Has anyone gotten their server rack to run off solar power.

I got the idea after seeing the Anker solix systems on sale at costco and thought what if I could get one of those to power my server rack and have a few rigid solar panels on the roof to charge the battery up during the day and run the server partially during the night off the battery, but switch over to grid power when it runs dry?

Curious if anyone has any experience with that, I’m not looking to do my whole house just my server rack for now, from my limited tracking of my rack it looks like it uses 8kwh a day so it seems possible. Searching online it looks like there are much cheaper battery options than anker

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    Yeah, running it like that here. Works fine for the most part, except that the hybrid inverter that I bought advertised “UPS” mode, but it doesn’t actually switch fast enough to avoid also adding a proper UPS (but running an UPS chained is another issue…).

    It sounds a bit strange as it does actually run off the battery all the time (unless below the minimum charge limit, when it seamlessly switches to grid power automatically), but due to legal requirements it needs to switch to another supply mode when the grid power fails and this switch is not entirely seamless on my inverter.

    • NeatoBuilds@mander.xyzOPEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      interesting, I do have a UPS on my rack already so chaining it isnt an issue. everything is plugged into the UPS now so I was imagining just unplugging the UPS from the wall and into the anker box, then just figuring out how to add enough solar panels to power the rack but also charge the battery

        • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          7·
          3 days ago

          My UPS at home just straight up won’t run off of another UPS unless it’s a perfect sinewave. Square wave REALLY makes it mad, and modified sinewave doesn’t work either. No matter what the UPS will refuse that power and only use its batteries.

          I can’t find anything on their website about it being sinewave (pure or modified) so I’m going to assume it’s square wave. I’d imagine a high quality PSU found in a server will handle it, but it won’t be happy.

          https://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/Anker-SOLIX-G179011A/p152319.html

          AC Inverter Output - 6000 Watt Continuous (240V) / 9000 Watt Surge

          Pure Sine Wave design provides extremely clean power

          Why is this not on their own website?

      • BakedCatboy@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        3 days ago

        If the battery inverter in the Anker box doesn’t pass through grid power then I think you would use an automatic transfer switch that switches between mains and battery inverter depending on which is powered. I had dreams of offsetting my homelab power with solar + battery + inverter.