Diary from the cabin page 2
April 06-2006; 5:30 am
Time to rise and shine. Today
I'm going to do a careful tracking of the sun to
see where I can install my panels. I'm knocking
the shore of the lake off of the list for two
reasons: possible theft (well, there isn't any
crime out here in the woods but there's a public
boat launch) and because we have a lot of military
fighters flitting about. Glare. Spending the time
until sunup drinking coffee and working on the
rest of the ceiling. Damn, I hate percolators. Got
to get a 12 volt drip maker.
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photo of the
finished ceiling looking towards the bedroom.
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6:30 am
Well, sun's coming
up. My memory has served me well. Looks like I'll
get some sun at sunrise to about 9 am (even in the
summer with the leaves on the trees) and then from
about 10 am to 2 pm. After that, indirect sun from
reflections from the lake. Looks like I'm good to
go ground mounting the panels along the house.
10:00 am
Oooo, it's real
sunny today. Bank hits 12.98 by 11 am. Once I put
a load on it through the inverter, the thing goes
down to 12.51 within a minute. Gotta get a new
charge controller, this one sucks.
2:00 pm
Started working on
the battery bank box. Going to build it so the top
is above the lowest level of the window that it
sits in front of for easy venting. I'm so smart.
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Photo of the
battery box while under construction. Note the
neat plastic battery holder I found. Notice the
inverter has very heavy cables to connect to the
bank but uses clamps. These are being replaced
with direct connections. I was using 12 ga. wire
last year and switched to these thicker (4 ga)
ones that the inverter came with. |
3:00 pm
Crap, that won't
work. Going to have to run a vent tube. I'm so
stupid.
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