Let’s catch up with what’s been going on.
The weather finally got nice enough to let me get some chores done outside. First thing I had to do was get the solar panels up off the mud. I threw together some temporary frames and supports out of pressure treated lumber. I’m not putting in anything even semi-permanent yet because it’s all going to get changed around and more panels purchased in the near future to feed the new solar system we’re going to be installing. More about that a bit later.
The new setup seems to have made a huge difference in power production. I didn’t get this set up until early afternoon and at that time we were seeing high clouds that were cutting power production, but even with the clouds I was getting 500 watts or more. When the sky did clear momentarily they were peeking at around 750W for a time. At 4:30 PM after the skies had cleared I was still getting about 450W. For most of the afternoon I was running the entire basement, my radio equipment, the grow lights for our seedlings and the heating pad for the little greenhouse we have set up in the basement, the chest freezer and the living room, all running off the Bluetti with more than enough power coming in to run all of that and keep the batteries topped off. Of course there isn’t a heck of a lot of power being used for any of that. I think that peaks at around 600W of load. Still, that’s 600 watts of power we aren’t paying the utility company for.
Today is supposed to be warm and sunny so I’ll see just how much power those panels produce now that they’re more properly oriented. I am really pleased with those HQST panels. They’ve been doing much, much better than i anticipated.
The weather was so nice yesterday that I finally got the bike out of storage, checked over and out on the road again. After about 5+ months of a woefully sedentary lifestyle I was pretty stiff and after about five miles my legs were complaining already. The Vado up there may be an e-bike but it doesn’t do all the work for me. I still have to pedal it and I run it in “eco” mode so it only does about 25% of the work for me. Although I admit I will kick the assistance level when I’m going up a steep hill. Hey, what can I say? I’m old. I’ll be hitting 70 this year.
It was nice to get out on the road again on the bike but there isn’t much to see this time of year. The countryside around here is still mostly, well, looking like this…
Not very appealing but give it a few weeks.
The weather has been, as usual, odd. We went from rainy, cloudy, cold weather with daytime highs of around 40, to 70+ degrees literally overnight. It’s supposed to hit 80 degrees this week before the temps plunge back down into the low 40s again by the weekend.
And now the OMG part…
We made the decision to go ahead and make a significant investment in equipment for a rather large solar power system. I’ll go into all of the details later but we’re sinking a significant amount of money and effort into this and I hope it isn’t going to turn into a fiasco. We’ll see.
I thought I was going to have some time to prep for this. The company I’m buying the stuff from said it would probably take 2 – 3 weeks to put the order together, get it on a truck and ship it here. So no big rush in preparing. I need to clear space out in the basement, a difficult job because our basement is packed with stuff, a lot of which belongs to eldest son, and a lot of it is electronics so it just can’t be shoved down into the storage unit. And because of the condition of our basement there are limited places where a large electrical system can be installed. It’s going to take a long time to clear out space for it. And then I need to get miscellaneous parts like fuses, electrical cable of different types. a new transfer switch or lockout system for the main breaker panel… The list goes on and on.
So I thought I had at least two weeks to get ready for this. I don’t. It’s coming Monday. Something like 500 pounds of stuff on two pallets is going to get dumped off in my driveway sometime on Monday, I’m told. Or at least that’s the projected delivery date according to the shipping company.
Oh, goody…
I’m going to be busy, it seems…
grouchyfarmer 