Professional at Being an Amateur: Expert Amateur is a website and video channel for people who do serious things without being paid to do them. We document open-source projects in solar energy, home automation, fire resilience, and anything else worth building — with enough detail that you can build it too.
Serious projects. No credentials required.
Popular Videos and Posts
These things are a little miracle. A jumpstarter you hold in one hand that I used to start the 6.7 liter diesel in my truck. How can this be? The truck has two lead acid batteries the size of toaster ovens. I left the damned lights on at a race track...
There are a host of myths about Lithium batteries, many more than there used to be about lead acid. One reason is the various chemistries lumped under a single name, but also there are the somewhat strange ways that they work, age, degrade, and get...
A bifacial panel is only half-installed when the modules are bolted down, because the whole point of paying for glass on both sides is the light that comes up from underneath — and that depends entirely on what you put on the ground. This is the part...
The MC4 connector is probably the most reviled electrical connector in modern use–and it’s not the connector’s fault. We’re going to cover more than just the MC4, and the basics here apply to almost everything you want to...
If you’re going to use more than one inverter to power your home or business you might know what I’m talking about, and if you’re doing a three phase system with three inverters than you almost certainly do. There’s a lot more...
The panels are the part people photograph. The rack, the neat rows, the glint of glass — that’s the money shot. But the decisions that actually make or break a solar build often happen in the unglamorous space between the array and the inverter...
Panels fail almost never unless you do something stupid to them. Inverters mostly die of old age or a lightning hit. The part that actually burns solar arrays down is the one nobody photographs and everybody underestimates: the little plastic connector...
In the last post I got 30 bifacial panels mounted straight and neat on the Chiko rack. But a bifacial panel is only half-installed when the modules are bolted down, because the whole point of paying for glass on both sides is the light that comes up...
My particular installation might serve as a useful guideline for yours, even if you elect to do a DIY rack. For various reasons I decided not to do mine DIY, mostly because I was concerned that I’d need an engineering stamp to pass local codes...