One thing lead to another

Thank goodness I uploaded the photos before the camera app on my phone broke some of them! I think I've fixed the phone, but I completely forgot to post an update here. I hope you'll forgive this late post!!

It all started when we purchased a pressure pump to get water from our tank into the house. With Winter well on it's way, Marty was mindful of the effect running even this small pump would have on our even smaller solar system. We looked into options locally, and yes, we could upgrade our panels from about 500W to nearly 1000W given our limiting factor - roof space. However, we could get 4 commercial 400W panels to fit, and it'd give us a whopping 1600W of power instead. The only thing is we had to get them from Newcastle. It was either arrange delivery or take a little holiday there ourselves. We opted for the latter!

Of course it rained and rained, but it was beautiful! Driving for over 6 hours from the very dry inland, it wasn't disappointing to us at all. As you can see, we enjoyed the water, all the green, the moisture in the air, everything!

  

We brought the panels back home with the use of a borrowed trailer, and a couple of weeks later, our friendly solar installer did the hard work of getting them on the roof, complete with a proper racking system. The original racks were Z purlins and bits of old signage screwed down to hold the panels in place. We might have considered it dodgy, but they did hold up to the weather for over 5 years!

The system has been much happier since the arrival of the panels. The batteries get to float much more often now, even in poor weather. It's amazing to see them perform the same on overcast drizzly days as our old panels would on sunny clear ones! There's so much power, the batteries have all they want with more to spare, giving us power to to use other electrical appliances more often too.

So, we had a little mini-holiday to Newcastle, experienced staying in an AirBnb host's home, had sourdough pizza and spent hours with our feet dangling in the water.. and brought back enough power to make our new water pump run. Excellent!

Not too slack

It's nice weather for sun baking..

..but we've been busy with the solar system this week. We ran the wire for the lights in the kitchen from the old system to the new. I always forget how to wire up the pull-switch, have to look it up every time!

The most obvious part of the whole thing was finally being able to take down the UGLY little solar shed that dominated the north wall of the cottage.

Other than that, we're almost back to "normal". We're still charging everything outside instead of in the kitchen though.. and the freezer.. that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. All I can say about that right now is, I made a HUGE mistake buying it all those years ago! Now it's back to square one again, but at least we have a good idea of what we really need out here now. (Something I wish I had considered way back when..)

We'll show-off the whole system after we've installed the battery monitor, so it'll be just about all done as far as 12 and 24 volt is concerned. Marty and I are a little bit proud of ourselves for pulling it off. We knew nothing about this stuff before hand. It's been quite the learning experience, and this way, we know our system inside out, back to front. :)

Charging ahead

We began early this morning, lifting the final panels onto the roof and plugging them in. The batteries were cleaned and wired in series and parallel, plus the temperature sensor for Blue on a negative terminal. We checked and re-checked everything, put in the remaining fuses and turned the system on. What a moment!

All that work comes down to this little setup we call the SCC - Solar Control Centre. (Not a very catchy name, and rather military, but it fits.) There is more to add to the system, but this is the basics of getting energy from solar panels into batteries. Everything flows from right to left - first a 2 way box with a couple of 50A fuses in there for the positive and negative cables coming from the solar panels, then Blue - a MPPT charge controller that is the brains of the system, over to the Bussmann fuse box which keeps the batteries and Blue separated if things go pear shaped (it has 80A fuses in it), and down to the batteries who enjoyed their first charge today thanks to this little setup.

So, how am I writing this if we've started the charging?? Well, silly us.. we realised that we can keep some of our power just by keeping one of the panels off the roof and using it to keep charging the old ute battery system. It's working just fine for now, and we're grateful for that. It gives us some breathing room to wire up the house and attach the other smaller components. We also want to make a door for the SCC to help keep out the dust.

We'll go to bed very tired, but happy with ourselves tonight.

Electricity and Water

The weather has certainly warmed up with 30°C+ (88°F-ish) days lately. We discovered last year that Spring isn't like it was in Victoria, with a slow build up of beautiful mid 20°C (77°F-ish) days. Nope, here we jump right into hot. Honestly, the winter hats, hot water bottles etc are still out and were only used a week or so ago.

But on that note, it means free hot water! Ok, luke-warm water is good enough for now, but oh how wonderful it feels!!

We used an old shower screen over the bath - an idea we got from our friends Jeanie and Bill. It was overcast today, but even so, after working in the roof and sweating all day, it was like heaven! The water drains to the mandarin tree, and soon the lemon tree as well, plus the pavers obviously need a bit of work still. :)

We're trudging along with the solar system. Step-by-step, little-by-little..

We've installed the conduit from the panels over to the batteries, fed the solar cable through (that is way more difficult than it sounds), bought just about every little bit of conduit joiner and accessory known to Masters (the hardware store), and we are still missing bits! Tomorrow we'll add the switch between the solar panels and "Blue" (the affectionate name for the charge controller), put Blue into place and wire her up. After that, we've got a pretty big job of taking down each one of the panels and re-wiring them.

It's only after all that, and then some, can we start the batteries charging for the first time. The initial charge is suppose to be for a week without load. As you might imagine, we're a little hesitant to say goodbye to the luxury of electricity for a week, but we'll just have to manage. It will be very much worth the wait though! It's not like we'll be sitting around with nothing to do, however. There's wires to run for the house, cutting concrete to run conduit to the kitchen and lounge, a light circuit to run for the bedroom perhaps, and of course, BATHS to relax in!! :)

DIY Extra Low Voltage solar power

We've been working on getting electricity happening here for a long time now. Lots of research, lots of learning, determining exactly how much we need and finding the components. It's been a learning experience, for sure, coming from not knowing what amps, volts or watts were, knowing nothing about electricity at all, really!

Building the battery box feels like nearing the end of the journey, rather than just the start.

Inspiration for the box and "wall" for the charge controller etc, came from a strange place. We had this wood frame that was attached to the 3-point-linkage carry-all we got at an auction. It wasn't much use to us on the carry-all, but it inspired us - in a rustic kinda way - to use it to build the holder for the power components. Just add a form-ply box for the batteries and.. you see it, don't you?

Fortunately, Marty sees my crazy plans, and runs with them. :)

It's sturdy. I weigh about the same as only one of the batteries though!

The top opens, the front comes off completely, making moving the batteries in and out (hopefully not often) a little bit easier. It takes both of us to lift a battery, and it took a few days of rest and a visit to the chiropractor after doing it. I'm not even joking!

The batteries are 12V 190AH each. All four of them will be hooked-up to give us 24V and 380AH all up. It should be enough to run the freezer, and I doubt they'll notice our little 3 watt light globes in the kitchen. Most everything else we re-charge (laptop, power tools, vacuum cleaner and mobile phones) are done during sunny days.

So, next up, we've attached a board at the back of the unit, and "Blue" (the Victron 150/70 MPPT charge controller) will be attached - once we've got a door to keep it safe from crazy weather.. After that.. well.. lots of maths, cable sizes, fuses and such. Maths isn't our strong point, so we're taking it slow and making triple-y sure we have it right before doing anything drastic.

Meanwhile, our old ute battery is still going strong - goodness knows how - with the old charge controller keeping it charged despite the weather. We have light, internet and gadgets.. but we're both looking forward to the day we can have a freezer too.

Experimenting with electricity

We're getting brave!

The poor old truck battery isn't going to be happy about this. :)

We've started playing with the 12V system available to us here. (It's a cool inside project, so we can hide from the summer a little).

It all started when the router lost our "fast" connection (as good as we can get out here anyway!), and we ordered an antenna. We figured we could now move the router into the house and install the antenna on the roof. Ha!

Then came conduit. Yes, I know, most people simply run the wires on the insulation in the attic, but with our mouse problems, the heat up in the attic, plus the condition of the old wires we took out, all say to us that we'd rather do things "right" and give the wiring all the protection we can. Plus it's a little less fire-risky too.

So, we install conduit, pull the wires through it, and kind-of bam, the router is installed in the spare room (which will be the bedroom some day). Then Marty gets a bright idea.. Lights in the kitchen would be nice, yes.. would save us some money on candles, yes..

So, we've finally got the parts together, we'll give it a go. If the battery doesn't like it, we'll just have to bite the bullet and upgrade the system. We have to anyway, if we ever want to get the freezer running!

Will update on the progress, but of course, things could come up and derail the whole thing for a month or two, or it could get finished tomorrow. Life is like that, huh. :)