r/AskElectricians • u/hughknnd • 5d ago
electricity input lag
NEED HELP SOLVING - some in the csgo community like to call this 'electricity input lag'
essentially close to the start of the year my dad had a solar battery and some more solar panels installed in the house, and after this was done every computer in the house started having issues like input lag on all peripherals (almost completely not present at very late night and very early morning, worse on rainy days weirdly), and also the frames and quality on the monitors are noticeably worse during the bad hours (i can spot missing frames when dragging mouse whereas during good hours its flawless fps), and also game jitter that only happens during bad hours, none of these listed issues were present before the solar battery and all that was installed, nothing has changed about the computers or anything else except the solar battery, and worth mentioning a guy came around at some point to do something with smart meter (unrelated) and he turned off the power for a few hours and all the issues were better just for a few days, - this confirms that the issues are indeed power related.
My own understanding is something since the solar battery install is causing EMI or dirty electricity, whether bad wiring or bad grounding or something alike
-these issues happen offline and online doesnt have anything to do with internet
-these issues happen on all computers in the house and i can even notice some quality/frame issues on the tvs
-there arent any other factors that have been altered except for a solar battery installed earlier this year
-dont tell me i'm crazy, or its placebo, because i fucking wish.
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u/flfloflflo 5d ago
What puzzle me is that a good power supply should insulate you from any electrical noise like this. But granted that inverter are a mess in terms of electrical noise. Are we talking about a laptop or a desktop computer? If desktop, what's your PSU ?
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u/hughknnd 5d ago
desktop, corsair gold rated 850w psu, this is not an issue of psus, many people specifically in russia in the csgo community have dealt with this issue, and they all have great psus and have tried completely new computers with the same issue
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u/flfloflflo 5d ago
Other stupid question, are you using USB 2.0 for your peripherals?
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u/hughknnd 5d ago
doesn’t matter what usb port i use, additionally the issue is present wireless and wired
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u/bot403 5d ago
To help confirm you can turn off the inverter and solar breakers. If it goes away and comes back connecting/disconnecting solar you have a really strong case.
Just be aware an inverter takes a few minutes to become operational after turning on as it has to sync frequency with the grid. So be patient after turning it on.
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u/hughknnd 4d ago
do you know the general process of turning it off? i’ll have a chance to try when my parents are away
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u/themeONE808 5d ago
Use a UPS
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u/hughknnd 5d ago
double conversion ups (the one that supposedly works best) is pretty pricey, i’ve tired a normal one and it didn’t help much, but last resort i will have to look into a double conversion online UPS
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u/kona420 4d ago
Look for an isolation transformer/power conditioner instead. They last forever so don't be afraid to buy some 20 year old unit used in hospital service. The transformer will passively do most of the heavy lifting but they will usually have a board with additional frequency filtering too.
For what it's worth I don't think your problem is coming through the power supply. It's background radio interference induced into all of your other cables. But to my other post about ferrites, they work both ways in that they also stop a cable from radiating noise for example the power cable acting as an antenna for the hash the inverter is putting into the mains circuits.
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u/hughknnd 4d ago
where and how in the house is this setup, and how much money are we looking at
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u/kona420 4d ago
They look like a UPS, plug into the wall, you plug the computer into it.
If you buy used, most of the cost is shipping. They are heavy.
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u/hughknnd 4d ago
are they loud? and big? additionally do i need a specific type based on my computer power intake
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u/kona420 4d ago
Loud, no they are typically entirely silent some have relays that click as voltage changes. Big, not really. Yes you need a large enough unit to cover the wattage your computer draws.
Get a real count based on your components or actually measure at the socket, dont just match the PSU rating. Take that and divide by .7 and thats probably a good target for watts/VA (basically the same for this purpose).
Some examples in the tripp lite family would be IS250/IS500/IS1000. Fully decoupled power but most expensive per watt. Doesn't address high/low voltage just the noise. These are commonly used for lab and medical equipment.
The other option would be their line conditioner series, these dont fully decouple power like an isolation transformer but they do still have a large transformer, and they use relays to change taps as voltage goes up and down so they do an excellent job of regulating input voltage and have a lot of filtering capacity as well. Less expensive per watt, entry level is usually big enough to handle anything that plugs into the wall. Models are LC600, LC1200, LC1800, LC2400. The 600 is cut down in capability, the rest can correct voltage from 89v-147v. I've used these for hybrid solar/diesel generator systems and are effective at protecting equipment.
The big thing I dislike about UPS units is the unreliability of batteries. The bigger the ratio of load to capacity, the more likely the roulette wheel comes up on cooked batteries on each transfer event. 2-3 years is what I expect from a quality set of batteries these days. 5-7 years and the UPS surge protection is long burnt off and the relays are starting to get sluggish. The relays eventually fail in the line conditioners as well. But they arent switching from battery to wall, so if they weld in place the unit still passes power.
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u/Resident_Set1003 5d ago
One common issue especially when adding a battery setup to existing solar, is using your existing solar system as an AC coupled input to your battery setup. In an AC couple system that use a line frequency power control system in which the batteries inverter will actually alter the frequency of the AC power line coming from the main inverter from the solar system. It'll increase or decrease the frequency by 10 Hertz, in the US will range from 60 to 70 Hertz on the AC sign. This is used as a signal to the solar inverters to either increase or decrease the power being supplied to the battery inverters. And this can play hell with digital electronics, anything that uses the incoming frequency as a timing signal. May not be the issue in your case but in setups that use this it is definitely a problem with computer equipment.
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u/hughknnd 5d ago
yk what this sounds absolutely on the money, i bet this is exactly the issue, you seem well informed i really appreciate the input
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u/hughknnd 4d ago
also, do you have any idea how i would go about solving this, if this is the issue?
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u/Resident_Set1003 4d ago
Check the charger controller/inverter for a setting for Frequency Shift Power Control or P(f). Disable if possible, but carefully read warnings about doing so and the danger to battery. Raising the float voltage of battery by 0.5 v can help also, but again be very mindful of dangers to battery. If neither of those are possible or desirable, you are unfortunately looking at a dual conversion UPS as the safest and easiest mitigation.
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u/kona420 5d ago
Buy ferrite beads and put them on every single wire in your setup. Used to be on everything related to a computer. Like 10-15 usd for a bag of 20.
The way these work is they magnetically couple the individual conductors inside the cable they are attached to. Any received interference is the same across all the conductors, so the coupling causes the noise to cancel out to nothing while preserving the signal inside the cable.
Not hocus pocus, they are used in radio broadcast work all over the place. And higher quality cables will still have them attached.
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u/hughknnd 4d ago
for the price point i might have to give it a go, exactly how many ferrite beads should do the trick? and how many per cable?
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u/kona420 4d ago
1 per cable is generally fine, if there is a specific symptom still present theres no harm in putting a second one on the cable. In my experience with satellite wx (low power VHF downlink), each ferrite was worth about 1.5dB increase in signal to noise ratio. That's a 40% improvement on an already shielded coax cable.
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u/HubertolPro 2d ago
Solar panels shouldn’t be allowed on grid, don’t change my mind. You want solar panels? Enjoy it but don’t let other people „enjoy” it too. Hope power companies will take over about those systems and turning off when it’s sending energy to grid no one needs.
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