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Mine's the 8kW model. Q

Probably a bit easier, just through practice, but I've never tried lubricating it, for example. It's certainly easier when it's on the bike rack on the back of my campervan, rather than at ground level 🙂

That's because they are! If I could have bought curtains, back when I made this, I would probably have done so! But these do the job very nicely.

Hi - yes, you could do quite a lot that way, but it has some challenges too. Have a look at the comment by @UKenGB earlier and my responses. It would be interesting to try, though...

Hallo - ich bin froh, dass du damit zufrieden bist. Ich habe meine kürzlich in meinem Wohnmobil in die Niederlande gebracht. Ich habe die meiste Zeit einen Fahrrad-Rack benutzt, aber es war sehr nützlich, das Fahrrad in den Van auf die Fähre zu legen. Es machte den Campervan kürzer und spart Geld auf dem Ticket!

Hi Matthew - the 55kg is the amount of *vertical* weight that the ball is designed to support. So if you have a bike rack and a couple of bikes sitting on the tow ball, they shouldn't exceed that. (I hadn't seen that, actually, so thanks... Our two folding ebikes plus carrier come in just under that if we remove the batteries.) The weight that can be *towed in a horizontal direction*, however, is a great deal larger! Up to a tonne, if the trailer has brakes, and 750kg if it doesn't. The 'nose weight' or 'tongue weight', which is the downwards force the trailer exerts on the towbar, is specified as 100kg max. I'm guessing this is more than the 55kg mentioned earlier because the trailer exterts a simple downward force without the twisting moment of a bike rack, created by effectively putting a weight on a lever which is gripping the ball. www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-BD9A38D5-4410-45A3-8337-BDF7342750F3.html Hope that makes sense? Quentin

Yes, I think the only way to convince it that a mic is attached is also to convince it that headphones are attached, and they do seem to override the internal speakers, possibly at the electronic connection level, rather than in software...

@@quentinsf I appreciate the reply Quentin, and yes it's been confirmed that this is hardware (DAC) limitation. Looks like my only solution is a USB-C external microphone (or an external audio interface, which would be unnecessarily complicated and expensive).

Ours is the 8kW model, but they have various different sizes. You can change the minimum charge level of the batteries; we set ours to 10%.

Well, to be more exact, the current recommendations are against installations in attics - it's not banned - and these recommendations have been greatly debated. The key issues seem to be the worry about heavy weights dropping through the roof if the rafters catch fire (but my kit is all mounted on the wall), and the likelihood of high temperatures in the loft in the summer (but I've monitored mine for a year and the temperatures are OK). So the recommendations do make some sense, but I'm not too worried about my own installation, and it's perfectly possible to have a safe installation in the roof if it's properly thought out.

Great! We've used ours a lot since this video and have been very pleased with them.

Hi Ken - Yes, that's quite appealing, isn't it? But I think the main limitation would be that, unlike dumb chargers, the Zappi is not just an on/off switch: it can provide variable charging rates. This is important when you want only to use your excess solar, for example, rather than the full 7kW. (I think I talk about the same issue with the Eddi immersion-heater controller in one of my other videos: it's basically a big dimmer switch!) So, for example, as the clouds pass over the sun, or as I briefly consume lots of power elsewhere to make a cup of tea, the Zappi can increase, reduce or stop the charging and then restart it again afterwards. Through Home Assistant, I do have some visibility of things like the Tesla state of charge, and I also have a certain amount of control over the charging rate through the current that the car is set to draw from the supply, but it's not nearly as much control as the Zappi gives, and (because it depends on when the car happens to talk to the cloud), these things can't be monitored or updated very promptly or frequently. Now, if I wanted a bigger project, I could probably build something interesting around OpenEVSE, and control it locally... 🙂 Q

​@@quentinsf Aha, OpenEVSE, now you're talking. 😀 The one EVSE I have already installed is one of those. How well can those be integrated into HA? I am in the process of looking into all this and not got there yet. The trouble with using the EVSE for any of this, like schedules etc is that it gets problematic with more than one EVSE. You end up having to set them all up individually, and then any modifications to the setup have to be duplicated to each and so on. If you want any variation to suit different cars, that would have to be locked in to the EVSE. So each car would always have to connect to a specific EVSE which is not great IMO and certainly not how I want it. So I really want dumb EVSEs, all controlled from HA. Schedules set up only once in HA and then ideally be able to detect which car was connected to which EVSE and apply the correct schedule to suit the car. Would like to also use HA to handle solar, batteries etc. but that may well require a proprietary app. 😕 Basically, I want HA to control everything as it's one interface to deal with and I get control over how that interface appears and operates. Also, it is NOT dependent on Internet connectivity. Not that I have a problem with my Internet connection (FTTP is fantastic), but I don't want to be reliant on anyone else's servers controlling my home. They do NOT have my best interests at heart and can introduce unwanted changes, change their mind about ongoing support or even go out of business at any time. I'm not yet sure about which EVSE is best suited for that though.

You almost certainly have CT clamps on your system for the reasons mentioned, for the inverter, eddi and zappi to use. If not, then I'd be very surprised! Now, there might not be room to arrange them as I've described, perhaps because of lack f space in your consumer unit... but they can be replaced or extended unless they're in a very confined space. Might be worth contacting another electrician familiar with such systems for a second opinion. And sending him a link to the video, of course! 🙂

No, that's true, and it's somewhat discouraged now by some new much-debated official guidance. But for many people other options are difficult if not impossible. I've watched my temperatures for a year, and when it gets above about 60C, the inverter fans kick in and stop it going above about 65C, so that's clearly their design temp. The batteries have never gone above about 30C, which is quite a happy temp for them. So I think mine's OK. I did add a thermostat-controlled extractor in the loft last summer, but I don't think it really makes any difference.

@@quentinsf I moved my inverter to an adjacent loft that had a vent tile . Its a lot cooler , Ithought it best .

Thanks Chris - it sounds as if mine is more of a UPS, in that the inverter is generally operating and supplying power from solar and/or battery, whether or not the grid is connected. I do also have smaller UPSs on some equipment, but the main difference is really to do with how the mains is isolated in case of failure, rather than how the backup is started up! I only picked up the 'EPS' phrase because it was what the installers used.

@@quentinsf if it is a ups , then when running on it, do not use electric motors, drills, kitchen mixers, large transformers etc

Well, whichever it is, it can supply 8kW and run the washing machine just fine 🙂

(But there is a very slight flicker sometimes visible on the lights at the moment the grid disconnects. I think a full switchover is more in the 20-40ms range, probably)

@@quentinsf Sounds like EPS - that is more normal for a general electrical supply

Yes, I saw that, though it doesn't concern me too much... The rationale was, I think, chiefly about two things: a worry about temperatures in the loft, but I've monitored mine through a year and had no problems. The inverter gets hot, but the batteries are fine. And the second was the concern, in case of fire, of heavy weights falling from high up, so I'm glad that mine are bolted to the wall and not supported on wooden rafters!

Hi Paul - good question, but no, the Zappi doesn’t know anything about how much charge the car has (unlike rapid chargers, which can find out the percentage). So it can control how much it’s adding, but it doesn’t know the starting point. I could automate that in Home Assistant, if I knew that I wanted the car charged to 85%, say, but I haven’t tried because the reports I get from the Tesla into HA about charging status don’t update very frequently or reliably. If either of them provided a good non-cloud API with more regular updates, things might be different! Best, Q

@@quentinsf thank you so much, super clear.

Oh, and just to clarify, the *scheduled* boost on the Zappi sets an amount of *time*, not an amount of charge to add.

Sorry for the delay, Chris - I missed this. They are Paulmann Velora Zigbee LCD panels.

@@quentinsf many thanks. Also Sunsynk now in and very impressed

@@chrisdotbrown1 In case it's useful, I had an old Raspberry Pi and decided to pay for Solar Assistant, which gives a nicer interface for many things than the Sunsynk app. The Pi is connected directly to the inverter, so you may need to get or make up the appropriate lead, but this means it isn't dependent on Sunsynk's servers.

@@quentinsf Thanks for this - I had looked at Solar Assistant previously but as it was difficult to interface to my old inverter I had forgotten about it. I had started to look at ESPHome based interfaces so I could interface to Home Assistant, But looking again at Solar Assistant it covers the inverter and my pylontech batteries and interfaces to HomeAssistant - plus I have a box of pi 3's. Need to check out the Octopus Agile options next. Cheers Again

@@chrisdotbrown1 I use it to connect to Home Assistant via MQTT. (But I think there's also an HA integration for the Sunsynk, and some people have used serial-over-ethernet adapters to link their sunsynk directly to the HA box.)

Hi Matt - sorry for the delay; I've been away. (Using my bike in the Netherlands!) But yes, mine also says 2022. Quentin

Hi Phelim - If you're not using the Aux output as a separate battery-backed UPS output, as I am, or a generator input, then yes, you can use it as a diverter. But it is basically an on/off switch. In the case of my immersion heater, that would be 3kW or nothing. The advantage of the Eddi is that it's basically a giant dimmer switch! If I have 200W of excess power, it can still use that to gently warm up some water, and vary the amount as the sun goes behind clouds. Also, it can control two heating elements, so if you have a tank with two heaters in it, or a water tank and a greenhouse heater, you can control them with different priorities. Whether all of that flexibility is worth the cost and complexity for you is, of course, a different question! Q

Oh, and one further thought - I make a (very) brief reference to the Eddi in this video too, which might be of interest if you haven't seen it. It's mostly about car-charging. czcams.com/video/iyPyXfsN6w0/video.html

Thank you very much that clarifies it for me.

Thanks - You are welcome!

Hi Chris - I actually have quite a complex consumer unit setup now! The house has lots of circuits and I started with two CUs before the installation. There are now 3 CU boxes, but two of them are effective split in half, to give the following sections: * The first half-CU is the incoming supply: the main switch and some circuits which are outside the inverter's normal world: the garage and car charger, and the immersion heater - these are never powered from the battery, though they can make use of excess solar which would otherwise be exported to the grid. * Then there's my main RCD, and the output from that -- the second half of the CU -- has the main supply to the inverter and the things that won't ever be powered in the event of a grid failure: in my case that's really only the oven. The two other CUs are for the things that *do* run from the battery during a power cut, so these are supplied with power from the inverter. * There are some that will only be powered while the battery is more than 50% full - the 'Aux' output mentioned in the video. There aren't many of these: the washing machine and tumble drier, for example, and so they only get half a CU. * Finally, there are those circuits which are *always* battery-backed. This is the majority of the house, and the circuits take up the remaining 1.5 consumer units :-) So I actually have one 1.5-CU section, and three 0.5-CU sections! It would be much tidier to have four separate CUs, but they're in a cupboard which only just has room for three! Still, to answer your basic question, it's possible to split the bus bar in a consumer unit into multiple sections, and if you have enough space, you don't really need a separate box for each bit. But you will probably need an RCD or a master switch or similar for each section, so splitting the bus in half doesn't come without cost. One stroke of luck was to find a Brother PT-E300 label printer on sale at a great discount early in the process, and labelling carefully and in some detail everything the installers didn't label themselves (and quite a few things they did!)

@@quentinsf Thanks, nice setup! I'm essentially struggling to find an installer that would put most of the house on UPS. I have one that will only do an AUX socket only and the other that would put a small backup board for lighting and the boiler only but it seems a shame not to have a few sockets working like internet and TV. Do you know if it has to be split from the main unit? I thought the inverter would just deal with the power cut and use the same CU...

​@@ChrisRenga It does have to be an inverter that is approved for automatic switching into 'island mode', and one that has a high-enough wattage rating to have a reasonable chance of running your house. The typical home battery installation just isn't big enough; it might have an 8kWh battery which is capable of discharging 4-5kW, and you wouldn't be able to turn on a hairdryer and a kettle at the same time... so the easiest way to stop people overloading it is to turn off most of the circuits. And there are the complexities I've mentioned in the video of the automatic switchover when the grid goes down - some systems will just offer a manual switch rather than an automated 'backup gateway'. Still better than nothing, but... My inverter can output about 9kW, and I had also been logging my electricity usage for a while so could show the installer that we pretty much never exceeded that, once you excluded the car charger. When I was looking, the only real options that could do what I wanted were, I think, the Tesla Powerwall or the Sunsynk, or you could build a system using multiple components from Victron. There may be other options now...

Yes... I can't say I'd want to heave them in and out every day, but it's certainly doable! One challenge is that they need to lie on their side, and I haven't worked out which way up: whether it's better to have them resting on the brake levers on the handlebars, or the derailleur. I'm thinking about getting something like a big garden foam kneeler and cutting a derailleur shaped hole in it and resting the bike on that...

Yes, the estarli's a very nice bike. Trying them side by side, we liked the ride on these a bit more, and the eovolts also have a larger battery and more range. The eStarli's a little bit smaller when folded, though, which is nice. And, as you say, it is cheaper. Have fun!

Yes - not sure which came first! I think eovolt have been making 20in folding bikes for longer, but perhaps not this particular model.

Ah, a belt would be nice. And hub gears, then, I guess?

Yes, 2 hub gears...@@quentinsf

@@geertvanpeteghem Sounds good. I only use about two gears on mine even though it has seven!

@@quentinsf In fact they change the motor and will use a Bafang motor with integrated two gear automatic transmission. All components will be upgraded and it is a significant change. Downside is that the price will increase significantly to approx €3000

@@roterpilot Interesting. The big price increase makes me feel better about getting an earlier one!

Not proper hills, I'm afraid - we're in East Anglia! But such hills as I've tried seem fine. Most similar bikes have a 250W motor these days, I think, so I'm guessing will have similar performance, though I guess the torque curve will be different on some, and on those with a bottom bracket motor, the gearing could make quite a difference. I've certainly felt very safe on it coming *down* hills. It inspires confidence, given the wheel size.

Hi James - my charge current limit is 32A (it's an 8kW inverter, so 240x32 is about right). And the discharge limit is set to 200A (which is approx 10kW at approx 50V). I haven't tweaked these - they were set by the installer. I think the 200A discharge number comes from the fact that the batteries are rated at 0.5C - their maximum discharge rate per hour is half of their capacity. I have 20kWh, so the batteries can discharge 10kW, though the inverter couldn't quite convert all of that. Best, Q

@@quentinsf Thanks Quentin, that's a big help.