solar power

We are now down on Ogilby road, which is in California, near the Mexico border, and about 30 miles from Yuma. We are about 6 miles south of a campground, where we can dump our septic tank and fill with fresh water. We have an amazing view 360 degrees and can see Mexico. Great sunrises and sunsets.

Oh and of course, most important of all, there are lots of rock locations near here, new ones we find each year.

…. and Tucker is now barking like crazy because a coyote came and checked out our MH…. He was just a little guy and I just let Tucker bark. Now he is MAD at me 🐶

What allows us to do this is our solar system, which we have had to ….renovate.. a lot… this trip.

Most people we know who “boondock” down here, have pretty basic solar systems and never seem to have issues. Our biggest issue is that Ken uses CPAP at night, to breathe well all night. SOOO, we are dependant on a good system that will provide power all night, and then charge during the day. When we were down in Washington in October, our batteries went. That is to say that they were totally down each night and barely charged in the day time. IT IS important for batteries never to get to zero.

We have had many solar systems over the past 10 years and have …. very gradually… learned a lot about them. We had a cabin on Adams lake that had no power so we installed a very basic system, and blew our first battery because we left the cooler plugged in and got stuck in a boat out on the lake for a long time and the battery went down to zero and never really worked again.

This is where we learned the importance of a charge controller, a devise that both protects your battery from too much charge from the solar panels and from becoming too discharged as in my previous example.

The diagram above shows how a basic system works. The solar panels, the charge controller to protect the batteries, the batteries to store the power ….. and the inverter that takes DC power and converts in to AC power, to you can charge your computers and phones.

So after our trip to Washington in October, we purchased a new battery, a large self heating lithium battery. The reason for the self heating mode is because apparently you cannot charge a Lithium battery when it is below freezing. We DO, on occasion camp when it is below freezing, so this function is important to us. This new battery is a 400 amp hour battery, with most of it, usable. ( a lithium battery can be discharged down to almost zero charge, whereas a regular battery is damaged if you take them to zero, they suggest only down to 50% at any time).

A battery cycle is from Fully charged down to the point that you can go down to, in the regular batteries, that is 50% charge, and Lithium it is close to zero. One difference between regular and lithium, is that the regular batteries can only cycle down about 300 times, and Lithium 4000. I guess it is a little bit like your car battery which you can only start SOOO many times in cold weather, you essentially wear the battery out. Usually started your can you only dip down maybe 5% from fully charged. SOOO that Ken uses CPAP at night and we do run the furnace of the motorhome at night, we do often run the batteries down to 50% often, which is why our previous batteries only lasted 2 years (warranty is only for one year)

The Lithium battery, can go down to about 10% and 4-5000 times. The previous batteries (we had 4) cost 1500 dollars, and the lithium one cost 2500 dollars. We NOW wish that we had gone with lithium to begin with.

SO NEXT ISSUE IS SOLAR PANELS….. We quickly learned that this new battery, it takes a lot of power to totally charge it. It is better for the life of the battery to keep charged or near charged. AND we are not always guaranteed sun every day. So we needed more solar panels. A big issue for us is purchasing stuff along the way. We are seldom in a city, and things for Solar, tend to be ordered online because there are so many options, few stores want to keep so much stock. So we have learned this trip that most towns have both a UPS, and FEDEX office that accept parcels, so that you can send a parcel to the next town you are going to. I MUST SAY,… this is at times hard because we seldom have a clue where we are going to be …. and when.🙂…. but at times we have to comply with a schedule … for the sake of our solar system.

The cool issue about Solar panels, is that they have gotten better, in that they are now available smaller with the same wattage. You cannot simply piece meal the panels together. The panels all need to put out a similar amount of power because the system basically drops down the the lowest power panel. I must say that I am over simplifying this whole process, but it is how it makes sense to me and likely might make better sense to someone else. A year ago we could not add solar panels because there was not room to add another panel of the same power as the ones that are currently up there, but now because of this new development we ARE able.

So we add the new solar panels, (we had to pick up in Barstow)……. I should back up a little bit here to explain the inverter. It really is a side piece … just there to charge our phones and computers. Essential nonetheless. The inverter, it turns out, uses power itself….. so IF the inverter is on, and even when nothing is plugged in, the power DOES go down, and when the inverter is failing, it uses more power.

As you can see I have stolen all kinds of photos from Internet. What this diagram is lacking is the inverter, it seems that none of the diagrams include both power usages…… the things in motorhome that run directly off of the battery and the things that require an inverter. So the lights, the furnace, the thermostat in the fridge, and in our case, the CPAP.

So suffice it to say, we needed a new inverter, and this was important, because to have a good system, you do not want to waste power on an inefficient part. So we did get a new inverter as well (250 bucks). The cool thing about the new inverters is that they power down automatically when there is no load (IE when your computers and phones are charged and no longer drawing on the battery)

OK so we arrive in Quartzsite, and Ken is ready to get the whole system hooked up and ready to go and suddenly the entire system went……We had NO power at all. OMG, we panicked… after all of this we were expecting a great system and never need to worry about it at all.

The cool thing about Quartzsite is that there are thousands of people, out in the desert, all relying on solar power (or generators). SOOOO what that means, is that the store in Quartzsite stocks a LOT of great solar system parts. AND very knowledgable staff. So what had happened essentially is that our new solar panel system had blown the charge controller. ALL that power was too much for the charge controller that we had. A charge controller can only handle a certain amount of charge, and a charge controller for a system is set up to be compatible with the number (power of) your solar panels. Sadly the charge controllers are NOT cheap and this set us back 750 bucks.

We DID learn at this step…. that you need fuses between anything that has power…. So a fuse between the solar panels and the charge controller and a fuse between the battery and the charge controller and these essentially protect the battery and the charge controller.

SOOOO….. we are now out in the desert camping. Where we are, there are other people but they are mostly quite aways away…. someone 500 metres and the next person… a KM away (half a mile).

I am sure in reading this, you wonder why we would spend so much money, just to be able to camp for free? Well I guess it is clear that whatever we save by being self sufficient, we spend on our system. However it is really not so much about cost, it is about choices. Once we get down here we can camp almost anywhere. I guess we find that we likely would not do this winter travel if it meant being crammed into a campground the whole time. Going into Yuma there are thousands of RV in many many campgrounds, many of them semi permanent. I guess we have always felt that that is just not us. Perhaps it is like the way we live at home, we have always lived somewhat remotely.

The closest we have some to living in a town was in Scotch Creek, on a one acre lot with a neighbour who quickly took a disliking to me and was aware that I liked the peace and quiet. So he purchased large speakers and played 70s music VERY loud every day. I felt I had no control……..

I DIGRESS…….. just trying to figure out why we do what we do….. I guess in our world that we have seemingly no control over, it is nice to know that we can at least have control over where we choose to stay.

Anyways, I thought that our recent adventures with solar, in a way, have explained our very complicated system to me, and I thought perhaps that other people might also be interested in how the system worked, AND maybe might not make the same mistakes that we have made.

I guess that is what life is about, finding the places you are most comfortable and making yourself comfortable there.

Must love to all from Janet, Ken and Tucker, the coyote hunter.

Here we are once again in Forest fire season, hearing about the millions of acres of trees that have been burned in Canada. Trees that provided us some protection from Climate change, creating more climate change in their demise. Hard not to dwell on, but……. Looks like a full…. sun?

Perhaps in remembrance of all of those trees lost we can start using Bamboo (or recycled TP) to wipe our butts, instead of having more trees cut down for that purpose. I read once that Costco was using old growth forest trees to make toilet paper. I guess we never talk about these “things”. ( I remember wondering, as a kid, if the Flintstones ever used the toilet. )

I guess we are puttering along attempting to do our part in cooling this planet, or at least not warming more. I am sure that there are those whose carbon footprint is much smaller than ours, but also there are those with greater footprints too. We have found that many of the changes we have made have actually started saving us money as well.

In March of this year we tripled our solar panels.

There is a government program that provides for a 5000.00 grant as well as a 10 year interest free loan for solar panel installation. (Our additional panels cost 14,000). So we figured that we pay an average of 180 per month for electricity, it would not make a lot of difference to be making loan payments instead, so technically we figure we got the solar panels for free. Our loan payments have worked out to 120 dollars a month for 10 years interest free, and our electric consumption looks like this.

So this is what the usage looks like. All the power we generate that we do not use, goes back to the grid giving us a credit. (you can see the negatives on this graph) What this means is that we are actually making money in this heat. The way BC hydro does it is that they balance all of the numbers each March and if they still owe you, you get a check. We actually have 2.5-3 months in the winter that the sun does not hit our panels, so the money we are “making” now, might just be spent in the winter 🥶

8 years ago we bought a fully electric car, and the power that our solar panels capture, is actually charging our car. SOOOO for most of the year we are not affected by gas prices. We essentially drive for free from energy from the sun.🌞

It is a freeing feeling, not being affected by the price of oil, or the price of electricity.

I should point out that I never took on any of these endeavours to save money, and am reminded all the time that these changes in energy consumption are expensive. But they have worked out well for us at a time we are heading into retirement and lower income.

I am continuing to make my toques, despite poor sales in this heat. 🥵 (but fall is right around the corner, RIGHT?) The yarn is made from recycled plastics, which is where fleece also comes from. I have recently read a book called “Unraveling” that defends the use of wool over recycled plastics (fleece) because tiny particles get into the water system and eventually to the oceans. There are apparently special filters you can use on your washing machine to prevent the particles from getting further down the water chain.

We have completed our garlic harvest and they are hanging to dry in our shop. We are thrilled with the size our garlic. We owe that to the large load of compost we had delivered from Spa Hills, a company that has bins all over Salmon arm and area, that composts everything, from animal remains at the chicken farms to food waste from restaurants. They compost at a very high temperature to ensure the material is disease free. SOOO it is strong stuff, and….. yes, smelly to begin with.💩

We have been selling “fresh’ garlic at the market for now before it is fully dried.

We did make a large batch of dill pickled garlic scapes and are now waiting the 6 “recommended” weeks to try them.

We have been camping at some lakes near where we live, and I discovered that you can really sneak up close to a bear in an electric car. …… to get a great picture. He did not ..hear… me coming. Isn’t he HUGE? (or she)

We have become a smoothie family, in trying to have smoothies for lunch each day. We have picked and frozen 20 lbs of fruit so far this year with direct plans for Smoothies. Although we get all of the recommended vegetable servings each day, I find it hard to meet the fruit recommendations. Hence the smoothies. We just put whatever fruit we have in freezer plus some cashew milk and then veggies such as celery and cucumbers. I throw in some rolled oats as well. We are studying up on the best machine for making them as my mini bullet is on its last legs.

Well so there is another blog, I have fallen behind as I let my subscription lapse, but am all paid up now.

thank you for reading much love

Janet, Ken and Tucker

mymostrecentobsession

adventures in solar…and life…

All the sun brings us.. and more🌞