[RFI] Tesla's Response to Solar Panel RFI

[EDWARDS, EDDIE J]

"... yes, they are changing their designs.  These field retrofits are expensive."  

Ed, 

How expensive are the retrofit kits? 

I was not talking about "expensive retrofits" being a design change.  That indicates they are NOT changing their basic design at all.  By "Basic Design" I meant it is redesigned so as not to need any field retrofits at all to work properly without creating RFI.  Based on your posts it sounds like that's not happening and not going to happen in the future.  

The result of the original RFI design eventually being installed everywhere to fight the "theory of climate change" is going to be exactly what I described in my post.  

In the future, hams will move into a house (with NO HOA or Covenant antenna limits!) and find out too late that neighbor(s) have noisy RFI solar panels installed years ago that he didn't see or notice.  

Or in other cases someone wants to become a licensed ham operator and buys a radio and puts up an antenna after spending months studying and getting his/her license.  Then he/she learns the cause of their poor reception is RFI from neighbor(s) solar panels that were installed several years ago.  

In both cases, I very much doubt the installer or supply vendor is going to provide a free expensive field retrofit to all the ham's neighbors who suddenly have a new ham moving in next door many years after the initial installation.  

The result of this scenario is the licensed ham will have to either pay for the expensive field retrofit for all of his/her neighbors (possibly several or even dozens of neighbors), sell the newly purchased house and move to the countryside with fewer neighbors, or else give up on ham radio and get a new hobby that doesn't have these expensive never ending RFI problems. (RFI grow lights, RFI battery chargers, RFI wall warts, & many other RFI sources keeping noise floor at S7-8 so he/she still can't hear most HF stations who live in the countryside calling.)  

Our amateur radio "technical pool" will continue to shrink even further than it already has the last 30 years due to HOAs and covenants causing them to eventually lose interest in participating in amateur radio at all.  I've watched many hams leave the hobby for these reasons.  Most hams get into the hobby to operate their radios, not spend most of their time tracking down RFI sources or fighting HOAs.  Model railroading is beginning to look like a better retirement hobby more and more every day.  

73, de ed -K0iL
Ed Edwards

-----Original Message-----
From: RFI <rfi-bounces at contesting.com> On Behalf Of Hare, Ed W1RFI
Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2019 4:35 PM

Actually, yes, they are changing their designs.  These field retrofits are expensive.  The Lab's W1VLF was on the list to get his own home system upgraded and they replaced the inverter, the optimizers, added ferrites and did twisted pairs  to the panels, not a big loop.

It reminds me of the BPL days, when some manufacturers did change the design of their systems not to use the  ham  bands. That got  into various industry specifications and the ITU-R adopted  recommendations for BPL to avoid Amateur, broadcast and other  spectrum.


Ed

________________________________
From: Eddie Edwards 
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2019 10:23 PM
Subject: RE: [RFI] Tesla's Response to Solar Panel RFI

Unless solar vendors change there basic design to
eliminate RFI in all cases before installation, this will eventually
escalate to a bigger mess mostly in regions where ample sunshine allows a 10
year break even on investment when electric bills rise sharply.  I don't
think the solar vendors will change their bad design.  So eventually it will
escalate when a ham moves into a home where a neighbor has noisy solar
panels already in place for a few years, and the ham discovers this too late
after moving in.  Now he has a complaint that the vendor will not respond to
since it is not a new installation.  This is our future for HF ham radio.

This will reduce the number of hams active on HF just as HOAs have done over
the long term.