Catching Up: GF Blows Up Inveters, Gardening, and Even More Stuff

Solar Stuff

Yes, you saw that right, I blew up the EG4-6500EX inverters on my solar power system. No, not on purpose.

I am still kicking myself. Look, in addition to farming and everything else I’ve worked at over my lifetime, I’ve in the building trades as well for years, especially building maintenance. My first job after MrsGF and I got married was building maintenance where I did carpentry, drywalling,. plumbing, electrical, concrete work… Especially electrical. The first year I worked for that company I spent the entire summer on the roof, rewiring all of the Reznor rooftop air handling units and putting in new panels down in the basement to feed them, and the rest of the summer rewiring the lift station, irrigation pump and boilers. If it was anything to do with building or maintaining a building and its systems, I’ve done it. Over the years I’ve gone through literally hundreds of hours of training on electrical systems, plumbing, fire suppression systems, alarm systems, building codes, the NEC, etc. So I know how to do this stuff.

All of which makes me even more upset with myself because I did something really stupid because of a momentary lapse of concentration. I thought something was shut off that wasn’t, plugged something in that I shouldn’t have plugged in and BANG… I blew up about$3,oo0 worth of inverters.

There was no property damage, except to the inverters,. no one got injured or anything like that. But it never should have happened.

To make a long story short. I had to spend close to $3.000 to buy a replacement inverter. There is a sort of silver lining to this, though, because I replaced the two 6500’s with that beast over there on the left. That’s an EG4 12000XP off grid inverter and to say it is very, very nice and light years better than the 6500s is an understatement.

It was easy to install. It took longer to drill the holes in our poured concrete basement wall to put up the mounting brackets than it did to wire it in. I should add that it is very, very heavy, weighing in at over 100 lbs.

It’s up and running, powering the entire house at the moment, and just purring along with no muss or fuss or headaches.

Not all was “plug ‘n play”, though. At first it wouldn’t communicate with my EGR-LL batteries. It didn’t even “see” that they were there even though it was getting power from them and would turn on.

Here I have to give a shout out to the folks at Signature Solar where I bought the inverter. I submitted a report to their customer service department via their website and within 12 hours I got back a very detailed response that explained what the problem was and how to fix it, including screen shots of the menu options on both the batteries and the inverter, pictures of the actual DIP switch settings, everything I needed to correct the communications problem. Within half an hour of getting the email from them I had the problems fixed and it was running exactly as it should.

Also I got in the mounting hardware for the new solar panels that are going to be going up on the garage roof. Close to 5 KW of new. bifacial solar panels are going to be going up there yet this summer. I should have a grand total of something like 7.5 KW of solar panels up before the end of the summer. Not sure when that will happen, though. MrsGF caught me about 25 feet up a spruce tree in the backyard hanging up a new antenna that one day early this year and now she won’t let me climb anything higher than a step stool so I’m going to have to depend on my sons finding time to get out here on a weekend and put the new panels up.

Anyway, more on that as things progress.

Gardening Stuff

This has been one of the best growing seasons so far that I can remember. Temperatures haven’t been too extreme, we’ve had regular rainfall and enough of it so that we’ve only had to water things once so far this year. And the plants out in the garden have responded by growing spectacularly. Here are a few photos to show you.

Other stuff

Yes, I’m still playing with the Falcon laser engraver and I am still enormously pleased with how well it works. I still think it is hands down the best 10W diode laser for the money on the market.

Solar Prices

If you’re in the market for solar panels right now you have my sympathy. All of the deals I was talking about earlier are now long gone and prices have gone up anywhere from 50% to as much as 100% or more. Panels in the 300 – 400W range which I was seeing for around $70 – $100 range are now up to around $150. The 400 – 450W bifacial panels I got back in February for $107 are long gone. Panels in the 400 – 500W range are now up to at least $175 – $200.

To give you an idea of just how badly we are being ripped off by our own government, solar panels we’re paying $200 for are selling for around $70 or less in the EU.

This is perhaps a good place to end this with the reminder that tariffs are not paid by the country of origin. Tariffs are a tax, on us. We pay it, you and I and anyone who imports or buys products from overseas. Not the country of origin. We do. This isn’t punishing China or Canada or whoever over unfair trade practices, this is punishing us, people already stretched to the breaking point by ever rising prices, stagnant incomes and a government that’s more interested in making up snarky memes to insult members of the opposition than it is in actually fixing our problems. Read some of the history of this country. We’ve gone down this path before and it nearly bankrupted the country.