Diary from the cabin, page 6

5-30-06 

I was worried. It had been 3 weeks since I'd been to the cabin and the weather was horrible; rain most days, almost no sun. Would the bank be down? Once again, it was a float having been through the bulk and absorption phases of charging.

Job one on this holiday weekend is building a new dock. The old one was almost 15 years old and rotted away. The new dock is 4 feet longer and is higher to keep it out of the water.

I also finished building the battery box and installed the 110 voltage circuit breaker box. This box, a Square D, fit the bill nicely since it came with circuit breakers. Having energized the circuits, I discovered the rest of the lightning damage see link which ruined the outside lights. Now (of course) I have to rewire the whole damn thing.

That's when a problem cropped up. There seems to be a voltage leak from somewhere in the system even though all the wiring checks out okay. There's a .5 volt leak to ground at 6 amps. It's AC, not the DC that the system produces. The panels are still charging the bank at the same rate that they were, so I'm still looking for the problem.

Update: After an interesting thread on Usenet, most opinions from other people are thinking that the voltage leak is coming from an old pole on the property. However the main 500kv lines in northern Michigan are less than 3 miles from the cabin. Hoo, boy this isn't good. I'm going to try and get some kind of filter.