Glad to hear it - but cost of renewable energy isn't the software or hardware locked behind vendors. Its installers, wholesalers and permitting. Pricing is set to about where homeowners will be willing to pay and installers will make a good profit. If only it was a 5 year payback - we'd see it everywhere in NA.
Not sure cost saving is the priority.
I got solar installed by the local power company and while it's well done and was a great deal regarding the price, the inverter stats are locked behind a really terrible app. At least there isn't a subscription cost but I wouldn't be surprised if they add one someday.
Would gladly pay more for fully open and serviceable replacement.
I get that - but also solar should be cheap. If we lower the cost of power we knock off a lot of the bad externalities of power production and allow people to be more inventive with their power use.
Agreed - a lot of the inverters do some real BS moves around data management clearly a way to extract more value in a subscription mode. Its mind numbingly frustrating.
Price isn't determined by the cost of supply but by the value provided to the buyer.
The stats are the least of your problem, the bigger ones are remote updates, planned obsolescence, hacking and bricking.
Yes, and?
This project isn't being marketd to people who call up a company to white-glove the whole-home installation end-to-end. This is for DIYers who have enough knowledge to tinker with self-designed solar projects but not the EE degree required to engineer some of the more specialized equipment themselves.
I'll give a good example: I use solar to power a ham radio station for a weekend in the summer. However, nearly ALL of the equipment you can buy for the production and storage of solar power emits some degree of radio-frequency interference, which is bad when your whole goal is to power a very sensitive radio.
When it comes to charge controllers in particular, there are exactly two companies that claim to make RFI-quiet MPPT controllers. One has mixed reviews (some people say they work great, some say they are not any better than anything else), and one is very good but also very expensive for what you get. So, more open design and community feedback from people like me might get the cost of a reliable RFI-free charge controller down to where it should be.
That's especially nasty when you're doing LF or VLF because the frequencies of the switches in those things are right in the middle of the bands that you are trying to receive.