Over here, there’s a culture of picking mushrooms every autumn and it’s popular, but absolutely only the ones you know. I am qualified to pick [using Latin because local names would look meaningless] Cantharellus cibarius (easy to tell apart), Lactarius deterrimus (not so easy, but there are no poisonous look-alikes anywhere nearby) and Lactarius rufus (not edible when raw, but we boil + wash them and marinate for winter, due to their borderline edibility they are abundant and long-lasting in nature).

Among locals, I would be considered a dumb mushroom picker who should learn to recognize a few more edible species, but I can’t be bothered, becase I have a garden which overloads me with other produce at the same time when others pick mushrooms.

Since mushrooms are different in other places, I would not go picking mushrooms further than 500 km from home.

In case of uncertainty, I would always encourage not taking it.

It’s not meant for year-round inhabitation.

an occupancy restriction means the owners can only inhabit the property for 51 weeks of the year.

…which is basically stuff people ignore, and which I would advise people to ignore.

It definitely has. But in my case, I’m not bypassing it - the external part of the charger is communicating to the car using the Type 1 interface and telling “charge at X amps”. (But I know that’s not applicable to DIY situations.)

…and since the tripping occurs within the ramp-up period or very soon after (e.g. on second 7), I’m fairly certain nothing has managed to overheat yet. I think that some generators have poor steering regulators, mine included.

Then take one that can take about 80% of the generator power and feed that into the battery bank. Size the charger to the lower of both numbers.

80% feels like too much.

My electric car has a 1600 W charging mode. My emergency gasoline generator supplies 2100 W theoretically if the power factor is 1 (totally resistive load). When I connect my charger in 1600 W mode, the generator trips and drops the load, however. It manages to work at 1200 W or below. And this happens despite the charger having a slow ramp-up behaviour (it doesn’t go to full load in a second, but during 5 seconds).

So based on experience, I would advise to pick a charger that can take 50…60% of the generator’s power.

For a 24V lead acid battery, look for chargers designed for warehouse equipment (forklifts), wheelchairs, truck batteries and such.

I’m quite certain that this is some misunderstanding.

Just like in every country where people don’t want to be caught bare-butted in a firestorm, I’m sure that in Belgium too, hospitals, water treatment, military units, air traffic control, rail traffic control, seaports, lighthouses, rescue services, communications hubs, data centers, critical warehouses (e.g. blood bank, vaccine storage, fuel distribution), big data centers and some industries (anything where devices would be ruined by an extended outage) have double or triple redundant power.

In my book, something becomes an electrical grid when power distribution lines cross from one plot of land to another. In some countries, monopoly to do that might be granted to the national grid company.

Now, as for housing and construction bureaucracy: it might be entirely possible that it’s near-impossible to build a decent-sized house in a normal-looking country (including Belgium) without requesting a grid connection for it. Construction bureaucracy is insane in some lands. They might demand you to build a road and lay plumbing too, just because you’re in “zone A” and some local regulation says “all living premises in zone A shall be connected to electrical, water and sewage grids”. My advise in that case: don’t build a living premise. Build something else but live there. :)

P.S.

I also note that Belgium seems to have regulations for microgrids.

https://www.energuide.be/en/questions-answers/what-are-microgrids/2129/

Public electricity networks in Western urban areas are extremely dense and also closely monitored. Because macrogrids are highly reliable, microgrids are virtually unnecessary.

However, efforts are being made to introduce renewable energy into urban environments, too. This is possible through collective self-consumption, for example, where consumers and producers come together as part of a local project (association, cooperative, co-ownership, etc.).

The principle is simple. Let’s say you want to generate sustainable energy, but you’re renting an apartment, living in a protected building or your roof isn’t suitable for solar panels. You can still form a cooperative with other individuals and generate electricity on the roof of a neighbouring school, office or warehouse, for example.

In Brussels, the distribution network operator Sibelga and Leefmilieu Brussel are examining the possibilities for collective self-consumption in the capital city.

In my experience, most car sockets struggle to deliver 10 A and might be fused at 20 A (but a fuse is not a suggestion, it’s a safety device). :)

Over here, no experience with ModBus yet. One customer might want an application, but in my own house, they’re all air gapped and I program them with buttons. :)

Hard to tell. Definitely not where I live (Estonia) since local planning bureaucrats seem to have a fairly strict understanding of “how you are supposed to live”. What follows is an imaginary conversation with planning officials over years:

• “why do you ask for a building permit, you’ve got to get a road first”

• “we want you to pay for the road, paving it, running road lighting along it, etc, please invest several hundred thousand into getting that road”

• “so, to bypass our demands, you built an agricultural building, please don’t live there, at least not publicly”

• “you want to install solar panels, there’s a permit for that”

• “so, to bypass our demands, you installed movable solar panels and a solar fence, we are severely concerned about it and consider taking action, but won’t”

• “after years, out of sheer bordedom, we are intending to privatize your access way and attach pieces of it to other plots of land”

• “we can’t take public ownership of it, as that could obligate us to build a road there, and we don’t really understand why you wouldn’t want to force us to”

• “oh, you spoiled part of our plan by requesting a power grid connection to be built along that path of land, now we’re kind of stuck with it, but hey, let’s try to obstruct getting the grid connection built”

• “let’s have doubts about why a power grid connection is needed, as the buidling it might supply isn’t properly registered”

• “oh, you have written that you need a power grid connection for a vehicle charging point and those have really low planning requirements, damn convenient to you, in fact you might get the connection built indeed”

Same question. :) The OP seems to have forgotten to post it.

What I can tell by heart: MorningStar is an established brand and they’re fairly well trusted - they’ve been selling charge controllers and inverters for at least a decade. They might be a bit costly, but there’s support and it’s likely to work. :)

Myself, I haven’t had the chance to look at their products up close.

Regardless of whether an opinion is for or against something, the recommended subject matter of this community is definitely not smart cities, but off-grid living.

smart cities

There must be a better community for that. A city, especially a smart city, would not be considered off grid.

I am not a member there, but I would take a look at “c/urbanism”. It is about cities.

Moderator of community, not admin of instance.

Exotic, rare, not representative of everyday things.

Here’s a reasonably representative photo.

No. Also, I apologize for being a bit rude, but what would you gain from having a video of a home wind generator working? There’s probably thousands of such videos on the Internet.

The question is too vague to answer well, but I have run a high autonomy household for 10 years, so it’s possible. Solar with battery storage, small wind generator to supplement things during storms. Heating uses wood.

Latitude 59, so I get an electrical energy crisis every winter, but on most winters, I don’t have to start a gasoline generator or bring electricity over with my e-car.

If you’re on a lower latitude, it becomes simpler, if you only have enough surface for solar panels.

Some types of solar charge controllers and battery managers have the capability to start a generator.

Steps:

1. charge controller: raises or lowers GPIO pin (3.3 or 5 V, current: a few milliamps)
2. relay board (needs 5V power): amplifies the GPIO signal and actuates a small relay
3. small relay: switches 12V power to actuate the starter relay (current: maybe 1 amp)
4. starter relay: powers the starter motor (12V, 10+ amps)

In an ideal world, your generator is well designed and already contains the starter relay, and the charge controller has a relay board, so you get to skip steps 1, 2 and 4 and just run a “start signal wire” between the two units.

Now, after getting your generator started, what you care about is load. The maker of the generator should have published a chart of efficiency vs. load. Too little load, and you’re wasting energy to overcome mechanical drag. Better stop the generator. Too much load, and you’re reducing the lifetime of your generator and risking accidents. Better reduce charging current.

Regarding UPS: a typical UPS comes with a lead acid battery that is not intended to be deep discharged repeatedly. If you end up doing that, expect dramatically reduced battery lifetimes.

If you’re new to electric circuits, your safest bet is probably an industrially produced LiFePO4 battery bank with balancing, alarm and emergency disconnect circuits built in.

However, if you have a manually startable generator, you better just get a big battery pack and find out what the optimal load for your generator is (note: might depend on temperature and cooling). You would want to start the generator rarely.

P.S.

If you can’t find a suitable product combination, this functionality can be DIY-ed with a Raspberry Pi, analog digital converter, voltage divider and cheap Chinese relays. But then it requires some electronics skills.

Sadly, I don’t know of any books on the subject. The only article I’ve read is this one:

https://tinyshinyhome.com/hyperadobe-earthbag-solar-shed-office-tour

Your intake of solar is quite low

I have other solar arrays besides the fence. Two diagonal arrays and one shed roof (which covers with snow in winter). All together they can currently give 4.5 kW. But this never happens in winter, of course.

If you cool something considerably below room temperature (specifically, the “dew point” at the air moisture level that you have), condensation will happen for sure.

I use my heat pump for cooling in summer. The indoor unit keeps dripping condensation water through a small hose into the big water tank.

This one looks neat, but I think I can propose a better one. :) It could be a tower, externally black in color, with the south-facing side transparent or windowed. The interior under the window should also be painted black. Instead of one rack, multiple racks of food could be installed.

Why?

• a tower develops ascending airflow, while a horizontal box does not, this helps ensure that moisture does not re-condense but leaves

• with a tower system, you can also dry foods that would degrade from sunlight (gather energy at the bottom and deliver it to a closed top part)

I even built one and used it to dry kale chips, but it was too tall - wind kept pushing it over.