Project: Tom Waits

I should probably try to get out of the house a bit more often... Comments Scott Christie   Please! For the sake of humanity! Manage Peter Raven   It gets worse... Manage

Battery storage continues to expand thanks to  Jarrad and  Glen , as well as a donation from a neighbour who wanted to know what the hell was going on. The second Heavy Duty Century battery initially failed to hold charge, but a bit of applied chemistry brought it back to life. He now has more capacity than his panel can charge in the light his mounting spot can see in a day (and more that he comfortably has room for with the current cabling layout), especially with how much he's been drawing from it. There's theoretically 400-600Wh of useable capacity stacked up here. Tomorrow he'll be leaving it untouched to get a solid charge and help keep the batteries healthy. Replacement solar charge module is on its way; hopefully the improved efficiency will help keep things in the green (pun intended)...

I  realised that the perfect name for his solar experiment was in front of him the whole time: Project Tom Waits: Watts He Building In There? Simon Bagas   Electrical work at ohm. Manag

Peter Raven   has whipped up another ghetto creation. Why spend $15 on something engineered by experts when you can spend 4-5 hours butchering an old dodgy powerboard and some salvaged cables to make your own dangerously exposed junkyard DC power rail? Nelle Fisher   Where’s the diy video?  😂 Mana Peter Raven   I've been considering doing some of those, but I'm a crap presenter and a lot of these aren't really things I'd recommend. A lot of these are things I'm doing to see if I can rather than anything I'd recommend to anyone else... M Ronald Underwood   Im sure there are people willing to pay big bucks if you electrocute yourself on video. Manage Danae McCulloch   How's your house insurance? Ma Peter Raven   None of this is connected to the wall so I'm not TOO concerned. Won't stop me getting a nasty jolt tho. It's all outside, as well....

Peter Raven   once heard the legend of a tight fisted wog who kept  some scraps of wood in the corner of the shed because he might use them one day, and actually did. Today was that day, and he is that wog...

Peter Raven   has been tinkering with the off grid solar rig on and off for a few weeks now. Here we have 2x batteries in parallel that passed reconditioning and testing (thanks  Nick ,  Richelle ,  Travis  who donated). The panel is currently wired into the little charge controller in the back which outputs 12VDC. The black inverter arrived on Friday and does a more efficient solar charge conversion (97% vs 70%)... or would do if it wasn’t DOA (RMA pending). It does a solid job of pumping out  900W at 220VAC tho. He’s been using the DC output to charge portables so far, and today tested out running AC devices. It happily ran his laptop, a couple of chargers and this desk fan today. He tried the vacuum cleaner but that pushed things a bit too far and the inverter said “yeah, no”. The system coped pretty well, although that much draw was more than the panel and converter could keep up with so it drained the batteries gradually over the ~4 hou...