My own electrician

Sometimes it's a lot more fun to work on other people's projects. All my electrical tools were organized in a rugged carry bag because I've been helping others. Ever start to do a project but get discouraged because you can't find all the tools you need? Since everything was packed in the bag there was no excuse to not work on my own electrical issues.

My solar electric system has major components that are over 23 years old. The inverter has a built in charger. The charger was turned on by a simple switch in my kitchen that activated a high amperage relay in the basement. The original relay had been salvaged from a fire horn. There was no telling how old it was.

When the charger stopped working the natural assumption was that the relay finally gave up the ghost. The quick and dirty solution was to hook up a battery charger directly to the battery bank. Unlike the system with the handy switch in the kitchen, the charger required that I go down the basement to turn it on. Fortunately the charger has a timer option so it's not necessary to go back down stairs to shut it off.

I was able to free up a relay from a hot water tank project. I removed the old relay and installed the replacement. Only after I threw the switch did I learn that I'd misdiagnosed the problem. While the relay switch was old and ratty, it was actually the charger part of the inverter that had died.

Since the inverter part is still purring along I'm in no hurry to replace it. I can keep using the heavy duty charger in the basement when the batteries need topping off. The only drawback is that I have to go outside to get into the basement where the charger and battery bank are. Right now I'm thinking that I could wire that kitchen switch to an outlet in the basement. That outlet could provide power to charger without me ever having to go downstairs.

There's a battery meter that's also in the kitchen so I'd know when the battery bank is charged. Of course, I could just spend a couple thousand on a new inverter/charger, but that will wait until it's absolutely necessary.

-Sixbears

Off-Grid 12 to 24 volt

My buddy and I just changed his off-grid system from 12 to 24 volts. For months he just sat on $3000 worth of solar electric equipment, waiting for me to be available to help with the installation. He didn't trust anyone else . . . well, anyone else who would work for barter instead of real money.

His old system consisted of solar panels wired for a nominal 12 volts to charge a battery bank of 12, 6 volt batteries wired at 12 volts. A cheap 12 volt DC to 120 volt AC inverter provided house current.

The cheap inverter caused buzzing and humming in some of their electrical equipment plus could barely power the water pump. They'd often fire up a generator to pump water.

The new system has all the bells and whistles. The big upgrade is a large sine wave inverter that has no difficulty quietly powering all their electrical needs.

The first thing we did was to rearrange the 12, 6 volt batteries into 3 groups of 4 batteries wired to provide 24 volts. Those three groups were then wired in series to increase amperage. The solar panels were also wired in series to boost their voltage. He lucked out in that his charge controller was designed to automatically adjust from 12 to 24 volts.

The sine wave inverter was a bit more of a challenge since I was unfamiliar with that particular make and model. However, I knew it needed to have a DC input and an AC output. It could also work as a battery charger so there had to be another AC input from the generator. That was the important stuff. To confuse the issue there were a lot of extra wires to send data to all the special electronic montoring and adjusting gizmos.

Good thing I brought my reading glasses along as it took some digging around circuits and manuals. There was a brief moment of tension until my buddy noticed one of the circuit breakers wasn't completely flipped into the correct position. At the end of the day we flipped a few switches and turned the lights on, so it was all good.

According to the solar electric supplier the 24 volt DC based inverters are supposed to handle loads like water pumps better than their 12 volt counterparts. Kinda makes sense, but it also helps that the new inverter is a quantum leap in quality.

All in all it was an interesting day.

-Sixbears

Battery decisions

I just pulled the dead 12 volt deep discharge battery from my sailboat. It got me thinking. Well, the first thing I thought was: darn, those things are heavy. The second thing that came to mind was the fact that my household battery bank is getting on in years.

My household solar electric system is of moderate size. Storage consists of 12 golf cart sized batteries. Currently I'm using good quality Interstate brand. Trojans are good too, but since Interstate has local dealers that's what I went with. The big advantage of dealing locally is that I don't have to pay for shipping. Since shipping is based on weight and batteries are mostly lead, it would get pricey quickly.

Lead acid batteries are really old technology. They haven't advanced all that much in the last 100 years or so. Battery storage has always been the Achilles heel of alternative energy. While lead acid battery storage is adequate for off-grid homes, it doesn't scale well to power grid size. There are some massive battery bank systems out there for things like phone and Internet systems, but there are none large enough to power a big city.

At least, not until fairly recently. Battery technology is making some huge leaps. There's always been interesting things invented in laboratories, but those technologies never made it out of the lab. Now there are huge factories turning out high capacity batteries for everything form cell phones to electric cars. There's real economic incentives for cheap battery storage. Those clever ideas from the labs are starting to show up in factories.

It's almost at the point where it would make sense to replace my 19th century electrical storage system with something from the 21st century. Almost.

The house system should be able to last for another year or two. By then it might make economic sense to try something new. Of course, there's also the possibility that as new battery technology takes hold, lead acid will be deeply discounted. That would be fine too, as leas acid has proven to be good enough for my needs.

-Sixbears

Fixing the boat I have

Monday was a good day for dealing with things on the Internet and on the phone. The day started with snow which accumulated to about an inch before turning to rain. Not a good day for playing outside.

The main sail on my Oday 19 is blown out and ripped. It's like the main motor is not firing on all cylinders. It really needs to be replaced. After a lot of searching around I decided to go with Bacon Sails. They e-mailed a detailed Measurement Form.

Apparently it's not enough to know the model and year of your boat. There's a lot of variance between boats, even those that are the same model. Rather than build a sail that sorta fits, they want to build one that really fits my particular boat. Makes sense, I guess.

I wish it was simple, as now I've got a lot of measuring to do. The boat will have to be unwrapped from its winter cocoon and moved to where I can lift the mast without getting tangled up in power lines. Tuesday is supposed to be another rainy day, but the sun is supposed to come out Wednesday.

I hope to get them moving on the sail fairly soon as it takes about four weeks to build it. They want half the money up front and the other half when the sail is completed. That seems to be a common practice in the industry.

While waiting for the sails to come in I might as well do a few other projects, like a mount for the 100 watt solar panel. A new cabin hatch would be great too. The Oday has a removable cabin hatch instead of a sliding one. It's a miracle that it hasn't fallen off the boat and sank to the bottom of the ocean. It would be kinda cool to build something that gives me a few more inches of headroom too. That would certainly make the boat more comfortable.

Maybe I can get all those projects done before the sail comes in. Right now all the ice isn't even off the lake yet, so giving it another month to warm up isn't a bad thing.

-Sixbears