New consulting relationship with GreenTecAuto begins
What actually goes wrong with the batteries????
A look at todays Hybrid and EV battery packs
Battery packs exposed
Keeping Warm In New England
Plugging into the SUN
50A 600VAC transfer relay
AC source transfer relay is finished
Adding some new batteries
All weather dish movers
Almost ready to wire things up
Assembling the parts for the load manager
Beating on the system/ use it or loose it
Better solar absorber plate
Better Specific gravity instrument
bringing in the batteries
Burgers are better
California or bust! Solar modified mobility scooter
Canning pot
canning season is here again
Concentrate the heat test #4
Connecting battery bank #2
Cooking some hotdogs
Crappy luck with the weather
Designing a simpler and lower cost solar tracking amplifier
Equilizing the batteries
Everything is working again.
Finally installed
Finally nearing completion of the battery enclosure
multytracker 1
First test
Getting a BIG solar plug
Getting some experience with DC
Getting started on the final wiring
Getting too old to be slinging 120 lb batterys into the rack
Giving the batteries a workout
Hot water tank as energy storage component test 1
Hot water test 2
Identifing the wires, and mounting the Inverter panel
Insulated hibachi reaches baking temperatures
keeping the head cool
keeping warm.
Sue Dabrowski (my better half) makes some solar eggs
Lightning the super fast EV minibike
Looking the data
Main structure of battery rack is finished
Making some stewed tomatoes
making the connection to the existing wiring
making the DC pos buss bars
More improvements to the dish
Multy purpose tracker 1
New tracking amplifier
No more throw away batteries please
Not very encouraging test # 3
Old Rear projection TV lens makes solar furnace
power distribution box fabrication
preparing to connect the big loads
Reading Specific Gravity accurately
running off grid all day
Running on batteries
Second test
Snow melt prep for test 2
Snow melt test one A close look at the process
solar cell adhesion test #1
Solar cells on my Insight ????
Solar cooker gets some wheels
Solar cookout in 20 degree weather
Solarfest 2013
Solarfest is next weekend so it is time to tweak the tools
Solar powered wood burner X-Y stage
Solar powered wood burner focus and lens assembly
Solar teaching toys
Solar tracking with no electronics" Solar Puppet"
Starting the rewiring
The 7 foot circle of sunlight moves to rear deck.
the final high current connections
the finished load center and charge controller connections
the heavy lifters arrive
The new batteries are finally installed and working
The snow is returning???
The snow keeps on coming, need to figure out a good way to keep the panels clear
The sun is dropping 1KW/SQ meter
The transfer relay is wired in and working.
Tracking the sun Big Time
Mikey's solar panel snow sweeper
Vertical and horizontal trackers installed, drive wheel controls
Very interesting heating element
Who pulled the plug?
Wood burning art ?
Yuck, more snow
Making a small solar concentrator
Building MIMA and the plug in adapters
Converting a telephone truck to electric
DIY dual pulse Capacitor Discharge Spotwelder
Chevy Bolt EV joins the family
Getting in shape while making electricity
Retirement
Replacing gasoline with solar electric lawn equipment
What is Genesis One?
How to stop the aging process DIY
MIMA Install Day 2005 a Big Success!
Building a hybrid car grid charger
Tapping into the Wind
Expanding MIMA with the Distribution board ( users projects )

running off grid all day

running off grid all day
Runing all day on solar

This time of year, the days get longer, the nights are shorter, so the total time where the battery's need to power the house is just at the point where the system stays on inverter power all night, and with the huge solar array, the batteries are fully recharged by 10AM.
Nice to see the batteries make it all night.
During the day, a lot of watts are not being used, so the next stage of the project is to move the big loads to the inverter, with a way to only allow operation when the power can be replenished by the sun in real time. To allow off grid operation overnight, we don't want the 4kW water heater or 4500W electric range to operate then.
The plan is to use high power Solid State relays to enable or disable these big loads, based on the power available. The hot water heater is a load that has inherent built in storage, so does the air compressor, so when no one else needs high power during the day, we can dump heat into the tank, and the temperature will stay hot all night.
The range is a bit more tricky, as the inverter will be overloaded if both the range and the water heater are on at the same time, so the plan is to design a load management system that will divert the daytime excess energy to the hot water tank, compressed air, until they are fully charged, and to turn off those loads if the electric range or the welder need power, and to switch the electric range to the grid if Sue wants to cook after the sun goes down.I am finding out that the outback inverter data logging and monitoring system is not very powerful, unless you buy more components. You cant control the inverter or change settings without the MATE3 controller, the MATE 3 does not include a USB output unless you buy a USB card that plugs into it. They sell the card that uses a microchip USB processor for $75, which is using $3 worth of components.
Then you find that the battery monitoring requires a Flexnet DC computer ($275) and additional shunt ($25) to give you the net Amp hours in and out so you can better understand your battery condition. Then you find that to use the Mate3 and the flexnet dc computers, you need a custom network router for another $150, when a better design could have given you all of this in the inverter and Mate3.
Well at this point, I don't have a lot of options, and with those components, I can write a labview data logger and control program that will tie together all the Misc parts. Why is it never easy!