Category Archives: → Technicians

Blog posts of interest to technicians who work on solar or generator equipment.

How to build a 640W UPS Using Victron Parts

You can build an Online UPS which is better than commercially available UPS systems using Victron Energy parts. It will better protect your equipment from bad utility power because power fluctuations and surges will never be passed through to your equipment, and you can extend the run time to whatever you need by adding more batteries.

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Operating Starlink on Solar power

A lot of our folks are anticipating getting a Starlink Internet terminal in their remote village location in the next year or two. The “Dishy McFlatface” terminals and monthly fees are quite affordable, however Dishy requires a lot more power than a typical laptop computer, so powering it on solar will be a significant expense. Below are 3 reference designs for power systems capable of running your Starlink terminal different amounts of time each day. To keep costs down you’ll probably want to limit your Starlink Internet use to daylight hours and operate it less than 5 hours per day.

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A Visual USB Cable Guide

With the introduction of the latest USB-C, USB PD and USB 3.0/ 3.1/ 3.2 specifications there are a lot of optional features that can be implemented by USB devices, but these features only work if you’ve got the right cable. Here’s how to recognize the cable you need. Remember that transfer speeds and power delivery is determined by the equipment on both ends of the cable, but the wrong cable can be a limiting factor.

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Test Driving a Half-Pint-XT Solar Power System

Online Test Drive Logo

The Online Test Drive is a useful tool for figuring out whether one of the GTIS Power Systems’ packaged systems will work for you. Plus, it will help you understand a little about using solar energy – the importance of panel and battery sizes, the importance of sky conditions, and the importance of load size and runtime.

Here’s a typical case. A linguist/translator  writes, “I would like to set up a village worker with a solar system and notebook computer, buying it locally. It will be a Lenovo ThinkPad 11e Gen 2. The person I want to set up spends part of his time in Alotau town [Papua New Guinea], where 240 volt AC power is usually available, and part of his time in a village situation without power.

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