Sunday, March 22, 2015

Uh-oh

This is taking too much time.

I'm going from topic to topic without making decisions and decisions are going to have to be made.

It seems like I'd really like to postpone the trip, but on the other hand, I really don't want to do that.

Shoot.  It ain't that hard.  ( I hope )

At the moment, I'm kinda hung up on batteries, controllers, wiring and such.

It looks like a four battery system, which means I need 3 more.  You know what?  I don't have to make this decision now, anyway.  But I have to before I move out there.

The tentative system looks like 4 ( 35 Amp-hr ) batteries, an MPPT-30 controller, and the 1500 watt inverter already en route.  I've got some battery cables lined up that I think will work.  Plus a solar panel.  Yeah, just one.

There may be other hardware to round out the system.  Something called a baby box.  Some breakers to go into the box, plus some other protective gear.  Wiring cables, an inverter install kit.  This may not be all.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that it isn't.

Other things that I've been looking at this morning ( and now early afternoon):

Update:

It's beginning to look like a good idea to use the van to recharge the batteries on cloudy days.  The output for the van's alternator is a whopping 90 amps.  Just 30 minutes on the van's alternator will recharge these babies.

I can use a couple of "baby boxes".  One for isolating the batteries, and the other for the other tasks.  Once the batteries are isolated by flipping the breakers, I can attach a jumper cable from the van's batteries to the bank of batteries powering my electrical system.  The van needs to be started from time to time anyway, even if you don't drive a lot.  Let it run for about 30 minutes on a cloudy day, and voila, charged batteries.

This will now go into the power subseries of the off-the-grid main series of posts.

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