Or is it I just can't find the option to get dark text on a light background?

Made the mistake of clicking on FA's 'beta' thing, now everything is white text on a dark background.

I say 1977 because this was your only option on the old TRS-80 computer I had back then.

I remember the headaches from hours of reading that way and would prefer to not do it again.

Any suggestions would be helpful (yes, I'm feeling too dang old to try every dang option under every dang tab after what I thought would be the obvious ones failed ...)

(If worse comes to worse I'll just go back to copy/pasting into something I can read things from ...)

Seems someone noticed:

"Almost long enough for a taur bike ..."

And it was removed. (guess I should have pasted a chakat on it ...)

This is a Warning Notice (1st Level Offense).

So I've pulled the 'let's skip our meds and see how the day goes' and the one making a baked face-hugger out of a turkey, crab legs and sausage.

Yes, by the rules my bad.

Though funny how long it took for it to happen! (might have me a new looker looking for anything to have an issue with.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1XJaW7fW4U

What makes this weird is that I already had this line in a tale I'm still writing:

“They’re setting me up to be the boogeyman,” he told her. “I’m listed as one of the scariest beings they’ve ever seen.”

“The scariest,” the human ambassador cheerfully corrected. “The top slot was held by a retired Kilrathi general, but after personally reviewing your data, he refused to be placed above you.”

... is as done as I think it will get.

I'm going to give it another week to see if I get any goof reports from my readers before I offer it to Goldie.

... when you're a idiot of many trades, but a master of not a dang thing ...

Come in from a food run to a high-pitched alarm of some kind in the garage (didn't take that car) - the perfect pitch that keeps you from telling which direction to look ...

Finally track it down to the water-heater leak detector in the pan. Yup there's water slowly dripping from the expansion tank above the water heater.

No cut-offs at the water heater (last plumber didn't see the need) so kill the whole house, open a outside faucet to kill any presser, remove old expansion tank, close faucet and head for the store for a replacement and some tape ...

Little did I know, the mains cutoff wasn't quite closed ...

Come home with the replacement, something about pre-charging it? One short U-tupy later I'm ready to install it - to find a slow but steady flow of water from the pipe I'd left open semi-flooding the garage (maybe about what I'd gotten in a day or three without that alarm going off ...)

Good news - saved a few hundred on a plumber.

Bad news - lots to dry out before we end up with a mold problem ...

(yes, still writing on the silly book four ...)

Hadn't checked a couple of my older email accounts in a while and found a good laugh.

An email sent to me by 'me' warning that I had been hacked and they have had access to all my accounts and devices for months now. And they had used my own cameras to record me wanking off to some very strange things. And if I didn't want it sent to everyone I know then I need to send them some bitcoin in the next 48 hours ...

Hmm, I wish they'd sent me some links to those strange things - can never have enough good stuff to wank to. Looking around, the only thing with a camera that might 'see' anything is on my phone - and it has never had the name/password for that email account entered in it. The laptop does have a camera, but the top is closed and it's sitting on the printer with a monitor and wireless keyboard/mouse plugged into it.

And the thing that got a laugh out of me, it was 'sent' on the 30th of June - so if it had been 'real' I'm sure a lot of you would have been giving me feedback and critiques of my performances!

Ah well, better luck next time, them finding an sucker and me getting actually useful junk mail ...

Okay, I've got the extra batteries wired in and can set things up to charge two sets of batteries at once (sun permitting of course.)

Last couple of weeks have been mostly cloudy, so I can run the batteries three or four days before they get too low (as I haven't fixed that roof and doubled my solar 'yet' ...)

Now for the problems. We had a couple very hot days and things got 'hot' - and suddenly I'm getting less than half to solar I'm expecting?

The meters I'm running on each panel set show 0 amps on three of them. A closer look at the diodes I found what had smelled so warm the other day. The diodes were rated for 20 Amps and the max you can get from a panel set is 12.75A (13.5A shorted), but good sun and a hot room was too much for them.

As I wired things to add more panels I simply moved them over to un-burnt diodes and added a fan to try to keep things a little cooler.

With them moved over I discovered I still had a problem. One panel set was not only 0 amps but under-voltaged. (To work the charger you need a few volts above the battery voltage and this one was actually below the battery.) I'm running four 17 volt panels which should give me around 68 volts to feed 56 volts to charge the batteries. The problem set is only giving me 52 volts, so either one of the panels died (and the built-in bypass diodes are working) or the bypass diodes in it have died in 'shorted-out' mode and I get nothing from that one panel. More fun is that panel came up with the rest this morning, the voltage dropping as things warmed up.

For those wondering about diodes, they let power flow one way and not the other. And there's two ways they can fail. Shorted like the ones in: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/56432478/ they act like wires and power flows both ways, and open where you have a broken wire and nothing goes nowhere.

I'm ordering more diodes for my panel, I might try doubling them up to see if they can handle the heat and just half the amps.

The panel will be more fun as I first have to figure out which one it is and then what part died. If it's the diodes I can cut or replace them (if it's the panel itself then I have to wonder how long the others will last in this Texas heat ...)

Almost done.

But it did get me thinking, how well can you actually keep a secret - and for how long?

How hard would it be with everything connected? What you buy/don't sell can hint at what you're up to. Buying bits to make what you need muddies the water some, as does mining for your own raw materials.

But then there's the people. Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead, so how tight can you keep your security - and for how long? And if a 'little' gets out; how do you counter it to keep others from digging deeper into your secret?

And is there a point at which it's better to reveal a bit to protect the rest of the secret?

Almost back to where we were ...

Insurance company wanted to total the car (2010 so 13 years old), seems they didn't think it worth more than 6-8k to fix ...

Considering the cost of a new car (and replacing the chair lift in the back) that didn't sit well with us.

So I went over to the repair place holding our wreck and discovered that for around 4k we could get the worse of it fixed and have the beast driveable again. Paid them to get things started.

Next time insurance contacted us they were told we were taking that route. (they did end up paying for just the repairs we had done.)

So the driver-side doors are dinged, but she drives. Mom's hip is bothering her - may or may not be from all the fun.

And I'm hearing here in the US the insurance rates are going up +20% ...

Almost like they don't want us driving ...

Hot day, driving me mom home from one of her appointments, passing the exit just before the one I need to take ...

And without any input from me my car is now taking the exit I didn't intend to take. Added fun is a terrible noise coming from my left front wheel - then I smell smoke ... (thankfully just tire rubber smoke ...)

So instead of trying to get my now lamed car to a parking lot or otherwise off the road I end up not quite blocking the exit lane ...

Seems someone in one of the other five lanes decided they wanted that exit - and didn't check to see if there was anything in their new path ...

I'm okay (other than being a bundle of nerves right now), one of mom's legs started to swell (hit the center console I'm guessing) she got to ride in one of those loud little boxes with flashing lights on it (x-rays at ER says nothing broken, ice and keep elevated.)

Home from ER was after business hours so I waited until this morning to call our insurance company - who already had a claim from the other driver that 'I' had rear-ended 'them' - a good trick as both cars had only side damage. My rap is looking into things a bit harder now.

Caller their insurance, filed a claim; called Hospital and gave them the claim info.

I only got one picture (yes I know you're suppose to get lots of everything but still shook up a worried about my mother.) The one picture I got was me trying to snap a pic of his proof of insurance - which he moved at the last second. But I got enough of it and either they gave the cop the wrong policy number - or he wrote it down wrong. Since he moved while I was taking the shot I also had a fraction of my front end showing the front wheel trashed - but the cops had had them park the car she was driving in front of mine showing their entirely intact rear end ...

Currently waiting for my rep to call back so I can send him that one pic ...


yes, still a bit jittery, but getting there ...

Edit:

Got the police crash report, seems she didn't even have a valid license to be driving that car ...

Or, how a bump on the leg two weeks ago suddenly turns into something that finally forces me to visit the ER …

I don’t post that much so most of you wouldn’t have noticed me dropping out of sight after last Thursday. After self semi-treatment failed to reduce a growing lump in my leg (and swelling up/down it) I did the thing I hate the most and went to ER – where that question was asked …

So, five fun days and a lot of antibiotics – and controlled diet and a quick/short acting insulin – and they kicked me out yesterday. Why didn’t I say ‘hi’ then? Well, the deities weren’t done telling me what a dumbass I was/is …

Lots of things I now can’t/shouldn’t have (or in very tiny portions), so I went to Wally-mart to pick up some frozen meals that wouldn’t cause me more harm than good. Halfway to the store I get a low tire warning (haven’t checked/added air in months so not too worried – I should have been!) Got to the store and all my tires still look nice and round.

Coming out of the store I was greeted with the right front sitting on its rim …

And discovered that I’d forgot to trade out phones when I left the house (house phone talks to its base station, maybe 100 feet range – oops!)

So picture this old fart jacking up the car, carrying/rolling the tire over to the gas pumps (they have air and I had an old tire repair kit in the car), finding/patching a leak, carrying/rolling the tire back (having to raise the car a bit higher as inflated tire was taller than flat one) and then finally driving away …

I did get a couple offers to help, but I’m stubborn (and the one I did try to allow to help didn’t know what he was doing!) Also had a couple people point out where I could get it fixed around the corner or just down the street – I still wonder how they thought I was going to get the car there without ruining the tire and maybe the rim?

I did say ‘old’ tire repair kit, the ‘glue’ was dried out and the corded patches were hard to work with (the prayer was ‘just get me home!’) and it did the job.

So this morning I’m looking around at all the food we already have, seeing what can be mixed with what to eat without going over the ‘total carbohydrates’ I’m allowed to have each meal/day. (was told ‘no’, I can’t just save it all up for one big ‘cheat’ meal …)

One day at a time as they say …

Someone asked for a breakdown of my playing with solar costs, so here ya go as well as a bit of a tale about it …

My Solar Costs to Date.

From Amazon:

$ 24.00 (2) 5 Set Terminal Blocks, 600V 25A Dual Row Screw
used to connect in the wires coming in from the solar panels. Maybe not my best idea as if you notice the upper left one on ( https://www.furaffinity.net/view/46420111/ ) you’ll notice the little jumpers they came with get a bit warm – and the max that leg could have gotten from the panels is 13Amps with a short.

$ 88.80 (8) 12V-110V DC Miniature Circuit Breaker, 20 Amp 1 Pole
seen below each meter, cuts power from each solar panel group.

$ 166.80 (8) HiLetgo DC 6.5-100V 0-20A LCD Display Digital
not a ‘must have’ item, but allows you to see the power coming off the roof in volts/amps/watts and watt-hours. Note that these are before the diodes (causes a 0.7 volt lost) so their total will be higher than what the solar controller will report coming in.

$ 8.65 (1) mxuteuk 20Pcs (10Pcs 10A10 + 10Pcs 20A10) Rectifier
only using six of the 20Amp rated diodes. Not mandatory, but reduces power lost from other panels when one panel gets shaded.

$ 150.00 (6) CZC AUTO 1-2-Both-Off Battery Disconnect Switch
used to add/remove the different (now six) battery banks from the charging/inverter circuits.

$ 36.40 (2) SELTERM 4 AWG 3/8" Stud (25 pcs each.)
terminal connections I used when making the heavier connections between the batteries/switches/inverter.

$5040.00 (24) Newpowa 210W(Watts) Solar Panel Monocrystalline
‘12 volt’ solar panels. As the inverter uses 48 volts the panels and batteries were set up in sets of four. (first sixteen panels were set up in pairs so I could run a 24 volt system if I had to.)

$ 10.00 (1) ICI 2 Pieces DIN Rail Slotted Steel Zinc Plated RoHS
just holds the 20 Amp breakers and meters.

$ 20.00 (1) Generic 150 Amp Waterproof Circuit Breaker
breaker between the inverter and the rest of the system.

$ 20.00 (1) Generic 100 Amp Waterproof Circuit Breaker
breaker between the solar controller and batteries/inverter.

$ 106.00 (2) GBGS 32 Pcs Rust Free Solar Panel Mounting
great solar panel mounting set – maybe too good as they’ve been out of stock ever since I got mine …

$8640.00 (24) ECO-WORTHY 12V 100AH LiFePO4 3000+ Cycle
da batteries! Only real down vote from me is the four by four max connection suggested, meaning the biggest battery bank you can build out of them is 20kWhs … (oh – and don’t let them get too cold!)

$ 17.00 (1) 300 Pcs 22-16 16-14 12-10 AWG Insulated Fork Spade
all those little red/blue/yellow connectors you see on the control board.

$ 37.00 (1) KOTTO Battery Cable Lug Crimper Tool 6-50mm²
one of many tools bought to do my little project.

$1968.00 (2) Ampinvt 6000W Peak 18000W Pure
the inverter that turns battery/solar power into something my old house likes.

$ 29.00 (1) Solar PV Crimping Tool for MC3 Cable Connector
more toys/tools

$ 25.00 (1) yarachel 25Pairs / 50PCS Solar Connectors
had to connect all those panels to wires somehow.

$ 600.00 (2) 80 Amp MPPT Solar Charge Controller
the toy that takes the solar power and feeds it to the batteries and inverter without over feeding them. (you can select the max voltage and amperage your type of batteries are fed.)

From my local Lowes hardware store I picked up the rest of what went into my project.

A bench to hold most of the inside stuff ($400).
Wires to connect everything (including two 500 foot spools ($300) of 10 gauge stranded for the solar side – one spool had less than ten feet left on it when the last panels were done!) Lots of other wire sizes for connecting things without causing any fires.

More tools, mainly a ladder and cordless screw drivers to speed up the panel installs.

All told somewhere around $20,000-22,000 to date. (Understand this is just the bits and pieces, if you're paying someone to do it double or triple the cost!)


How this all came about …

A while back most of Texas got to see what real winters look like, and Texas wasn’t ready for it as a lot of power dropped out forcing them to kill power to a lot of people across the state (depending of who you read/believe, at one point Texas was twenty minutes away from losing its entire electrical grid.)

And I have this eighty-plus handicapped mother that it’s sometimes an ordeal getting her to the doctor’s (and where would we go in a possibly weeks-long major blackout anyway?) So, how to better hunker in place rather than running as far as the gas in the car might take us (no power no gas pumps!)

By some bit of luck our power never dropped, though one of my brothers’ homes less than a mile away was over a week getting power restored.

Yes, I could get one of those gas generators, but the noise tells others you have something going – and just how long in hours and days is that gas going to last you?

I did some hunting on Amazon, lots of bits and lots of kits. I should have read a bit deeper and learned more before settling on what bits I got, but hindsight is always 20/20. One thing in my considerations was this was going to be a one-man – okay, one old fart with a bum knee job. So sometimes a selling point was that it wasn’t something that would take two guys to haul around. The 210 watts panels were just over two feet by just over five feet and only twenty-six pounds each. The batteries only twenty-three pounds each. I think the hardest thing was the inverter at sixty-six pounds – most of it on one end!

So with a general idea of what I thought I wanted I started ordering the bits for my little project. I wanted to test each piece before installing things, so the lower half of the bench was set up on the covered back patio with the solar controller/meter/breaker/diode and a battery with a pair of sawhorses held a panel or two out of the grass. As the batteries are shipped at just 30% charge, this let me test panels and controller while charging the batteries. Later four charged batteries were set up to test the inverter before things got set up inside.

One thing that helped with the solar panel installation was already having a metal roof. It’s grounded, so just screwing the panels into it grounded them. Why the wire drop where it is? Attic access is in the garage, so from the access I drove a screw up near the roof cap. Topside the screw showed me the access center and some measuring got me a spot I could drill a hole to run a plastic pipe down that wouldn’t hit any of my air ducking and end up just above one of the cars (so any leaks would drip on the car’s roof rather than some place harder to notice – no leaks to date!)

Plastic electrical piping/couplers protect the wires between the different sets of panels (looking at the roof pictures you can just see the gray pipe running along the top of the panels, that weird bit above the slightly offset pair is three 90 degree pipe bends that I twisted so they’d end where I wanted them to – and was something I could take apart if I ever needed to fish still more wires through them.) Funny fact; other than the pipe going into the roof, none of it is actually anchored to the roof nor glued, just friction fit. We’d had a storm with high winds blow through before I could finish up the finer details – like tying down the wire pipes, but it seems my angles are such the wind just can’t get a good enough grip on things (yes, far more luck than planning!)

A few hooks in the garage ceiling gets the wires to the bench.

Hold My (Root) Beer 1 show off another item from Lowes, a small standard inside house breaker panel. There are two ‘ganged’ 40 Amp breakers and a single 20 amp breaker. The idea was that the right 40 was the 6000 watt inverter powering the house, the 20 was if I was using grid power to recharge the batteries, and the leftmost was if I ever had to use the 2000 watt inverter I’d picked up as a spare. I still haven’t needed/wired the last two options, though I did get (and am running on/testing) a second 6000 watt inverter. The wires going out in the upper left of the breaker box feed into a 40 amp ganged breaker in the house breaker panel (yes, possible overkill on being able to kill power from many places.)

A note for those that might not know, breakers are sized to protect the wires run to them – not the equipment that might be plugged into the sockets. In truth the 40 amp breaker is protecting wire rated over 60 amps, and the max steady draw from the inverter is 25 amps per leg (240 times 25 is your 6000.) likewise on the battery side the max inverter draw is 6600 watts (max 10% wasted/lost in converting) so 137.5 amps at 48 volts. 200 amp rated switches and wiring with a 150 amp breaker cutting off the inverter if the draw gets too high too long; 100 amp breaker to the solar controller though the max out of it should be 80 amps.



Root Beer 2 is getting the wires from the roof organized and fed to the solar controller. The reasoning for just six lines per block was max current from each panel set is 12.5 amps, so six of that type of panel gives you 75 amps to my 80 amp max controller. The upper left is all six positive lines ganging together to head for the controller. Just to the right of that is six 20 amp diodes that prevent a higher voltaged panel from feeding its power to a panel with a lower voltage (more shaded or otherwise blocked.) Why red and brown wires? Because they were out of that size in black wire …

Because the panels were wired in pairs and I needed pairs of pairs, a patch panel paired them up for me (the zip-ties on each pair matched so I could tell who went where.)

Below the patch panel was the negative side of my panels. These feed to meters and then through the breakers before being ganged together for the solar controller.

The way things are wired the meters give me the voltage off the panels before the diodes (which cost my 0.7 volt heading for the controller), and the current from each panel. (Oh, and those meters are powered by the panels, a mere 0.003 amp draw.)

Root Beer 3 shows the meters. Remembering the diodes drop the voltage 0.7 volts, the top meter is only feeding the controller 4.51 amps at 60.43 or 272.5 watts. I’d lose a lot more than five watts if one of the other panel sets became shaded.

Root Beer 4 needs to be updated as there are now six banks of batteries and six switches to control them as well as a second breaker for the other solar controller.

And this comes to one of the places I screwed up and need to rewire my little setup. As I’ve said elsewhere the batteries BMS(Battery Management System) in these batteries don’t like more than 4 sets of 4 batteries ganged together; so I said ‘fine, a 4x4 main set with a 2x4 reserve’, the 1-2 battery switches would be ‘Main-Reserve’ with the second solar controller keeping the backups topped off. So I hooked up my second controller and the readings from both controllers went very wrong. You see all my switching/breakers on the battery side are on the positive lines – but the controllers’ shunts for measuring current/amps are on the negative side, so they’re sharing/halving the current they see going between the solar panels and the batteries! Sadly the ‘easiest’ fix is to move all the switches/breakers to the negative side, which means a bit of rewiring. For now the second controller isn’t hooked to the panels until I buy some more wire and redo a few things.

Root Beer 5 just shows the batteries – to which a second shelf was added and another dozen batteries bringing me up to 24. Currently running four sets with two sets as backup (swapping every few weeks which sets are offline.)

Root Beer 6 is the first sixteen panels, Root Beer 7 the added eight for 24. Best reading this year on a semi-cloudy day was just over twenty kilowatt-hours of power through the controller.

What all this means is that I put too much money and effort into this if all I was trying to do was save on my electric bill! (though the savings should pay it off in 15-18 years …)

But as a backup (which has been needed a couple of times already) the only thing I can’t do is run the A/C and drier (we have two window units we could use sparingly and cord/pins if it comes to that), and enough battery life for a day (maybe two) of really cloudy days.

What does this mean to those thinking about going solar? Not a damn thing. If you just want to save a bit on your bill and get plenty of sunshine grid-solar is a much cheaper investment in watts-per-dollar. If you’re going/playing off-grid games, the first thing you need is a general idea of what your daily power needs are/will be.

I WAGed (Wild Assed Guess) it (8 batteries and 12 panels), got cold feet before putting anything together and added another four each of batteries and panels. Which for the winter months actually worked for me (15kWhs of battery storage and 3360 watts of solar). As things got warmer, the usage went up and any clouds blocking the sun meant switching over to the mains to not risk waking up in the dark.

Oh, and if you don’t know what you’re doing please don’t try to do any of this! At 48 volts you can ‘feel’ it if you are in contact with both ends (yes, I was surprised I’d goofed up!), and higher DC voltages can be even more dangerous than AC; getting ‘bit’ by AC can kick you back/away as the direction of the voltage keeps changing, where as DC can cause you to ‘lock up’ – unable to release it if your were holding a wire when it bit. I was a coward the whole time playing with the solar panel power, covering my ass every way I could (no one else there to save me if I screwed up!)

The floor is open to questions (yes, I already know I'm nuts!)

My solar experiment has been going fairly well, and the local power company hasn't seen 3mWhs of my load last year.

Panels and batteries work in sets of four (48 volts), so I can remove problematic ones and rebuild sets if needed. And I did pick up a second 80Amp solar controller.

But I didn't have a real replacement for the 6000 watt inverter. Yes, if truly desperate I could rewire the batteries and use a much smaller 24 volt 2000 watt inverter (which has come in handy taking a little power 'on the road'.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find the same 6000 watt inverter I bought year before last much cheaper ($885 vs $1088!) than what I'd paid for back then. (I'm guessing some big ticket items are getting harder to sell - or Amazon was having a sale.)

So ordered/delivered/(and I was forcible reminded of just how heavy and lopsided the weight is!) and currently testing as if I do need to return it it's better to do it in the 30 day window where Amazon will deal with any problems.

As to my tall tales, I'm going to hack a couple bits of Book 4 and am rereading to find what needs to fit changes in Book 5. Updates in a week or so (maybe) ...

Oops …

If you’re not screwing somethin' up every now and then you ain’t doin’ nothin’ …

When I was setting up a bit of solar I didn’t do as much research as I should have and it came back around to bit me in the ass. My initial plan was just enough power to cover the basics if the grid went down for a bit. Sixteen panels and a dozen batteries (set up in sets of four for the forty-eight volt inverter) seemed to cover things if we didn’t have cloudy/rainy days. As the days got warmer so did usage and it became obvious what little I had just wasn’t enough.

This is where the lack of research jumped up and bit me on the butt. The batteries I’m using recommend not having more than four sets connected together or you get the different built-in battery management systems fighting over voltages/power. What they do they do well, they just don’t scale. Which means when I upgraded to two dozen panels and two dozen batteries I couldn’t have all the battery sets connected at once.

Now these are 12.8 volt 100Ah batteries, so each ‘set’ of four is right about 5kWhs of power, and going from 15 to 20kWhs now keeps things from dying just before the sun came back around. The other eight batteries? A 10kWh reserve in case we ever need it. On good charging days I’ll flip from the primaries to the reserves to top them off.

All that and some of you are still wondering ‘so what was the oops already?’

I had flipped over to add a bit of charge to the reserve – and come dark I forgot to flip back to the primaries! So a little after six this morning I get a call (home phone doubles as an intercom) ‘the power’s out!’ So it is, flip things back to run off the mains and enjoy having lights while I wait for the dawn – and discover my goof.

To be honest I’m surprised/pleased that just two sets powered the place as long as they did.

Live, learn and try not to take too many shocks to the system.

I’ve been worse, though not in the last couple of decades …

Not-so-bright relative took his kid to one of the disney breeding grounds before seeing family, and now most of us are testing positive for the crap.

Spent most of Monday in ER (83yo mom had a high fever and heaving, never got ‘admitted’ and all she was given was some aspirin …)

Still alive for now.

In previous posts I’ve admitted that while it ‘works’, it leaves a bit to be desired.

So, more batteries and panels coming in to allow for a cloudy day when we get them.

Some limits on the batteries will have me trying to get creative, but that’s half the fun!

More as we get there …

It seems what I've thrown together will work just fine - up to a point.

It can't quite run the drier (and most likely not the A/C come the warmer months), but it can run the house - provided we get plenty of sunlight!

The power in from the panels is slowly getting better as the sun comes back from the south, 12.5kWhs per sunny day are turning into 13kWh days. Best peak panel power out so far has been 2518 watts of a theoretical max of 3360 - though diodes on each panel set will take a little off what comes in. (Without the diodes a low panel's voltage can bring down the higher ones - which can make a big difference on charging when a panel gets shaded/covered.)

So rather than tell someone that she has to conserve power at all costs (she'll be 83 in a few days), we switch to the mains on cloudy days (which makes it a good day to do the laundry!)

I'm not going to make any changes at this time, but if the rates go high enough another set of batteries and two more strings of panels could be added without me having to upgrade any of the base equipment.

Oh, one other tiny problem is that the inverter isn't quite a perfect 60 cycles per second but around 59.58 ... Which means any clock using it for a reference is losing about ten minutes a day ...

Comments are welcome (after you stop laughing ...)

I know you guys (gals/herms/others) are getting tired of this, so this will be the last one (for now!)

A very cloudy day has shown me the limits of my toy as it now sits.

For a quick recap, we are playing with a 48 volt solar system:
16) 210 watt solar panels wired in groups of four
12) 12.8v 100AH batteries wired in groups of four
1) 80A solar controller
1) 6000w 240 split phase inverter
powering an old house built back in 1967 ...

Other than today we've gotten a bit better than 12Kwhs each day, today we got just under 2Kwhs. Mornings the battery voltage has been 51.2 or so, evenings have been 52.2-52.4 ...
This morning (07:44) started off at 51.22 but by 17:25 we were down to 49.51 and when I checked less than an hour later we were down to 47.96 I wrote that down and looked up again and it was .94 .93 .92 like watching a timer ticking down ...

So I'll give it a sunny day or three to top off the batteries before I 'play' with it some more. (next time I'll pop breakers for rooms we don't need and see how much I can trim our power demands!)

I still have enough 'room' on the controller to add one or two more panel sets - not that that would have helped running out of juice in this case. I can also add a fourth set of batteries, though I'll wish I'd found a bigger 'bench' to hold all this!

Thoughts and comments welcome (yes, I already know I'm crazy - thank you!)

RING RING

CPS Energy has detected an outage at your address - we'll take care of it as soon as we can ...

Okay ... maybe their semi-smart meter noticed I'm not drawing any power and ratted me out?

So I go out to flip things back to mains - I don't need some idiot of their going "Here's the problem!" and damaging my system by hooking it to live mains! But their meter is blank - there really is no power getting to it ...

Lady next door was just wheeling her trash container to the curb and admitted that the power's been out all morning. She was wondering why I still had outside lights ...

So I turned off my outside lights to not have the power company drive by and wonder what's up.

Not even February and the system's already paying for itself.

(and it's the first really cloudy day since I started running it, so more than one test today/tonight ...)

And my little test ended almost 48 hours after it started ...

Thursday about 14:00 I switched over to the inverter to see how long the batteries might last. And this was a 'not' trying to conserve test as in we didn't do anything to 'save' any power. Only main concern was the 1250 watt microwave and the system handled nuking a few things just fine.

Semi-sunny skies on Friday left the batteries a couple volts low compared to the start, but we powered through to Saturday where bright sunlight had us at better than Friday's high before noon. So it was time to do some laundry. Washer at its worse wasn't quite as bad as the microwave, but then it was time to see if we could run the drier on low heat ...

The answer was yes-but-no, drawing 18-20 amps on both legs - which the inverter seemed to be handling. Then something(s) else in the house kicked on (heater/refrigerator/freezer) and took one of the legs passed its limit. Since I was watching things I heard a 'beep' from the inverter as it said 'nope' and my world suddenly got quieter and quite dark ...

Disengaging inverter circuit breaker ...

Opening garage door manually as the button isn't working for some reason ...

Outside we flip the mains breaker back on ...

Restarted drier.

Pushed inverter power button, it seems happy enough sitting there with no load.

I'll let the batteries charge and run through the rest of the laundry that needs doing and we'll flip back to batteries after the drier's done.

So, not too bad for a test run, I might by some cord and clothes pins in case we have to dry things the old fashion way ...

Editing to add that I flipped us back over to the batteries/inverter after finishing the laundry, the testing continues ...

Wires look right ...

Inverter on, voltages look okay, draws about 40 watts with no load ...

Mains breakers off - where'd the lights go?

Inverter breaker engaged, there be lights!

Current house load 3.5 amps on one leg, 1.5 on the other (6000 watt inverter means it should be able to handle 25 amps per leg) , semi-cloudy day so only seeing +800 watts off the solar ... (two 120 legs as the US is funny that way ... :-P )

Must have is the microwave, jumped the 3.5 leg to 19 and since the solar isn't putting out no 1200 watts I watched as the battery voltage dropped - but it works!

Going to let it run as long as it will, should be sunny tomorrow so I might try running a load of laundry with the (electric) drier on low heat ...

Wish me luck!

(Yes, carrying a flashlight in my pocket just in case!)

Got replacement battery and drive for the laptop, it seems happy with things (typing this on the breast.)

Data recovery didn't (BACKUPS - BACKUPS - BACKUPS - and do as I say - not how I do!)


As to my solar mess, sixteen panels wired in pairs now grace the roof, wires dropping into the garage where the house circuit breaker panel is located. A temp panel is charging the batteries (they come delivered with only a 30% charge) and the main panel is planned and blocked in - but not yet wired.

Yes, me be slow, bum knee and a bit of weather didn't help things along.

More as my slow ass gets around to it! :-P

Don't back up your laptop before taking it with you ... (more on that in a bit)

Visit parents that believe in letting their three-year-old scream all the time ... (always carry earplugs!)

Always confirm that your laptop has entered hibernate mode before putting it in its padded travel bag! (yeah ...)

Yeah, it never shut down, so it sat in a sealed bag and cooked for a couple of hours. (was still cooking when I got home and took it out of the bag. Wasn't hot enough to burn me, but far hotter than it should ever get.

It did come back up after cooling down - to wondering where the hard drive might be (you can hear the heads clicking around, but that's about it. Oh, and the power/battery status light was doing a pattern I'd never seen before, seems the heat cooked the battery a bit as well. (found this out when I swapped out the boot drive and the battery/plug icon says: "Consider replacing your battery"!)

By some luck of the draw (or those Alien laptops are really built) the rest of the system seems to be working (typing this on it now in fact.)

Just a few months of 'stuff' gone (backup backup backup you dumbarse!) so I'll get another drive and battery and see about getting me arse back in a forward gear.

Hope the rest of you have better Christmas' and happy new years - or it that nude deers?

Warning! Nutcase with an 'idea' - do not read if you wish to stay sane!

Some of you may be aware that last February there was a bit more winter than some were expecting and there a lot of power problems/outages as far south as Texas (depending on which report you read/believe, the Texas electric grid almost went completely down - something that would have taken weeks if not months to bring back up if nothing big was damaged by the crash.)

Then there's the rising cost of power (seems someone in DC wants us completely 'green' without first building/installing enough green to cover for the gas/oil pipelines they're trying to close/cancel.)

So this nutcase in question is thinking about power.

There's grid-solar, where you have panels on your roof and it feeds any excess to the grid (and you get 'paid'/credited for it), but if the grid goes down you're dead in the water - even with the sun shining brightly.

Tesla has a power-wall, but that's out of my price-range.

So, the rough idea is to throw some panels on the roof to feed a controller that feeds the juice to a bank of batteries, which then feeds power to an inverter - which feeds power to the house.

For those about to squawk, yes, the mains breaker gets popped/tied-off before the inverter's breaker (yes - that gets protected as well!) is engaged.

Current plans are:
A dozen (may got to 16) 210 Watt panels (in the yard propped on a sawhorse I'm seeing around 170W on a bright day) feeding an:

80 Amp MPPT Solar Charge Controller, which will charge:

Eight (may go to 12) 12.8 volt 100Amp-Hour LiFePO4 Lithium Iron Phosphate Batteries which will power a:

120/240 VAC Split Phase,Continuous 6000 Watt low frequency pure sine power inverter Peak 18000 watts off grid solar inverter

(To reduce wire gauge/cost, the DC side is a 48 volt system, so panels and batteries will be set up in groups of 4.)

Only thing not tested as yet is the inverter, maybe this weekend (dang thing weighs 33kilograms, the batteries are only 10.43Kg each, the solar panels 11.1Kg each.)

Comments are welcome, but the power-bench is taking shape!

Stolen from 'McGyver' on a DAZ forum:

after seeing:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7e.....ant-believe-it


I'm starting to feel like my acorn based cryptocurrency "Wonkles" might actually be worth pursuing...

The following is from an old post or one of my Readmes...

Bitcoins... Pffft...
Reminds me of the .com days.
Just like small children, investors love playing with bubbles... While I can see some form of crypto currency eventually being a stable alternative currency, I don't think the ones we see now are going to be that, unless there is some sort of radical evolution...
In the meantime these numbskulls are driving up prices for gamers and 3D enthusiasts.
But I'll let everyone in on a secret...

I'm currently working on an even better crypto currency... It's based on a complicated system using special acorns which are numbered and given to spiritually enlightened squirrels to bury and then eventually dig up, each person who purchases one acorn (called a wonkel) before it is buried is issued two bananas which are not actually sent to the client, but are given to a specially registered chimpanzee banana attendant who then eats the bananas and writes out a complicated passcode mostly scrawled in poo, which is scanned and then laser etched into the shell of a turtle (called a "foogie") who is placed onto a series of complicated conveyor belts, some of which lead to enclosures with lettuce or others with lava. The surviving foogies (turtles) are then mailed to a crypto bank in Romania (or somewhere secret) where highly trained turtle whispers spin the foogies on a turtle divination board that's sort of like a roulette wheel. The foogie is spun thirteen times and the resulting numbers are multiplied by the number of surviving foogies from the previous night and then divide by 2.003 and that sum dictates the base value of each wonkel issued before 14:00 hours Greenwich time.

The client is then mailed a specially trained budgie (called a parakeet) who sings them their unique transfer code once before it explodes, which they must then quickly write down in invisible ink in their crypto pass book to redeem their wonkels.

As you can see it is foolproof.


My system is based on a physical item, the Wonkel which can be horded or traded, the entire system is based on a bafflingly stupid premise like all real currency, it involves some degree of risk to increase its volatility which drives its demand, it has an ironclad security system involving exploding budgies and invisible ink and the squirrels act as a randomizing factor to keep it real... This creates a complete system that marries the best stupid ideas of both traditional physical asset based currencies and imaginary wish backed crypto currencies.

Of course in the unlikely event all the foogies end up in lava, the system collapses... Which if you were paying any attention to at all, is clearly mostly almost absolutely sorta fairly impossible.

In fact one wonkel is probably kinda guaranteed to do nothing but increase 62,000% per attenuated monthly polysegment.
Not bifurcated yearly amortized disinterest segment, but a real time attenuated MONTHLY polysegment!

So... All I'm saying is if you don't want to look like the biggest most flatulant idiot on earth, you should get in on this before it goes so big that obnoxious Internet celebrities and Russia billionaires are the only ones who can afford this... Not only that, but by sinking every penny you have into my system you will help drive down the cost of GPUs and be able to afford a really good one when the Bitcoin craze pops!

Win-Win for everybody my peeps!

So yeah... It's looking like people are actually getting stupid enough for me to make this a real thing.