experience in this area, with a wealth of knowledge, and had a few suggestions re earthing, shielding, physical location of inverter etc.

[proftournesol]

rawl it would be great if you can share that info as I'm about to buid a new house and sound room with rooftop PV and a grid connected battery system