alt Hacker NewsThey are pretty clearly targeting DIYers and enthusiasts who like tinkering with off-grid solar.
Grid-connected is an entirely different ball game. You will not see any open source projects there, or at least not any that anyone will want to use.
Let's think about why not. Anything grid-connected, you REALLY want a licensed electrician to plan and install. And competent electricians will NOT go anywhere near a piece of equipment that is not UL certified. A company producing equipment is NOT going to go through the expense of getting UL certified and then just release their design, PCB, and schematics for free.
And I want to be clear that I am a strong proponent of open source hardware, there are just certain situations where the incentives in reality just don't line up. This is one of them.
Replies
Could the inverse process work? Design, then (crowdsource?) pay for UL certs? Don't know the process for certification, but in the software side, I've heard from foss projects asking for money for, e.g, security audits
Bollocks. I've been making grid connected hardware for decades, there is nothing magical about any of that. You just need to be careful, use proper fusing and you need to know how to read the electrical code.
Competent electricians are licensed professionals who (1) stand to make money on selling gear and (2) have customers that hire them simply because they don't want the hassle or the liability. Obviously a licensed professional is not going to install your home brew inverter, but at the same time if you can design a homebrew inverter you probably don't need a licensed professional anyway.
I've rewired lots of homes and have never had an issue with any of this and designed my first inverter when I was 17 to power my room when my betters decided I should go to sleep and cut the power.
This stuff is not magic. If someone designs a modern open source inverter I'm definitely going to build and install it. Fortunately insurance companies here are reasonable: if your homebrew device wasn't the cause of the mishap then you are still insured.
The one thing they are very strict about is gas, because there is no such thing as a 'fuse for gas'. But if you've properly designed and fused your gear then it should be no less safe than any other grid connected device, even if the magic UL or TUV mark isn't there.
The big one is EMI, that can be hard to get right and you need some gear for this, which is why it pays off to pool the money for an open source design to be certified. And once certified of course the design is 'type approved' and frozen, so you can't change any of the hardware without going through recertification. This is expensive, but if you don't do it every other week should still be well within the means of a properly set up open source project.
Why the fearmongering? It's not as if we're 12 here.
> Anything grid-connected, you REALLY want a licensed electrician to plan and install.
Have you heard of balcony solar?
It's a solar panel, a microinverter, and a standard wall plug. It doesn't need an electrician to install any more than anything else, you just plug it in. Outlets work both ways.
LibreSolar doesn't seem to be working on any inverters, but a complete open source system like this would be great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power