I am going to get solar panels with battery wall installed soon. Plan is to use the battery wall to power the house when no sun shine. Will this is impact my power amp and pre amp in a good or bad way? Power amp is the Musical Fidelity 6s PRX. Thank you in advance.
You may find useful info here:
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I don’t think you will get the yes/no answer you would like. Of course on one hand it would make sense because all your energy is coming from a known source and not polluted by what’s going on in other houses.
However I can think of two areas to consider
- That pollution may be coming from your house anyway (e.g. fridges, heating systems, freezers etc),
- It all depends on the battery system, and how much care has gone into converting DC to clean AC via the inverter. The thing is these devices don’t have to produce a pure AC sine wave, so why would they put that extra expensive electronics on board for just a small number of customers. That’s not to say it will sound worse, it’s just an unknown, but would be really good if you could report back.
Some people have said that their HiFi sounds worse when their Panels are generating all their electrical needs, which they put down to their Solar inverter. I don’t hear any difference, but I always think the HiFi is better in the evening because everything is calmer and therefore more conducive to listening.
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I may need to see if a separate feed can be installed just for the HiFi to keep it on the mains. I’ll see what the installer can do.
Out of interest what will the power output of the batteries be, what is the storage? I only ask because I have been monitoring various high power devices in my house of late. For instance if I play a triple A gaming title on my pc, its drawing over half a KW of power constant.
Similar story for TV, I have a 55 incher its not new tech but its not plasma, that draws 300 watts constant. Hifi I dread to think, but have to imagine 400 watts plus at volume.
A dedicated feed is generally seen as a no brainer on this Forum, but as I don’t know how a battery backup system is wired, I couldn’t say if that’s still true for you. Perhaps get your Solar/Batteries installed first, and perhaps speak to the installer to see how it is wired.
Still be confirmed but a 10 kWh battery has been recommended. I’ve been told high demand at the moment so no installation for 10 weeks.
The issue here will be the quality of sine wave produced by your inverter or inverters. If this is noisey them im afraid it will not be good news. At very worst it will simply be chopped DC; although this is unlikely.
Im in the same boat. Just ordered panels with microinverters and a 9.5Kw storage battery. My supplier was unable to answer any questions about the quality of the inverters.
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We’ve got micro-inverters on a 8.7 kW system being installed this week, but no battery.
There was some non-conclusive discussions about how solar impacts on power supply and sound quality. I think it’s a case of wait and see (hear). I guess i there is Sine wave issues, there are thingies you can plug in for that?
The ideal AC output from an inverter is a pure sine wave. The very best inverters try to create this sine wave from chopping the DC supply. However, this complexity requires lots of high speed switching and electical energy itself. This switching, combined with the chopped DC could produce a very noisey AC signal.
Im not aware of anything to clean or filter this noise.
I was looking for a standard to which these inverters should comply with; something beyond frequency and voltage limits. In short, how close to a pure sine wave do they need to be.
Sounds ( literally) like a few of us will need to wait and feed back. My install will be early October, by the time the G99 is submitted and my GivEnergy battery built.
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I’m also getting a GivEnergy battery. I have a local electrician who gets the HiFi concerns over power supply and earthing, I’ll seek his advice and possibly contact GivEnergy.
PS Audio not keen on battery wall for HiFi. Claim distortion to great. See here:
Of course they do also sell their own AC generator, which is always a possible solution for you. They don’t seem to come up on eBay, which might suggest they work very well.
GivEnergy don’t recommend relience on the battery for sinewave sensitive equipment.
I wonder what they mean by that?
Dont rely on it, or it’s not prefeered.
Or, is the inverter output not for " sinewave sensitive " kit?
If that’s the case, we are buggered.
The output of some of their inverters is quite low when you have lost grid supply. I.e. dont put a kettle on.
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Yes don’t use it to drive high end hifi. Going to consult my electrician on options.
This is an interesting article that I found last night:
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Very interesting. So effectively in his case the Tesla Powerwall gave out a cleaner AC current than the Solar Panel inverter. Of course we don’t know how other battery systems/Solar Inverters would perform - if only someone would do some oscilloscope tests. Certainly big points for Tesla!
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We’re equally happy whether running from the grid, the solar PV, the Powerwall 2 or even a blend of the above. The Tesla Gateway 2 does a super job of seamlessly blending these sources in the background for us.
Best regards, BF
It’s almost like the Roon equivalent in the power management world 