But first, let me say that I replaced the bus bar in the combiner box and everything seems to be working fine now. Except one fine bright day I happened to take a look at the solar charge controller when I noticed it read 3100W of power flowing in. Wow! That’s great! My array is made from six 390W-rated devices, so best case should be 6 x 390W = 2340W. I was getting 28% more than full power! Actually, this is kind-of expected, but not really, but yes.
You see, that 390W is evidently just for the front of the panel. There are photovoltaics on the back of the panel, too. What madness is this, you ask? Well, for roof-mounted systems, that would be madness indeed. For ground-mounted systems, however, this makes sense in cold climates. Specifically, it makes sense in climates that see snow. Snow reflects light. Snow reflects light onto the back of the array. Right! Indeed it does. These panels are made by a company called Canadian Solar. Seems rational to think they might have thought of snow 🙂
DC power = Amps x DC volts. Voltage varies with solar intensity and, for that matter, loading. The question here is how much current is flowing from the array? Why does it matter? It matters because the smallest wires in this system are size AWG 10, which, depending on temperature rating, are specified to carry between 30 and 40 amps. Conservatively, we say AWG 10 wire is good for 30A. My array, at a loaded voltage of about 75V and peak power of 2340W represents a current of 2340W / 75V = 31.2A. No problem. I know for sure I used high-temperature-rated wire. I still have the spool and I checked. It’s good for 90C (194F!). Still, I really don’t like my wiring getting hot, or even more than a little warm, really. 31 Amps is no problem, though. But wait – that was for the 2340W rating and my charge controller was reading 3100W! What was the current in that case? 38A. That’s a 26% overload. More than a little. Not enough to be an immediate and urgent problem, but definitely more than I’m comfortable with.
I got out my thermal camera and aimed it at the conduit carrying those AWG 10 wires. Indeed, the conduit exterior read over 100F in a 70F room — and that’s 1″ conduit with only two wires in it. How hot were the wires inside if the exterior of the conduit was 100F? Hard to say exactly, but for sure they were going to be meaningfully warmer than 100F. And that is hotter than I ever want them to be, even if they can officially take it.
I knew these panels could get an approximately 30% boost from their undersides — but I didn’t realize that boost was not already included in the 390W specification! I had a chat with my vendor, who didn’t realize this either. In the W.O.G., there’s only a short run of AWG 10 wire into the power center. The long haul from the array underground to the building actually uses much heavier wire, but that wire is too big to terminate in the power center itself, so I have a junction back down to the smaller stuff just before. In the house, there’s a good 30-40ft or so of the thinner wire and it’s much harder to replace. In both cases, I do not want a sunny day after a snow storm overheating my wires!
The good news is that this is easily remedied. The charge controller has a setting that can limit the amount of current it allows in, even if more is available. It was set to maximum of like 88A by default. It is set to 35A now on both systems, which is still a little high, but keeps the overage within my comfort zone while still allowing a high-producing day to give me a bit of extra juice if my batteries are low. And if the array should ever be able to produce even more than 38A, it still won’t flow more than 35 through my wires. That will warm them a little, but still keep them very safe and within my comfort zone.
It’s been hard to stay motivated to work in the W.O.G. as winter drags on (though spring has made a few preview appearances), but I keep at it, slowly. Most recently, I’ve been paneling the walls, which also means finishing the insulation job behind them. Here’s some work in progress that also illustrates another important aspect of all this.
See those books on the window sill? See that shelving unit to the left of the window? Neither the books nor the shelving unit belong there, yet there they are. Why? Well, it’s as simple as this: in order to work on the walls, I need space in front of the walls. As soon as a section of wall is done, I can occupy the space in front of it with things that have been unpacked. Unpacking, besides gaining access to the things, also makes more room in the workshop because things in boxes take more space than those things not in boxes. I can’t unpack unless there’s someplace to unpack into. Hence the shelves. But I can’t place the shelves where I’m working. But I can’t work on the walls with boxes in the way! Another great big game of Parking Lot. What happens is this: I shove things into the middle of the room to start, so I can work on a section of wall. Once that section is done, I can put a shelving unit up against it and then unpack some things into that unit. That makes more room elsewhere, increasing the ease with which further construction may be done. It also consumes construction materials, decreasing the space they take in the middle of the room, increasing the ease with which further construction may be done.
So while I do not plan on keeping those shelving units in these places with that stuff on them, their being there gives me the ability to continue to work elsewhere in the room, slowly making it more hospitable to everything and eventually making way for the workshop layout proper. Eventually. You might actually notice that this shot is far, far less cluttered than when I took a picture from a similar angle of the “well lit disaster area” from a couple of months ago. It is still a long way from tidy and useful, but it is also a long way from where it was two months ago.
Since this photo was taken, the top course of framing along the walls has been advanced a bunch. It still needs to be insulated and boarded.
Actually, this corner, once the walls are done, will be ready for the work station that goes here. This is where my chop saw will be stationed, on a large built-in that can support work for 8 ft to one side and at least 4 ft to the other side. Below the work deck will be a large number of cabinets/drawers for tool and material storage. A large catchment hood will be in place behind the saw for dust collection. That station, in turn, will be used to fabricate the other work stations to follow.
Dating? Yep. My original plan to live out here was a solo plan. Then life went where it went and became coupled during construction. The plan was then to live in the HomeBox with my partner. You can thank her for the king sized tub and the wood stove, both of which were her idea — after I had already started construction and somehow had to find a way to fit them in with all the other constraints already established. I did, and I’m quite happy about all that — especially the stove; I love heating with wood. The partnership, however, did not last as long as the construction project and so when it came time to move in, it was just me.
At that time, though, circumstance would have it that I was once again coupled, though the other half of that couple was very happy with her location so our relationship became one of distance. It did not survive this, because reasons. So for a few months here, I was by myself, but still coupled. And more recently, not coupled at all. And while I am good company, even to myself, and while I do like the peace and simplicity of living alone, I am still a human and humans are social creatures . . . and it would be nice to have some local connections.
I do actually have one local connection, but not a romantic one, and that’s with the fellow who did the earth moving and septic system for me here. It turns out he lives just a few miles down the road and we’ve become friends. That’s a good start, for sure, but there remain unmet needs. The hardest part about that is that what’s good about this place is also what’s bad about this place: there aren’t many people around. In winter, even more so, as such a high percentage of residences in the area are seasonal / vacation properties. It seems most people don’t wish to spend their winters where it’s windy and snowy and foggy and gets to -8F. I don’t know why they wouldn’t want to… but evidently they don’t 🙂
Aside from there not being many people around, there’s also no activity happening either, really, so not so much with random opportunities to discover people, either.
That’s the tricky bit. I expect this to change a little in the spring, when the seasonal people return, and when year round residents come out of having been hunkered-down for the winter, for that matter. Still, I’m thinking that getting connected with people, be they friends or otherwise, is going to be particularly challenging. I do have one idea that may be both effective and delicious. Before she closed for the season last year, I had taken to conversation with the lady who runs the local ice cream stand / snack shop. She’s quite chatty and seems to know a lot about everything / everyone. A nexus of sorts. I will tell her I’m interested in making local connections when she opens for the season, some weeks from now. Maybe she knows someone … or has ideas about goings on that I might get involved with.
I looked into meetup and scoured the interwebs for other likely methods for finding like-minded folk but didn’t find anything promising within 100 miles. Like I said, the good thing about being far from everything is also the bad thing about being far from everything: one is far from everything. Thus, it is quiet and peaceful here, the night sky is glorious, and people leave you alone to your business. All of that is lovely. But also lonely. The people I meet at the general store and the post office and for that matter the coin laundry have all been pleasant, but with the exception of the store clerks, they’re not people I see repeatedly, so there’s not much opportunity to build rapport. Not quickly, anyhow.
I’ve dipped my toe into the madness that is online dating . . . and now I understand why people dislike it so. There is much not to like about it, and as you might expect, the number of members who are within 50 miles of here is quite slim and few people are interested in anything at a distance, even thought that really can work nicely for the right kind of independent people. And so it goes. Or, rather, doesn’t. Not really. Though a little. Maybe. I think.
I saw this Turkey Vulture on the property a few days ago. There were two of them, actually, and a day or two later, I saw a third (separately). I had never seen these birds before, though I’d heard of them. I don’t know what they were looking for or at, or what might have attracted them here, but I did take notice.
Now, I don’t believe that animal sightings have intrinsic meaning as signs/portents/messages. If I see a hawk, I see a hawk because a hawk was going about hawk business where I happen to be going about people business. Nothing relevant there, just two creatures doing their things within sight of each other.
I do believe, however, that things have meaning when we say they do. I also believe that the subconscious can nudge the conscious into noticing certain things it might not have noticed otherwise. You might see hawks all the time and not think much of it until one day you see a hawk and somehow it feels more relevant to you that time. Why would it? I will leave that question open to the vagaries of intuition. Sometimes one has a knowing that cannot be easily explained. In this same way, sometimes when one sees a thing, it feels significant, even if there is no intrinsic significance (e.g., hawk doing hawk things has nothing to do with you doing people things in the area, but this time you notice it differently).
In this light, when I saw the turkey vulture (who also reminded of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal), it felt relevant so I looked it up. This is what I found. What you make of it is up to you. I found it of interest and remarkably apropos to what’s going on in my life at present in various ways. Sometimes intuition leads a person to an interesting place.