Surrounded sounds ominous. Its more like riddled with paper company land. Most of it is owned by Irving these days although I remember the days of IP ownership and Boise Cascade before that. -Curt From: Andrew Strasfogel <astrasfo...@gmail.com> To: Curt Raymond <curtlud...@yahoo.com>; Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com> Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 1:22 PM Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT: Solar performance - long Is that area surrounded by International Paper lands? I used to work for IP and did field trips to company lands in ME and NB.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 12:36 PM, Curt Raymond via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: No deer, lots of sign though. The camp is in Caribou, Maine. Take I-95 north until it becomes the TransCanada 2, turn left and drive north for an hour. -Curt From: OK Don <okd...@gmail.com> To: Curt Raymond <curtlud...@yahoo.com>; Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com> Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 12:16 AM Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT: Solar performance - long Very cool - sounds like you are about to get it figured out and optimized for your needs. Get any deer? On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 7:38 PM, Curt Raymond via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: Since we had the talk some time ago about Andrew possibly installing some solar power I thought I'd bring you up to date on the solar installation at camp.As a reminder Dad installed 1x 100w solar panel, charge controller, 2x 35ah 12v batteries and an 800w inverter. The system powers the range hood which sports a 9w CF bulb and a fan which together pull around 80w running on high and a ceiling fan which pulls about 40w on its one setting. This is measured at the output of the inverter with a kill-a-watt meter. When its on the inverter itself draws .5a at 12v or about 6w measured with a multimeter. The inverter also has 2 USB outputs, each draws .25a at 12v for another 6w when in use. The inverter draws a constant .01a when idling with the USB ports hot but not in use. Most recently we had 4 guys for 9 days. Thats 4 cell phones and 4 tablets plus the wifi hot spot. Something was on the USB ports all the time, in fact I charged my tablet and phone in my truck because I couldn't get any time inside for it. So I figure we were using 6w 24 hours a day for 144w. The range hood light/fan combo ran every morning for about half an hour and the light ran every evening for about 2 hours, we didn't use the ceiling fan. That'd be 40w in the morning and 18 in the afternoon giving us a grand total of 202wh or around 16ah at 12v. The 100w panel is angled for best capture in mid August at which time it should make (reliably) 400wh a day. Sadly this time of the year I'd be satisfied if we were making 1/4 that. We don't have good input monitoring (yet) so lets say 100wh which is possibly generous. Certainly we did start making power about the time the sun came up with the panel showing constant 12v about half an hour later and it continued at that rate until the sun was well over the horizon. So we were using about twice our production. Actually thats true for the sunny days, I suspect on the cloudy and rainy days we were probably making more like 50wh... Some of this will be improved by taking down some small trees to the east of the camp that shade the panel early in the day. There are other much larger trees which could be removed for more improvement but won't for ascetic reasons. Anyway the system behaved as expected, with an 8ah a day deficit voltage sagged badly so every other day I'd run the charger for awhile to prop it up which was a PITA. The extended plan for next year is to add 2x 100w panels and 2x 35ah batteries though I may push for a third panel instead of the batteries to help during the cloudy times. Other add on plans:2x 12v ports, we need more USB capacityammeter for incoming (ie solar) monitoring. I intend to put this in a box with the 12v portsbattery voltage monitoring - we currently have an input voltage monitor but not on the batteries, though in practice the batteries lag the panel by about .2v just about all the time. Pics:http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz353/curtludwig/Camp/IMG_20151113_134650599_HDR_zpsvaomkrrj.jpg the panelhttp://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz353/curtludwig/Camp/IMG_20151113_134636443_HDR_zpshlloz7hl.jpg batteries, with the backup charger, note that this is actually on the outside of the camp, directly under the panel and just visible in that shot.http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz353/curtludwig/Camp/IMG_20151113_134715244_zpszvgug8rj.jpg the brains of the operation, right to left, the inverter with the kill-a-watt hanging off it feeding the camp through the orange cord is connected to the charge controller which is connected to the batteries (middle posts) and to the solar (left side posts) also shown is the solar voltage and under that the shunt thats supposed to allow us to see solar amperage but that strangely only seems to work at voltages below 12v. -Curt _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com -- OK Don NSA: The only branch of government that actually listens to US citizens! “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” – Mark Twain"There are three kinds of men: The ones that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."WILL ROGERS, The Manly Wisdom of Will Rogers2013 F150, 18 mpg2012 Passat TDI DSG, 44 mpg1957 C182A, 12 mpg - but at 150 mph! _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com