Northern Michigan Solar Powered CabinAlternative Energy Living at the 45th parallel
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Some of the projects that we are currently working on:
You are viewing the old site. All new updates, articles, diary entries, videos, show episodes, confusion, beer consumption and other semi-legal activities now take place at the new site. Become a member there and contribute your input, thoughts and hangover information. - Bill XamNAVIGATION Email or Contact us here
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We're going to build our own solar panels!Read the diary entry here. |
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Disaster planning should be part of every single household across America, strike that, the world. When disaster strikes, people die or lives are c80%hanged. In times of plenty, forego the Playstations and buy extra food. You can explain a lack of toys better than a lack of food to your children.
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In
1980 our military switched its entire food ration program over to the full
moisture MRE pouch system. These are the meals we tested on "This Old
Shack". |
Quite possibly the best preparedness site in the world.
There were several reasons for the switch:
Sprinkle of rain = power failure.
Giving a little back by not using so much.
Independent living.
6-26-10
"The lynchpin of the entire system"
That would be YOU. In any alternative energy off grid system the entire system is only as good as the human interface. Sure, them there solar and wind turbine chargers will give you that great pulse width charging
(the controller or charger senses tiny voltage drops in the battery and sends very short charging cycles
to the battery) feeling but any system is only as good as the human that keeps an eye on it.
Those of you that have been around this site for any length of time know that if you have an off grid system, you indeed are your own power company, a utility of self. Saving the planet? Sure, if that floats your boat but I do it to gain the knowledge, ability and of course to save money as well as staying free from "The
Man" is why I do it. They can't tax sunlight. Yet.
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NEW EQUIPMENT TEST! First results: Battery #1 is fully charged and is undergoing it's first load test using a 1 amp load. Battery number two is still charging and will be tested for the first time later this week. |
At any rate, about the only place that the human interface needs to put in some face time at is the battery bank. Gel, AGM and such need less maintenance than a wet cell but do you REALLY know what's going on in there? With a wet cell battery there is more long term care that you have to do but keep this in mind: having a system that you think you don't need to care for will lead to you not spotting problems. Since your battery bank is going to sit still in it's little area wet cell batteries really should be at the top of your list of choices - and AGM and gel batteries are very sensitive to how they are charged.
So let's get this diary entry underway and stop wasting your time and making my hits look soooo much better.
Batteries are your children. The more you have the more time you have to spend caring for them and well, they
can misbehave.
Like children, batteries grow up. They don't mature to full capacity until they have 40-50 discharge cycles on them. Until then you might think you have a bad battery. You probably don't.
Like children, batteries need to be exercised a lot to keep them healthy or they get fat and lazy and die early. They need to be drained by a load and charged back up. And when you buy them use them. Don't save them for later. They really don't like that.
Like children, batteries have be burped when fed (honest to God, I can't make that up). They HAVE to bubble in order to mix the electrolyte. If they don't you will not get a full charge. When they bubble and burp, they are releasing gas which means there is a chemical reaction going on. This is good.
Like children, your battery should be dressed properly. Keep the caps on them when charging. This prevents the electrolyte from evaporating or splashing on the terminals which causes corrosion. Keeping the caps cracked so you can observe the cells while charging is okay.
!!! USE RUBBER GLOVES AND SAFETY GLASSES ALWAYS !!!!
If you see a cell that is not bubbling during charging you have a problem - it's not charging correctly.
We'll address that later.
Like children, your batteries do not have good memories. You don't have to completely drain a battery to "erase" it's memory. It's an urban legend and probably made up by some helpful battery salesperson.
Some other great things that you can do with your batteries is to equalize them every month or so. Equalizing your batteries breaks off the deposits that form on the lead plates that reduces their capacity. There are special battery equalizers on the market and most solar charge controllers have an equalization circuit on them. This is a charge that is about 10% higher than normal the normal (15.5 volts + 10% = 17 volts) charge voltage, and is applied for about up to 16 hours.
IMPORTANT NOTE: THE AMP RATE THAT YOU CHARGE AT IS DIFFERENT THAN THE VOLTAGE! CHARGE AT 5% OF THE AMP HOUR RATING. FOR A GROUP 31 120 AMP HOUR BATTERY THIS IS ABOUT 14 AMPS. FORMULA: 20 HOUR AMP HOUR RATE/8 .
Next up: getting some alone time with your battery bank.
6-25-10
This entry is going to be long legged and several parts so hang onto your hats. Updated 6-26-10. Read it here.
6-11-10
Time for another exciting season of "This Old Shack"! Our first visit revealed what had happened during our year off from spending time at the shack. Nothing. Well, there was two years worth of debris on the ground. After some brief soul searching amplified by the usual adult beverages, I decided to plop the battery bank (3 group 31 deep cycles, 110 amp hours each, 330 amp hours total) right next to where the solar panel wiring enters the shack.
In
the diagram, the solar panel array is in green, the 10 gauge wiring is in
orange, the battery bank box is in gray and the temporary spot for the bank is
in black.
Doing this eliminated any amperage drop the 10 gauge wiring that the solar array current normally runs through to the normal bank spot 35 feet away.
Good enough, did some cleaning up, mowed the "lawn" and called it a weekend.
6-17/20-10
Got to the shack after installing the panels (6 at 90 watts total) in their usual spot the week before. Left the battery bank with the voltage being just above 12.5 volts. Upon returning with the week being cloudy to partly cloudy, the battery bank voltage stood at 12.9 volts according to the meter - didn't feel like grabbing the hydrometer (a hydrometer is a turkey baster with various balls that float at different levels according to the chemical composition in the battery and is much more accurate than a meter alone). Fired up the generator and using the 6 amp Schumacher manual charger, full charge indicated by the Xantrex C12 charger after 3 hours of running the generator.
During that time, ran the laptop, webcam, phone charger, lights, fans from the generator power. Total power from all of this is about 2 amps at 110 volts.
After the C12 indicated the bank was at full charge, switched the laptop to the battery bank for the evening.
NOTE: TOOK DOWN TREE NUMBER 1 LAST YEAR FOR ADDITIONAL SUNLIGHT EXPOSURE. SUCCESS? COULD BE. WILL STUDY THE SITUATION TO SEE HOW MUCH MORE FULL SUNLIGHT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE TREE IS DOWN.
Update: Removing just the one tree now has us up to 6 hours of sunlight from 3.5 hours.
6-18-10
Got tired of tripping over the batteries, so we moved the battery bank to it's normal spot at the other end of the shack in the battery box we built. Of course, I checked the amperage coming from the 10 gauge feed wire from the bank - same as at the array itself minus .01 amps.
Death of a battery.....redux.
So, it begins again. Last year, through my own fault, we had a tragic failure of one of our batteries (not the one in the original death of a battery). The battery in question, a group 31, 110 amp hour deep cycle battery was in the back of the This Old Shack truck as extra weight for the winter driving season. As luck would have it, the thing tipped over and all the electrolyte evacuated from the plates. A few weeks later, I happen to notice it, refilled the cells and was sad to notice it had poor charging and charge holding (a specific gravity of 1.145). Thus, I set it aside and moved on. One year later, I happen to pull the thing out and was preparing to recycle it. Much to my surprise, each cell now was at 1.222. Well, that was good news. So we are now de-sulfating the thing (sulfates build up on the plates in a battery preventing it from performing at full capacity). Once that is done, it's time to put a load on it to see what is going on.
So....we've been busy updating a ton of stuff on several web sites as well as working our our television network, Saline Entertainment Television and our live feed from there. Sadly, we've had a serious family illness so there have been no trips to the shack this year. What we're doing is planning out one single trip in August as well as doing some alternative energy stuff here at our main headquarters in Saline, Michigan.
It's an all new episode of This Old Shack, starring Bill Xam! Bill is finally back with a new episode. Why so long between episodes? We've been converting the This Old Shack truck to a hybrid! The new episode is here.
he latest episode of This Old Shack is now available for your viewing pleasure. This is the first of two parts about fuel mileage and features hypermileage driving techniques.
In the hospital, out of the hospital, back in the hospital. Middle age is so much fun.
Photographs of weather stations in Michigan.
Each entry in the energy blog now has a comment link for posting comments. The comments are courtesy of Halo.
Watch our latest lightning video, shot at the shack last week.
Oh baby, do we have a video for you! I'm a storm chaser and as luck would have it we had a major lightning storm here at the main house. Lightning hitting the street in front of us, transformers blowing up and our neighbors getting hit by lightning. Check it out!
If you've watched my Youtube trailer for the season premier of This Old Shack, you're probably saying, "Bill, what the heck happened to your hair?". Go here to find out more.
And finally the data you've been looking for, excerpts from the NREL Redbook!
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How I testThere are several people on various newsgroups and discussion areas that waylay in uninformed or those just starting out in the off grid world of self power generation. This involves an almost religious belief in a phantom 6v golf cart true deep cycle battery that is superior in every way to any other battery in existence.
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