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.

photo of the finished ceiling looking towards the bedroom.

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.

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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