Diary from the cabin page 3

Photos from this trip:

Solar panel installation, My dock is dead.

4-21-06 

A day of good news all around. First, I'm able to leave work an hour early, which put me on the highway a half hour early. Second, my timing is once again perfect; I missed all the heavy traffic for the entire 240 mile trip. Third, and this is the good one: My Dodge Dakota (2000, 4.7L V8, towing package) got 22 miles per gallon at 70 miles an hour. Made the trip on less than 3/4 of a tank of gas. My trick? Steady speeds, and a little cheating going downhill (I've got a manual transmission). You can imagine my surprise when upon my arrival at the cabin. First thing, I checked the bank voltage. 13.41! Even though inside and propped up against the windows, the panels kept the bank charged. I also had left the inverter hooked up and on, though with no load which put it in standby. I purchased a Vector "smart charger" at Lowe's - It is able to go bulk, absorption and float on the bank. This is hooked up the the generator. The inverter runs through the bank, which cleans up the dirty power from the generator. The charger works fine with the generator. Put it on the 10 amp auto charge and an hour later the bank is full, baby full.  What I do is turn off everything when I'm checking how the panels are working and monitor the bank voltage as well as the A. raw output from the panels B. Output from the controller C. Bank voltage, cross connected from the charge poles.  

4-22-06 

From the Xantrex C12 to the bank, I used 12 gauge wire (a 1 foot run). I also took apart a cheapo digital meter and wired that into the controller direct. Around 2 pm on Saturday, the clouds started to break up and it got sorta sunny. Well. Too bad the panels face south and the sun was towards the west over the peak of the cabin. Well now. I just happened to have a 2 foot wide piece of plywood and a boatload of aluminum foil. Installing the panels was simple. I just built the frame out of 2x4s and mounted them. I also positioned them about 5 degrees apart so the morning sun and the noon sun can be utilized to it's fullest. See reflector information below. 10 minutes later, I had a home made reflector/concentrator set up. Bank @ 12.51, panels 15.72, 30 watts. No reflector Bank @ 12.63, panels 17.90, 80 watts. With reflector That works. The way I set up the reflectors, they reflected the indirect sunlight and put it onto the panels. If I keep this setup, during the full output portion of the day, the reflectors won't reflect that much since the sunlight will be behind them. During the early afternoon when the sun is over the peak of the house, they'll reflect the sun onto the panels having the effect of extending the solar day.

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